Tweet In grade school, I struggled to read, misinterpreted letter combinations and reversed numbers. Throughout my education, I discovered how to tailor my efforts to learn in different ways to accommodate my dyslexia, a learning disability that results in difficulties with reading, spelling, writing and word pronunciation. I am among the nearly 20 percent of Read more »
Author Archive
How Can We Improve Students’ Motivation to Learn?
December 28th, 2010
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Tweet There has been a lot of news reports lately about how students’ test scores in the United States are not meeting the overall performance level of their international peers. In the past year, Australia, Britain, China and South Korea have all launched national initiatives for educational improvements1, while we continue to fall behind them Read more »
How Do We Encourage Students to be Advocates of Their Own Learning?
December 21st, 2010
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Tweet I often ponder and worry that students are not prepared and engaged to learn in school and are not prepared to be continuous learners. I personally believe that in order to be productive, highly-functioning citizens, we need to prepare our youth to be life-long learners with a thirst for knowledge, continuous personal development and Read more »
Among the P21 Skills, Are We Teaching Students the Skills of Learning?
December 14th, 2010
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Tweet Educators today are faced with the daunting task of wearing many hats in and outside their classrooms. Yet, the monumental task is teaching the basic skills and building blocks of reading, writing, analyzing, synthesizing and researching while instilling in students the desire to ask questions and then seek out their own answers. This is Read more »
Anchor Students’ Learning Before Winter Break
December 7th, 2010
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Tweet Winter break is just two weeks away for many school districts. From now until the bell rings in mid-December, you may find your students restless and daydreaming about sleeping in, playing in the snow or enjoying a homework-free couple of weeks. Educators often say that the biggest challenge at this time of the year Read more »
How the Brain Creates Meaning
November 30th, 2010
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Tweet Visual thinking helps students understand new concepts and retain knowledge, but what’s the brain function behind visual learning? How does visual information help a student’s brain create meaning and knowledge? Recently I watched a speech by Tom Wujec at a TED conference in February 2009 discussing this exact process.1 In the first six minutes, Read more »
Reach Beyond the Classroom
November 23rd, 2010
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Tweet Can you envision a classroom in ten years or picture the future of students’ learning and homework? Presently, technology has expanded the reach of education and begun redefining the classroom experience while reshaping the way students today do their homework. Before, a teacher’s impact was only between the hours of a school day. Students Read more »
Tools to Teach Paperless
November 16th, 2010
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Tweet One hundred acres of rainforest are cut down each minute to help fuel our 85 million tons of annual paper consumption in the United States. This equates to each American using about a single 100-foot Douglas fir tree every year in paper products.1 These products include the notebooks, handouts, books, printed documents and more Read more »
Take Process Writing to the Webspiration Classroom
November 9th, 2010
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Tweet Writing skills are critical for educational achievement, success after graduation, career performance and life skills. With the continually growing use of digital communication methods including word processing, blogs, email, texting and other Internet-enabled forms, written communication skills are imperative for students to compete in the world today. However, writing does not come naturally to Read more »
Collaboration on the Forefront of K-12 Technology
November 2nd, 2010
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Tweet Technology in the last five to ten years has dramatically affected the way we communicate and collaborate. Students today, who are the digital natives of our world, communicate naturally through programs on computers and applications on mobile devices. Between texting, social networks and email, students understand that our world collaborates and communicates via technology Read more »
