Teaching+Ideas+and+Links

=Best TOK sites/blogs:=

http://www.toktalk.net/ This site has interesting videos about the ways of knowing

=Digital Humanities= http://rebeccafrostdavis.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/digital-pedagogy-keywords-nitle-seminar/ Slides and content for a presentation, with a focus on digital pedagogy. Current as of April 2013

http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/ Bamboo DiRT - digital research tools - to carry out various tasks, such as managing bibliographic information, using an ipad, search visually, stay current with research, write papers, collaborate

=Free Online Resources= These digital resources and tools for creating, collaborating, researching, and sharing can be found in the Common Core Curriculum Maps. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, as the technologies are constantly evolving. Consider it a beginning! []

=Project-Based Learning=
 * The [|Buck Institute for Education] is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to 21st-century learning skills, with a focus on PBL. Their site is full of useful resources, research, and teaching materials.

Taken directly from the BIE:

What is PBL?
In Project Based Learning (PBL), students go through an extended process of inquiry in response to a complex question, problem, or challenge. While allowing for some degree of student "voice and choice," rigorous projects are carefully planned, managed, and assessed to help students learn key academic content, practice 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication & critical thinking), and create high-quality, authentic products & presentations.

Rigorous, meaningful and effective Project Based Learning: If we are serious about reaching 21st Century educational goals, PBL must be at the center of 21st Century instruction. The project contains and frames the curriculum, which differs from the short "project" or activity added onto traditional instruction. PBL is, "// The Main Course, not Dessert. //"
 * **is intended to teach significant content.** Goals for student learning are explicitly derived from content standards and key concepts at the heart of academic disciplines.
 * **requires critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication.** To answer a Driving Question and create high-quality work, students need to do much more than remember information. They need to use higher-order thinking skills and learn to work as a team. They must listen to others and make their own ideas clear when speaking, be able to read a variety of material, write or otherwise express themselves in various modes, and make effective presentations. These skills, competencies and habits of mind are often known as “21st century skills,” because they are prerequisite for success in the 21st century workplace.
 * **requires inquiry as part of the process of learning and creating something new.** Students ask questions, search for answers, and arrive at conclusions, leading them to construct something new: an idea, an interpretation, or a product.
 * **is organized around an open-ended Driving Question.** This focuses students’ work and deepens their learning by framing important issues, debates, challenges or problems.
 * **creates a need to know essential content and skills.**Project Based Learning reverses the order in which information and concepts are traditionally presented. A typical unit with a “project” add-on begins by presenting students with knowledge and concepts and then, once gained, giving students the opportunity to apply them. Project Based Learning begins with the vision of an end product or presentation. This creates a context and reason to learn and understand the information and concepts.
 * **allows some degree of student voice and choice.** Students learn to work independently and take responsibility when they are asked to make choices. The opportunity to make choices, and to express their learning in their own voice, also helps to increase students’ educational engagement.
 * **includes processes for revision and reflection.** Students learn to give and receive feedback in order to improve the quality of the products they create, and are asked to think about what and how they are learning.
 * **involves a public audience.** Students present their work to other people, beyond their classmates and teacher – in person or online. This “ups the stakes,” increasing students’motivation to do high-quality work, and adds to the authenticity of the project.

Why use PBL?
Students gain a deeper understanding of the concepts and standards at the heart of a project. Projects also build vital workplace skills and lifelong habits of learning. Projects can allow students to address community issues, explore careers, interact with adult mentors, use technology, and present their work to audiences beyond the classroom. PBL can motivate students who might otherwise find school boring or meaningless.

How is PBL used?
Some teachers use PBL extensively as their primary curriculum organizer and instructional method. Others use PBL occasionally during a school year. Projects vary in length, from several days to several weeks or even a semester. PBL can be effective at all grade levels and subjects, and in career/technical education, afterschool and alternative programs.

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According to the BIE, PBL helps students to "make thoughtful decisions" and "exercise reasoned judgements." Critical thinking is "//ordinary thinking done well, ... reflectively, with attention to criteria, and with the goal of making a defensible, reasoned judgement//."

A project should be centered around around a non-Googleable **Driving Question**. A question that can be answered with a simple Google or library search is "Why is the sky blue?" or "How are airplane wings constructed?" These are certainly worthy questions, but they focus on the uncovering of information, and the explication of concepts rather than the critical analysis of information or concepts.

Questions such as “How can we design an airplane wing that is light and will support 25 pounds without breaking?” or “Which is bluer, the sky or Frank Sinatra’s eyes?” are ones which encourage students to "//**define terms**//, //**consider whether information and concepts vary according to context**//, //**weigh multiple explanations**//, //**evaluate evidence**//, and //**compare alternative actions based on their probability of success**//."

"Projects that develop critical thinking competencies are designed around cognitive tasks that require deliberative thought – making judgments between alternatives, figuring out the best way to create something, weighing evidence, reconsidering initial ideas, creating a plan for solving a problem, summarizing an argument’s key points."

"Critical thinking projects not only require students to think carefully and deliberately, they provide models and scaffolding to show how such cognitive tasks are carried out. For example, a project requiring students to examine the multiple causes of their city’s growth (formation of immigrant communities, establishment of factories, location on a transportation route, proximity to natural and other needed resources, etc.), weigh their relative importance, and identify the most important cause, can give students practice in brainstorming causes, forming specific hypotheses, testing these hypotheses at different points in the town’s growth, discussing in small groups which hypotheses seem more explanatory at different points in time, crafting a well-reasoned argument and finally, preparing a public presentation based on that argument. Teachers can scaffold and guide students by defining the specific competencies used in the project, modeling them for students, giving students the practice and feedback they need to develop the competencies, and finally, requiring students to explain during the project’s public presentation how critical thinking was used in the project."

Key components of PBLs that successfully develop critical thought:
 * non-Googleable Driving Questions
 * deliberative cognitive tasks (which involve reflective thought)
 * support and scaffolding
 * formative (timely, relevant, actionable) assessment and feedback (from teachers, peers, and their own self-assessments)

http://biepbl.blogspot.com/2013/04/does-project-based-learning-teach-critical-thinking.html In //[|The Child and the Curriculum]//, John Dewey observed that, “The logically formulated material of a science or branch of learning, of a study, is no substitute for the having of individual experiences.”
 * The George Lucas Educational Foundations’ [|Edutopia] site has videos and real-life examples around PBL.
 * [|PBL-Online] is an online laboratory for developing and sharing PBL resources and project ideas.
 * This article from Scholastic discusses “[|The Power of Project-Based Learning].”
 * You can also find more PBL Web sites and lesson plans at [|LearningReviews].

--all above information found at wikispaces blog http://blog.wikispaces.com/2011/09/resources-for-project-based-learning.html

=From the Horizon Report -= http://www.nmc.org/publications/2011-horizon-report-k-12

LearnBoost https://www.learnboost.com/ -track student grades and progress, create lesson plans, generate analytics and reports, share with students/parents, organize schedule

Acceptable Use Policies in Web 2.0 and Mobile Era http://www.cosn.org/Initiatives/Web2/AUPGuide/tabid/8139/Default.aspx

K12EdCom http://k12edcom.org/ -An Educational Commons - OpenCourseWare content for K12 schools

5 Ways to Build Your Personal Learning Network http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2010/08/5-ways-to-build-your-10-and-20-personal.html