No two people are alike…we are all individuals. What works in a classroom for one individual may not work for another. Some students may be auditory learners while other may be more apt to understand new content when they can see it and touch it. Dr. Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor of neuroscience from Harvard University, developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) in 1983. This theory recognizes that people have different learning styles. For teachers to educate all students, no matter their style, they must learn to differentiate. With the advent of common core, now more than ever,…
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As an educator people sometimes recommend sites or programs to me that I find don’t live up to the hype. It’s frustrating and time consuming to wade through the massive amount of new web apps popping up everyday. What’s The Easiest Way To Get Started? Then, every once in a while, I’ll come across a site that makes me stop and pause. It sounds amazing. It looks great. But will it work in practice? For the last 4 months I’ve been piloting the website Fishtree. It’s a completely online web app that allows you to create lessons or use lessons…
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The SIIA (The Software & Information Industry Association) have just announced the winners for the 2014 NextGen Awards in Mobile. Fishtree is proud to be recognized as the NextGen Most Disruptive and Overall Mobile Award Winner. The following interview between Rhianna Collier, Vice President of Software Division at SIIA, and Terry Nealon, CEO of Fishtree was originally published on SIIA Blog. Tell us a little about Fishtree and what makes you unique. Fishtree is a next generation learning management platform that combines learning management, collaboration, curation  and personalization to empower every teacher and engage with every student.   The purpose of the…
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Hi, I’m Jennifer Dragotta, a 3rd grade teacher from South Carolina. As an educator I wish I had more time and resources. I never seem to have enough time in the day to teach everything I wish or plan everything I want for every child. I often have to go to several different sites to find new resources that I know my students will enjoy. Yet again, this takes time! My students use various websites that promise personalized education, yet most only deliver the same cookie cutter lessons. If the lesson uses a video about basketball, that would be great for students…
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“Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution.” These are the stirring words of education activist Malala Yousafzai, uttered to the United Nations Youth Assembly on her 16th birthday, a date internationally recognized as Malala Day. This address was Malala’s first significant public appearance since being shot in the head last year by the Pakistani Taliban, who had banned girls’ education in Malala’s turbulent home region of Swat. Is slacktivism a scourge? Malala is a…
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Shouldn’t education be student-centric then, with one single aim – keep students happy and deliver on better learning outcomes? As Douglas Green suggested yesterday at weekly #edchat discussion: “In business, the customer is the number one you need to satisfy. I think it’s good to think this way regarding the students.” This statement caught the attention of many, participating in weekly #edchat. Julie Szaj asked: “Do you think education should take on the business model? Would that make sense for education?” What is education for? We often forget that education is about preparing kids for the future. Education is (or…
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Big-Data is the buzzword of the decade – everyone is claiming that they are in the Big Data game. To be honest, Big Data has always been with us; it has always been a part of real life – population migration, stock market movements, motor traffic patterns, television viewings and ratings, pathogen transmission & mutation etc. The problem has always seemed to be making sense of that data in a uniform manner. All of this information was coming from different channels and was heterogeneous in nature; you could make sense of one of these data sources but that didn’t necessarily…
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Like tiny red candies with a sweet white centre, they glint at me in the corner of my screen. The temptation is irresistible  “Oh! Another one for me?” I exclaim delightedly in my mind. “Why thank you very much!” I’m trying to cut back, but my self control is proving lacking when it comes to these little guys. But it’s not candy I’m hooked on; it’s Facebook notifications. A grown woman though I may be (and one who can generally muster up enough restraint not to go overboard on the sugar), I’m still subject to the seductive lure of social…
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The last five years or so have seen such a whirlwind of exciting developments in the educational technology sector that it’s a daunting task to step back and take stock of it all, never mind distill it down to one or two key elements. But having thought long and hard about this, I realised the revolution we are currently experiencing boils down to one deceptively simple word: openness. The term “open” has become associated in particular with open source content – often referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER), including MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) – which is radically changing…
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When I was in 5th grade, my teacher gave us an assignment: design a quiz board. I’m sure you know the kind I’m talking about – a simple switchboard with a list of questions one side, answers on the other, and when you connect a question with the correct answer a little bulb lights up. As an 11-year-old, I was crazy about this project. Wires! Chipboard! Lightbulbs! And all the poster paint a grade school heart could desire. I revelled in the freedom to craft my own quizz, but more than that, I was thrilled by the experience of creating…
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