Clif's Notes

Professional Development Meme 2012 #pdmeme2012

I’m a big fan of goal setting. It can provide a road map for the short or long-term and can be an effective motivational strategy. I have set a few professional development goals for this summer and have challenged a few of my friends/colleagues to do the same thing. In 2008 I realized that I could set this up as a blog meme and hopefully encourage some of my online friends to achieve a few items from their To Do Lists as well. There are a myriad of ways to approach this, but I’ve opted to take the short-term, easy-to-assess approach, but I’ll leave wiggle room for you to customize it to meet your needs. The official information is below.

Image Source: http://dcrasyep09.files.wordpress.com

Directions

Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2012 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.

Guidelines

NOTE: You do NOT have to wait to be tagged to participate in this meme.

1. Pick 1-3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.
2. For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/03/2012).
3. Post the above directions and these guidelines along with your 1-3 goals on your blog or preferred social media platform (Facebook, Google+, Posterous, etc.).
4. Link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/5147.
5. Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme2012.
6. Tag 5 or more educators to participate in the meme.
7. Achieve your goals and “develop professionally.”
8. Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

My Goals

1. Become more proficient with Google+ and other Google services and integrate them into my graduate courses and professional development services.
2. Read at least 2 of the books on my book wish list.
3. Submit at least 1 of the articles currently in progress for review.

I Tag…

Related articles

• How to encourage teachers to self reflect and be their own best Professional Development (ruthcatchen.wordpress.com)
• Personalized Professional Development (digitaldivideandconquer.wordpress.com)
• Summer – Learning While Rejuvenating! (brightfutures4me.wordpress.com)
• Professional Development Round-up (informania.wordpress.com)
• EduTweet #edchat Discussion- Professional Development so Last Century (adaptivelearnin.wordpress.com)

• Professional Development Meme 2009
• Professional Development Meme 2010
• Professional Development Meme
• Learn with Us (IDT7078)

Bookmarks for 05/28/2012

• LectureTools – iPad app fostering engagement in lectures

  “LectureTools is a student response system that also allows students to take notes linked with the slides and videos presented in class, answer instructor generated questions and pose questions to the instructor. All notes, questions and activities are instantly synchronized with the LectureTools web application.”

  tags: Collaboration=Telecollaboration Social-Software Web-Apps Online-Learning blendedlearning Educational-Technology iPhone iPad

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Bookmarks for 05/24/2012
• Bookmarks for 04/14/2011
• Bookmarks for 12/17/2010
• Bookmarks for 05/04/2011

Future Teachers: Your Help Is Needed — #edchat #idt6061 #idt3600

America’s future teachers are invited to participate in the “Speak Up 2012 Survey for America’s Future Teachers” to share your ideas about teaching.

Speak Up, a national online research project facilitated by Project Tomorrow®, gives individuals the opportunity to share their viewpoints about key issues in K-12 education.

Any college student, who is participating in a degree or credential program that will prepare them for a career as a K-12 teacher, is eligible to take the survey, regardless of prior student teaching experience.

Speak Up for America’s Future Teachers is facilitated through online surveys and will be aggregated at the national and institution level. All of the data is 100% confidential and no specific institutional findings will be shared with anyone outside of the participating college or university.

Participate in “Speak Up 2012 Survey for America’s Future Teachers” and share your ideas about teaching.

• Interest in Math and Science Careers Sparked in Classes Where Learning Is Directed by Students & Supported by Technology
• Speak Up 2011: National Findings for K-12 Students and Parents
• Webinar: Technology Use in Education
• Project Zero at Harvard University: Information and Strategies Every Educator Needs

Teaching through “Questioning” Rather Than “Telling”

Harvard’s Project Zero: Part 2

One of the principles that is of major emphasis at Project Zero is teaching for understanding. The following video is loosely connected with this idea. I intend to go into greater depth about teaching for understanding in upcoming posts in this series.

“You can forget facts,
but you can not forget understanding.”
– Eric Mazur, Harvard University

“How can you engage your students and be sure they are learning the conceptual foundations of a lecture course? In From Questions to Concepts, Harvard University Professor Eric Mazur introduces Peer Instruction and Just-in-Time teaching — two innovative techniques for lectures that use in-class discussion and immediate feedback to improve student learning. Using these techniques in his innovative undergraduate physics course, Mazur demonstrates how lectures and active learning can be successfully combined” (Source).

NOTE: This video is also available as part of another DVD, Interactive Teaching, which contains advice on using peer instruction and just-in-time teaching to promote better learning.

