Posts by Guest Author
Five Free Online Courses (MOOCs) to Help Your Career
Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have become all the buzz among higher-education experts. The idea is that anyone, anywhere can sign up to take a course from the nation’s top institutions like Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Stanford. This is undoubtedly an exciting idea. With tuition costs rising and student loan debt topping $1 trillion, the future of our higher education system will rely on innovations like MOOCs.
What Does an Ideal Learning Environment Look Like?
How would you describe the perfect learning environment? Yes, I realize the question is open-ended, and after launching Compass Learning’s Ideal Learning Environment Video Contest, it’s evident that plenty of people have very specific thoughts regarding their education. We received 100 video entries of teachers, students, and parents describing or showing us their vision of the ideal learning environment. And let me just tell you: I was shocked at the range of creative ideas submitted.
Protecting Your Teaching Investment: Help Students Retain Knowledge While Away From School
For years, when school breaks drew to a close, educators were faced with the task of refocusing students suffering from the proverbial “brain drain” after weeks or months away from the classroom. Despite the best intentions of holiday reading lists and math worksheets, not to mention the lack of focus that can accompany the end of the semester or school year, students were returning to the classroom at a different point than they left.
Use Google Drive as a “Stepping Stone” to 3D Learning
Craig Roberts, assistant director of education at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, believes his students learn better when they explain things visually. So, he has them build fruit fly brains out of Play-Doh, and construct human brain cells out of miscellany from The Scrap Exchange, a local nonprofit creative reuse center. More often, he sends them to the whiteboard to illustrate core concepts using a splash of color and lots of lines.
11 Essential Tools For Better Project-Based Learning
The rise of technology used in classrooms has made learning much more interactive. The emergence of iPads to browser-based tools in project-based learning, take teaching to a new level in the 21st century. Even the current trends in education include the use of new technology, from collaborative projects to blending traditional textbook teaching with innovative tools.
Innovation In the Face of Dated Modalities
The charter school movement that began 20 years ago in Minnesota has provided an unprecedented opportunity for educators to implement innovative change. This kind of change invokes a variety of emotions.
The Case for Authentic Learning
It was John Dewey who created the notion of “learning by doing.” His famous line was, “Education is not preparation for life: Education is life itself.” And years later it was Jerome Bruner who stated that it wasn’t enough to learn, say, history. The more successful approach would be to teach students to think like a historian. The ideas of these education philosophers, and others such as Johann Pestalozzi, are making something of reappearance in the call for more authentic learning experiences in an age of extensive testing. Authentic learning could be defined as learning that involves real-world tasks and problems.
How Is ‘Back to School’ Changing?
This past month as millions of young people traded in their baseball bats for backpacks, teachers, parents, students – and Blackboard staff – experienced the familiar rituals of Back to School. That got me thinking: technology changes a lot – how we create content, collaborate with our peers and find information. Do today’s tech-savvy students experience a different Back to School transition than past generations?
Amazon Competes with Apple for Classroom-Tablet Dominance
After the release of the cutting-edge, media-enriched iPad apps iBooks 2 and iTunes U in early January, Apple may have thought it would be the only Fortune 500 company with the technological goods powerful enough to monopolize digital tablets in the classroom. But with this week's announcement of Amazon's latest technological creation, Kindle Whispercaster, Apple may have just found some fierce competition in the educational market.
The Future of OER
Open education resource (OER) is one of the rapidly changing education platforms globally. However, as this versatile educational platform gains popularity, a number of questions have been raised concerning its sustainability and future. Here are some aspects about the trend that will help you answer some of the issues or questions about OER.