Into the Driver's Seat

The unfortunate fact is that few of us ever really come to grips with what it means to study, apart from sitting by oneself with a textbook for hours on end. Despite its obvious inefficiency as a learning method, we’ve all found ourselves doing that kind of “studying” at one time or another. Having taught psychology classes for 40 years, Pierce College professor Marty Lobdell has seen thousands of students laboring, indeed suffering, under similar studying-related assumptions, and in his 8.7-million-times-viewed talk “Study Less, Study Smart,” he sets out to correct them. He has also dispensed his wisdom in a book by the same title.

For more than a dozen years Common Craft videos have been used by teachers to help students understand topics including digital citizenship, personal finance, and many big technology concepts. One of the things that makes Common Craft videos popular is the clear and concise manner in which information is presented using a whiteboard, simple cutouts, and voice over. That style has become known as the Common Craft style and many teachers including myself have had students make videos using that style. Now Common Craft offers their own free course for teachers who want to make Common Craft style videos in their classrooms.

We want our students’ learning to be enduring, enabling them to make sense of complexity now and in the future. For this to occur, we need to nudge students beyond the learning of facts and skills to uncover concepts—transferable ideas that transcend time, place, and situation.

Google Scholar crawls the worldwide web for scholarly articles and research so that you don’t have to.

Scholarly Googlebots relentlessly scour the Internet for academic and peer-reviewed resources that fit your topic search and leave you with more time for analysis, writing your thesis and sharing the results with your classes and peers.

"Tips to help online educators plan their first course. With online education, a growing force on the market, more enterprising individuals than ever before are finding themselves inspired to launch an online course of their own. However, for many of these potential educators, the first hurdle is learning how to teach a course."

In the twenty-first century classroom, learning is no longer teacher-directed. Students are beginning to feel more ownership for their learning, allowing them to interact with course material instead of simply trudging through direct instruction and handfuls of physical material.

Google HyperDocs are digital documents that contain all elements of a learning cycle in a central location. Within a single document, students have access to hyperlinks to all resources necessary to complete the activities within that unit of instruction.  The following are ways in which HyperDocs can help enhance your teaching at any educational level

Online students often underestimate the amount of time and discipline necessary to successfully complete assignments, discussions, quizzes, and projects.

With online teaching and learning becoming the norm for so many teachers and students during the COVID-19 climate, it is important to be aware of what makes an engaging, creative and effective web-based teaching and learning experience.

Learn to change your background, your audio and video settings, and how to share your screen.

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, here is a handy visual featuring 10 easy ways to help you integrate the power of QR codes in your instruction. We have also included a list of resources at the end of this post so you can learn more about educational potential of QR codes in education.

The following article is adapted from our upcoming book on future-focused learning. It talks about how to teach learners to build solid research skills for school and for life.
 
How do we help our learners develop research skills that will serve them practically in school and life? Having this set of information location and management abilities in any digital-age survival kit applies equally to students, teachers, and everyday people. In the classroom, we teach it using the process of Information Fluency.

Years ago I published a slideshow that demonstrated how to create a quiz in Google Forms. Even though that slideshow is now outdated, I still get requests for copies of it. To replace that slideshow I made the following video that demonstrates how to create a quiz in the current version of Google Forms.

Can you feel excitement about flipping your classroom? If you’ve never done it before it can be challenging to know where to even begin. That’s why we’ve created this essential flipped learning beginner’s guide for you. We’ve seen countless other teachers “flipping out” and it has forever changed the results of their students’ learning. In fact, even the kids most in need are benefitting from accessing the best flipped learning videos.

Students work on the feedback provided to them to bring the best out in their performance. However, there can be a possibility that students are getting the right feedback which hinders their growth. Without having the correct feedback it is impossible for students to work on their weak areas. As educators, the feedback provided needs to be of sort that can direct students towards better results.

Read the story of Jeremy LeCornu of Brighton School in Australia, and how his encounter with Lee Crockett inspired him to try flipped learning.

When you develop online course, you tend to overlook few things without realizing their importance. Take care of these and be effective in your instruction.