For more videos on teaching, visit the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University.

Related articles

• PMU initiates innovative learning approach (arabnews.com)
• Less Lecturing, More Learning (bokcenter.harvard.edu)
• Learning about Learning: Research and Edreform News and Views 02/22/2012 (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com)
• TechBurst Encourages Students to Share Knowledge (wired.com)

• Project Zero at Harvard University: Information and Strategies Every Educator Needs
• The Floating University: What If All the World’s Best Thinkers Could Be Your Teachers?
• 1 Thing Teachers Should Know about Teaching with Technology
• About the Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence [Video]

The Floating University: What If All the World’s Best Thinkers Could Be Your Teachers?

The Floating University is a new educational media venture that creates and distributes online multimedia curricula, rich in text, video, animation and graphics, that feature today’s biggest thinkers, practitioners and leading scholars.

Their  video lectures “are paired with related texts to introduce complex multidisciplinary subjects in an entertaining and engaging way. Whether you’re a life long learner or a current university student, [their] goal is to take you on a journey of discovery into myriad disciplines — to let you explore unfamiliar territory in a new light — and to pose questions that will encourage critical thinking and robust debate.

For schools, they “aim to invert the traditional lecture model of learning to focus valuable classroom time on interaction, exchange, and discussion, rather than on the passive consumption of live, in-person lectures” (Source).

The Floating University launched last fall with an online course offered at Harvard, Yale and Bard and delivered the key takeaways of an entire undergraduate education. Learn more in this short video.

Disrupting Education: There Are No Boundaries to Knowledge Anymore

This clip/commercial has really gotten in my head. I keep thinking about the juxtaposition of traditional education, innovation, reform, media and technology that this represents. I see this as a sort of a microcosm of what so many of us are talking about and involved in education. In this clip we see a disruptive innovation, online and/or hybrid learning, and some would argue that the classroom has been flipped. I see connections between this delivery platform and the notion that some have that failing schools would improve if they had access to the best teachers. In higher education reports indicate that more and more students are preferring the perceived flexibility of online courses and institutions are strategically planning how they intend to respond.

I’m also really curious to see how interactive and engaging the courses are and how effective they are at promoting creativity and critical thinking. These terms are used frequently on the site and in this video. I also noticed on the website that everything is optimized for use on the iPad which could open the door for interesting opportunities related to engagement. However, I often see teachers, schools, and institutions make similar claims under the pervasive but misguided notion that the very act of using technology makes instruction more effective and more engaging while automatically promoting higher levels of thinking. That just isn’t accurate. Given the reputations of the universities and lecturers involved as well as the feature-rich and content-rich Floating University and Big Think websites I’m going to speculate that they are doing at least a respectable job, and perhaps even better, in these areas. I would enjoy the opportunity to view and experience the Floating University’s courses for myself. The idea of “robust debate” in an online class sounds like fun to me!

Change is in the air. I wonder how all of this will play out over the next few years and subsequent decades. We’ll we resolve these matters or will they have to be solved by the next generation(s) of educators? Perhaps you’ll share your reactions to the the Floating University and to some of the thoughts I have shared.

Related articles

• Critical thinking in the Online Learning Classroom? (onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com)
• Floating University (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)
• On the Quality of Online Courses (sandwalk.blogspot.com)
• Brandon Busteed: In Education, Technology Changes Everything and Nothing (huffingtonpost.com)
• How to Give Every Child the Best Teacher (bigthink.com)

• Project Zero at Harvard University: Information and Strategies Every Educator Needs
• Our Book Is Now Available
• Web 2.0 Tools in the Classroom: Valuable or Distracting?
• Paper Airplane World Record

Project Zero at Harvard University: Information and Strategies Every Educator Needs

Harvard’s Project Zero: Part 1

I had the privilege of participating in Harvard University’s Project Zero Classroom last summer. We (the Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence) were able to send 6 local teachers to participate in the institute thanks to the generosity of Presbyterian Day School here in Memphis. It was undoubtedly the best professional development in which I have ever been involved. I took notes, gathered resources, and spent time documenting my thoughts and reflections with the intent of sharing some of it with you here on this blog. The experience impacted my beliefs about learning and teaching and has been a catalyst for the redesign and enhancements I’ve made in the graduate courses and professional development that I teach and facilitate. In the midst of implementing those instructional modifications, and balancing my work and personal lives this school year, I just haven’t had much time to share much of anything on the blog.

