Eclectic Technology

Jackie Gerstein has a number of posts that look at the Maker Movement, and in this post she discusses looks at two issues within the movement that have come to her attention through social media (quoted from post):

* Maker movement initiatives are often driven by more affluent white males.

* The maker movement is too often being associated with the tech stuff – Arduinos, Littlebits, Makey-Makeys – stuff that less affluent schools and community programs can afford.

Gerstein shares evidence that addresses each of these issues and then moves on to discuss how we can provide learners with maker opportunities at minimal costs. This portion of the post is divided into three sections:

* Changing Perceptions about Stuff

* Changing Perceptions about What Activities are Considered Making

* Changing Perceptions: Making is about a Mindset and a Process Not About Stuff

Her bottom line, let's focus on the act of making. If you are considering adding a maker corner to your classroom next year, or have the opportunity to work with learners this summer and would like them to become a part of the maker movement, take the time to peruse this post.

Who knew that the Growth Mindset is just one component of the Academic Mindsets? (My answer would be "not me.") Having stumbled on this post from mimio I knew I had to share it. Learn about three other mindsets that our students need to be aware of:

* Self-Efficacy

* Sense of Belonging

* Relevance

Are these mindsets you use in our classroom? How might you incorporate them? What will your students think about them? 

Click through to read more.

Do you teach your students about growth mindset? Is this a topic of discussion with other staff in your school? Jackie Gerstein has shared three excellent resources in this post that focuses on growth mindset.

She has created an infographic (image above) that looks at fixed mindset and growth mindset, showing how a student may identify based on their mindset.

The next step was putting the infographic into ThingLink and creating links to over 15 resources. Here is the link: ThingLink version of the infographic.

There is also a slideshow that provides additional resources (although some may be repeated in the ThingLink). The slideshow is split into four sections:

* Mindsets

* Historical Background

* The Educator with a Growth Mindset

* Teaching the Growth Mindset to your Learners

Since this post is based on a workshop she provided it is a great resource to share with teachers at your school (or other teachers whom you know). Make sure to check out the resources for students. You may find yourself creating a poster to help your students learn more about growth mindset.

This chart looks at the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset by looking at eight areas:

* Desire

* Evaluation of situations

* Dealing with setbacks

* Challenges

* Effort

* Criticism

* Success of others

* Result...

You may want to share this with students or other teachers at your school.

The more times I watch Ted-ED videos the more impressed I am with the quality of the presentations...and the fact that they also supply questions (typically multiple choice and short answers), additional resources and a forum. This particular presentation is an individual sharing their disability, but it also addresses the concepts of fixed mindset and growth mindset, in a way that will engage students. I think it could be used to bring up these two concepts for a great classroom discussion.

This post explores the Matthew Effect in detail, providing the background to be able to understand how this impacts our classrooms today. After the introduction the post is split into three sections:

* How The Labels You Place On Your Students Affects Their Performance

* How Early Experiences Determine A Student's Academic Career

* The Matthew Effect In The System
This final section raises the question of the value of holding students back. The author states "The ideal solution, she proposes, is not holding kids back but collaborating with parents on the creation of an individualized learning plan for each student who needs help reading — a plan that might involve specialized instruction, tutoring, or summer school."

* Abandon the notion that it is the best and brightest who rise effortlessly to the top.

We often hear of growth mindset and fixed mindset. Is there also a creative mindset? Jackie Gerstein suggests that there is a creative mindset in this post. Why? If a mindset is defined as "ideas and attitudes with which a person approaches a situation"  there is a list of "ideas and attitudes" that may be part of a creative mindset. The visual above provides Gerstein's list of some items she considers important for a creative mindset. The list is also below.

* Believes in one's own creativity

* Embraces curiosity

* Suspends judgement - silences the inner critic

* Tolerates ambiguity

* Persists even when confronted with skepticism and rejection

* Taps into childlike imagination; a child's sense of wonder

Each of these is described in more detail and links to additional resources are provided. There is also a short discussion conditions necessary to facilitate creative mindset in a classroom.

As teachers many of believe it is important to teach students about growth mindset. This research provides additional information about the value of doing this. Quoting the last paragraph from this article in Time:

"The takeaway: How we’re predisposed to think about problems changes the way our brains handle them. Beyond the abilities we’ve inherited, the most important factor in achievement may be believing that it’s within reach."

If you are interested in more information on growth mindset search for the term in this Scoop.it. There are quite a few articles and videos that are appropriate to share with students.

Do you discuss growth mindset with your students? Do you also discuss what a fixed mindset is? In this post Jackie Gerstein provides her insights into these areas, and also talks about the grwoth of what she defines as a "toxic mindset" where a students might think:

• Mediocre is often good enough for me as long as I get the work done.

We are fortunate that she has also provided a "Personal Accountability and Reflection" series of questions, which is shown in the infographic above, and also listed in the post. Below are two of the questions.

• Did I work as hard as I could have?

• Did I regulate my procrastination, distractions, and temptations in order to complete my work?

These are great questions to use with your students. How do you think  your students would answer them? Would they acknowledge how they are working accurately?

How can we help nurture a growth mindset? New research has been published shows that providing as little as "30-minute online intervention can spur academic gains for many students, particularly those with poor grades."

Learn more about the programs that were offered and about the gains that struggling students made based on the online intervention.

Carol Dweck is known for her research on growth mindset and this post provides up-to-date information that may make you consider creating a short presentation and discussion with students about the value of hard work and effort as well as various study techniques. It is important to remember that students of all ages need to be educated that they are able to learn.

There are times when we run out of steam and feel little to no creativity...and this infographic provides some quick and easy ways to move ourselves towards a more creative space. The post provides the 27 ideas as a list (which some folks may prefer). As you read through you might also think of sharing some of these with students, especially if you are going to have a conversation about growth mindset.

Learn about the characteristics of genius in this post as well as five strategies to create a growth mindset in children. Two are listed below:

* Perseverance

* Praise the process, not the person

This post discusses a recent article that was published by the Journal of Consumer Science. The short hand version is that there is a significant difference in saying "I don't" than "I can't."

Why? "Your words help to frame your sense of empowerment and control [and the] words that you use create a feedback loop in your brain that impacts your future behaviors."

As I read this post I thought about Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset. How can we use this new knowledge to help our students?

This September the publication "Educational Leadership" is focused on Resilience and Learning. There are many articles available at the ASCD website and this one provides a list of 11 reflections on resilience, available as text only or as the infographic (downloadable as a pdf). Several other items listed in this are below.

* Resilience is a process, not a trait.

* Everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, has the capacity for resilience.

* Resilience isn't just for people from high-risk environments...

Each of these has additional detail and an additional 7 are available in the post.

What do you think? Do your students come to you with a fixed mindset? Is there future pre-determined by birth? Is intelligence static? Or do you students come in with a growth mindset, with the knowledge that learning takes effort and time, the ability to try and fail, and try again (and again...)? Can intelligence be developed?

Gleeson provides an overview of the two mindsets and explores the infographic and the five categories within in it by asking each as a question. Below is one example...but you will find questins for each category in the post (challenges, obstacles, effort, criticism, success of others).

Quoting from the post:

OBSTACLES: Do we allow our children/ourselves to give up when learning becomes too difficult and stay in a growth- limiting ‘comfort zone’? OR Do we expect our childen/ourselves to persist until we overcome those obstacles and celebrate the achievement of success against all odds?And if you would like to watch a short video that discusses fixed mindset check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhLJPhxuvGM.