Engagement Based Teaching and Learning

A question is essential when it: 

causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content;provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions;requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers;stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons;sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences;naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.Essential questions are essential to lesson design!

Use Crop It! to help students develop visual literacy, by thinking and revising thinking about an image. This activity can be done in the classroom using construction paper cut in the shape of two Ls to create a cropping tool and printing out images for each student. Teachers can create a unique online Crop It! learning activity for their students by logging into My Portfolio and choosing My Online Activities.

And now the kids speak.  My favorite is Taylor's who says:  " In my experience, teachers get distracted, too, by weird stuff like a pen on the floor across the room. Kids don’t get distracted any easier than adults."   Maybe teacher's distractions cause the need to occupy time (and hence multi-tasking?) 

And now Tamar: "

This article actually doesn’t surprise me because I’ve heard it all before. A lot of adults think that we don’t know that what we’re doing is wrong, but we do. When I multitask, my logic is, “At least I’m getting it done.” If teenagers really want to get some work done, we’ll get it done while resisting distractions. And yes, we text in class, but if my grade in that class is and A or a B I don’t see why it’s a problem."

 

 

 

Part one......

 

My immediate response is that THIS can be a bad thing and determinental DEPENDING on WHAT the main task is.  I believe the research "58 percent of second- and third-year law students who had laptops in class were using them for “non-class purposes” more than half the time."; " “Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources."

What I think, though, is that MUCH of what we have to take in during lectures is NOT "complex"!  I don't think teachers really know how much "down time" there is in a given period of time together.  

Secondly, I think we can TEACH appropriate and effective use of technology during class and as parents at home.  I personally ask that phones are down during key times:  dinner and any other important social interaction (family parties); studying; reading.