Category Archives: Learning
What will become of teacher education?
Schools/programs such as Iowa BIG and Waukee APEX reflect efforts to reform education going back more than 100 years. While the people running these programs might not agree, there is a lot of similarity to vocational programs many of us grew … Continue reading
Posted in Education Reform, Learning, Nature of Teaching, Teacher Actions, teacher education
Tagged dewey, PBL, teacher education
4 Comments
Teaching is Design: End User
Once we know the outcomes of our design, we need to consider for whom we design? The best designed products clearly considered the end user in the design process. When a product is designed for the end user, the user … Continue reading
Posted in Design, Learning, Nature of Learning
Tagged Design, education, Learning, learning theory, students, teaching
2 Comments
Learning to Walk
The following abstract came across my google reader today. What are the insights you’re seeing for learning/teaching in K-16 education? A century of research on the development of walking has examined periodic gait over a straight, uniform path. The current … Continue reading
Technological evolution, not revolution.
As much as people want to believe in the revolutionary power of technology, technology advance more closely resembles evolution than revolution because new technology is developed in light of previous technologies (McArthur, 2007). Usually, new technologies are simply a recombination … Continue reading
Posted in Learning, Nature of Learning, Nature of technology
Tagged Learning, nature of technology, philosophy of technology
3 Comments
Creation of what?
When we talk about the use of technology in schools we often note how the technology can be leveraged to increase students’ level of thinking. Bloom’s taxonomy placed “creating” (used to be synthesis) near the top of the “thinking pyramid”. … Continue reading
What should we flip?
My last post had some criticism of the flipped classroom. David Cox, Frank Noschese and I were discussing the nuances on twitter and each had an important insight. David noted that the better flip described in my example lesson is … Continue reading
Posted in Assessment, Class Activities, Curriculum, General Education, Learning, Teacher Actions
Tagged Assessment, edreform, flipped classroom, homework, questioning, teaching
22 Comments
Imagine a class…
Imagine a class engaged in an authentic problem*. Let’s say they are trying to understand how to wire a ceiling fan (or some other thing, doesn’t matter). One student says, “Hey, I have a room in my house where I … Continue reading
Posted in Class Activities, Education Reform, Learning, Teacher Actions
11 Comments
The Stillness of Chaos…
Organized chaos. This phrase is how I often envision my classroom. Today, we accomplished a lot. We developed a list of questions to research, introduced the collaborative blog project, discussed classroom management, questioning strategies, motivation, wait time I and wait … Continue reading
Posted in Class Activities, Goals for Students, Learning, Teacher Actions
Tagged chaos, Learning, motivation, organized, questioning, student thinking, teaching, wait time
1 Comment
Interrelated learning factors
The diagram below was created during a discussion in my “learning & assessment” course. We started by listing some things that we know affect learning & then tried to understand how each factor affected other factors. While the students are … Continue reading
Posted in Learning
15 Comments
Teaching as Dynamic 