This past February Harvard invited me to be a Project Zero Faculty Fellow. I’m excited for the opportunity to work more closely with “the experts in learning” and look forward to all the ways that I will grow and all that I will learn. With the school year behind me and the summer before me, I’ve begun to steer my mind towards all-things-Project Zero. I’ve been reading and watching videos about learning, teaching for understanding, making thinking visible, thinking routines, cultures of thinking, multiple intelligences, making learning whole, and more. These are just some of the components of the work that the Project Zero research group has produced in it’s more than forty year existence. I intend for this to be the first in a series of Project Zero related posts in which I hope to introduce you to some of PZ’s research, frameworks, strategies, terminology, and big ideas, while sharing some of my own experiences, ideas, and classroom connections. With that in mind, let’s start at the beginning.

Project Zero

“Project Zero is an educational research group at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University” (Source). “Project Zero was founded in 1967…by the philosopher Nelson Goodman to study and improve education in and through the arts. Goodman believed that arts learning should be studied as a serious cognitive activity, but that “zero” had been firmly established about the field; hence, the project was given its name.

“Today, Project Zero is building on this research to help create communities of reflective, independent learners; to enhance deep understanding within and across disciplines; and to promote critical and creative thinking. Project Zero’s mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.

“Project Zero’s research initiatives build on and contribute to detailed understandings of human cognitive development and the processes of learning in the arts and other disciplines. They place the learner at the center of the educational process, respecting the different ways in which an individual learns at various stages of life, as well as differences among individuals in the ways they perceive the world and express their ideas. Many of these initiatives involve collaborators in schools, universities, museums, or other settings in the United States and other countries” (Source).

Learn more about the history and research of Project Zero.

Project Zero Classroom

Participants in this week-long immersive institute will learn to “create classrooms, instructional materials and out-of-school learning environments that promote deep learning and understanding…The Project Zero Classroom details various frameworks that enable you to look at teaching analytically, develop new approaches to planning and make informed decisions about instruction. You will learn to recognize and develop students’ multiple intellectual strengths; encourage students to think critically and creatively; and assess student work in ways that deepen learning. In a Project Zero classroom, teachers are also learners who model intellectual curiosity and rigor, interdisciplinary and collaborative inquiry, and sensitivity to the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of learning” (Source).

The institute addresses fundamental educational questions, such as:

• How can we best inspire and nurture creative thinking and problem solving in our students and ourselves?
• What is understanding, and how does it develop?
• What are the roles of reflection and assessment in student and teacher learning?
• How can participants continue to share and pursue their understanding of Project Zero’s ideas with others after the institute?

The Project Zero Faculty Chair is comprised of Howard Gardner, David Perkins, and Steve Seidel.

Related articles

• How then do we teach Generation C? (onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com)
• Critical thinking in the Online Learning Classroom? (onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com)
• The Flip Side of the Flipped Classroom (effectiveonlineteaching.org)
• Education Week: Use Technology to Upend Traditional Classrooms (sharingtree.wordpress.com)

• About the Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence [Video]
• Teaching through “Questioning” Rather Than “Telling”
• Project-Based Learning Spotlight: PBL Success Start to Finish
• Introduction to Project-Based Learning

Thanks @InsideHigherEd for the Feature

My colleague and friend, Dr. Katrina Meyer, just brought it to my attention that Inside Higher Ed has featured one of my recent articles in its May newsletter. I’m surprised and honored. My thanks to anyone at Inside Higher Ed that might read this note.

“Inside Higher Ed is the online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education…We believe that higher education [is] evolving quickly and radically, and that the time [is] right for new models of providing information and career services for professionals in academe” (Source).

Learn more at Inside Higher Ed.

Related articles

• 4 Reasons Why the Bonk MOOC is So Interesting (downes.ca)
• Pineapples, Robot Graders, and Standardized Testing in Higher Ed (hackeducation.com)
• Meet Doctor Robot, PhD. (blogs.the-american-interest.com)

• University of Memphis Education Career Fair
• Alltop Education
• Tools I’m Currently Using
• AERA Conference

Bookmarks for 05/24/2012

• Teamie – The Collaborative Learning Network

  Teamie is a cloud-based social platform that makes learning collaborative & fun, enables educators to engage & teach, and drives performance & behavior.

  tags: Collaboration=Telecollaboration Social-Software Web-Apps Online-Learning blendedlearning Educational-Technology

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Bookmarks for 05/28/2012
• Bookmarks for 04/14/2011
• Bookmarks for 04/23/2012
• Bookmarks for 12/17/2010