Fourteen years after writing Teaching Zack to Think, there is still no Internet skill more critical than Web literacy. However, simply teaching students to be able to search for and validate information is not enough. The ever-growing amount of information on the Web and the immediate access to experts and peers from around the world [...]
Alan November and Brian Mull have recently written an article titled Flipped Learning: A Response to Five Common Criticisms which now appears on the eSchool News site. Within the article, they explain how to deepen student learning using the Flipped Learning method, and they also address criticisms this method has received. You are invited to read [...]
Since writing my 3 Keys to a Flipped Classroom blog post, I have been reading many great contributions to the discussion around flipping classrooms. Last week I was commenting on Lisa Nielsen’s thoughtful post Five Reasons I’m Not Flipping Over The Flipped Classroom and something occurred to me… I have flipped my Professional Development! I’ve [...]
Today, we are officially relaunching our opening keynote from BLC11 with Dr. Eric Mazur. Dr. Mazur is the Area Dean of Applied Physics and Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. In his keynote, Dr. Mazur shares his vast research on teaching and learning. Students in Dr. Mazur’s class are [...]
The pencil was, in its day, a disruptive technology. When the little pink eraser on the end was introduced it had educators throwing up their hands. Now, they said, no one will think before they write. The pencil is also an incredibly sophisticated tool. It took more than a century to perfect–Thoreau’s family was a [...]
I recently received a call from a principal who posed this scenario to me that happened within his school. I thought it might make for very interesting discussion, and I’ve asked him for permission to put this out to our readers. To respect the concerns of the school, principal, teacher and student, none of their [...]
How can we help prepare students for the future and encourage them to dream bigger, think creatively and develop innovative solutions? On May 2nd, educators, experts, parents, teachers and students from a variety of backgrounds and points of view will come together in Los Angeles to flex their creative muscles on teaching and learning solutions. [...]
I think the best way to tell this tale, is to rewind to 7 or so years ago. I am a 3/4 Multi-Age teacher, and Google has yet to be invented. I can’t remember exactly what I was teaching to the students at the time, but I believe it must have been science related, because [...]
A fifteen minute presentation format is a very short time to try to build a case for a big idea. My Ted Talk is about how the current culture of school typically underestimates the contribution that many students would make to solve real problems and to make a contribution to help classmates learn. Of course, [...]
Years ago I accompanied a student who I was working one-on-one with to an event at his school where his entire grade level was having a special “showing” of their Social Studies Projects. I can’t remember the unit they were studying. I can’t remember what the project was (I vaguely recall the “Oregon Trail” or [...]
We're proud to partner with Texas ASCD to host Southwest BLC, our first regional version of BLC, held in Dallas, TX.