The findingDulcinea Blog

Introducing MashPlant

In a world full of new web platforms for education, I was excited to find a new one at ICE 2013 that stands out. MashPlant Studio is a free platform that allows teachers to create safe spaces for students that add a new layer of creativity, collaboration, and engagement to any curriculum.

Teachers create one or more studios - small, private social networks - and invite their students to join via assignments on the teacher's blog. Teachers maintain a degree of control to keep order if necessary.

Students can upload their work in one of many document or multimedia formats, critique and collaborate using familiar social media tools, celebrate their achievements and growth together. The site will soon include dozens of tutorials that teach students the fine points of creating professional-grade videos.

The interface is intuitive and fun to use; MashPlant says its beta testers were sharing work and uploading media even when it wasn't assigned, a sign of passionate attachment that we don't see enough of in students any more.

"When we built Studio, we had no idea how many different ways teachers would find to use it," said MashPlant CEO Jason Brett. That inspired MashPlant to create the Teachers Lounge, where every educator with a Studio can share his curriculum ideas and explore new ways to use Studio in the classroom.

"We think this is a product that can revolutionize the classroom and take today's curriculum to the next level and we can't wait to get it into more teachers' hands," said Brett. MashPlant Studio is completely free for teachers to use. The product is paid for by what Brett calls "mission aligned advertising" - curated ads highlighting brands and organizations that offer a positive influence. A truly neat adaptions is that ads cannot be clicked on during the school day!

Create your own free account at http://www.mashplantstudio.com and see what the buzz is all about.

A Three-Word History Test that Most American Students, and Adults, Would Likely Fail

Discuss, using examples.

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

Dulcinea Media

Read how our free resources help prepare students for exams that require critical thinking.

Buy the LineTime App for iPad/iPhone, which offers a zoomable timeline of modern history, enabling students, teachers and fans of history to see contemporaneous events across all cultures, as well as to explore topics throughout many centuries.

Learn 11 Things You May Not Know About Abraham Lincoln, an article that links to the very best primary and secondary sources about Lincoln available online.

A Search Engine for Educators

Three years ago, we introduced SweetSearch, A Search Engine for Students. It is a bold concept – a human curated search engine that searches only Web sites that have been evaluated by research experts. We didn’t apply an algorithm or a filter – we created a whitelist of 35,000 Websites. Reviewers have uniformly praised SweetSearch as an outstanding tool for students.

After we launched, we learned of another group of people that may actually appreciate SweetSearch even more – educators. We continually monitor Twitter and education list serves to learn about the specific search needs of educators, and to make sure we meet those needs. The response has been gratifying:

 

See many more Tweets by educators about SweetSearch.

Teachers are learning that if they search in our reliable universe of sites, they can quickly build their lesson plans, find blogs and advice from fellow educators, and discover primary resources, which are hard to locate using the internal search function of sites such as The Library of Congress or National Archives.

To see typical results for yourself, take a look at the results for these representative terms, then compare them to the results of Google and Bing:

Holocaust

Differentiated Instruction

War of 1812

Shakespeare Sonnets

World War II

 You'll likely find, as Paul Gilster, a technology journalist, wrote in the News Observer about SweetSearch: “Google or Bing may find many of the same sites, but what I've noticed is that some of the better sites for a particular topic wind up deep in their search results, often outranked by Web pages more commonly used but of inferior quality....I was impressed with SweetSearch's focus on credible scholarship and emphasis on primary source materials.”

SweetSearch has integrated Yolink, a tool that highlights keywords, showing where the term is used and in what context, so that anyone can quickly scan a search results page and easily determine which results will be most helpful for a particular task. See how quickly you can evaluate the full first page of 20 results! The search terms and surrounding context can then be saved, with one click, to a Google Doc (with the link included), EasyBib's citation generator, or a social bookmarking service. So you not only can find what you’re looking for in seconds, but you can be sharing it with colleagues moments later.

For Open Education Resource platforms to succeed, they need to be as easy for educators to use as possible. It's not enough to give educators a long, aggregated list of relevant resources of varying quality; the resources need to be expertly curated, and there must be a function for educators to search within these resources.

That is what SweetSearch provides, at no cost.

 

  

 

 

Mark Moran

CEO

Today is National Grammar Day (and Twitter is No Excuse!)

Get this picture on a t-shirt at Allfavourites.com.

You can fire off a three-paragraph e-mail in one minute and condense a day’s worth of thoughts into a few 140-character tweets.

But how’s your grammar?

Modes of communication like e-mail, instant messaging, texting and Twitter are changing a lot of things, like the way we get information, how we consume it and most importantly on National Grammar Day, how we compose it.

Today is a chance to treat every utterance like it can’t be spell-checked by Microsoft Word.

 The official site of National Grammar Day has a simple message for all those who want to “get involved” in the celebration: “Speak well! Write well! And on March 4, march forth and spread the word. We want people to think about language and how it can be used best.”

One way you can “march forth” is by challenging yourself with the University of California Press’s copy editing quiz. You may feel like you’re back in the classroom where you first took the SAT. But even if you get the answers wrong, you’ll get an explanation of the right answers.

Also, read our article on the decline of grammar, in "What's Happening to Writing Skills?"

Grammar Girl hosts podcasts about common grammar and usage mistakes. Confused about “which” and “that”? “Between” vs. “among”? Need proofreading tips? These and more topics are covered in a format that’ll give you a nice break from screen-based reading.

Refer back to a good, old-fashioned book, “The Elements of Style,” for trustworthy tips and explanations.

Finally, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar publishes this blog in which it members "document their noble efforts."

Check out our Web Guides to Elementary School English and Middle School English for links to some quality sites and tips on English that you can impart to the young people you know.

Liz Colville

What Will Take the Place of Textbooks in the Social Studies Curriculum?

For many years, educators and other observers have forecast the death of the textbook.

Yet when Apple introduced iBooks two weeks ago, it was met with great fanfare in parts of the education community.  Several major textbook publishers signed on as initial customers.

It’s no surprise that these companies eagerly signed on to a “solution” that largely preserves the status quo. The iBooks, for all their bells and whistles, still have one fatal flaw: they are still textbooks. They are a case, in the words of Pete Townsend, of “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.”

As education professor Alec Couros Tweeted last week, “as long as there are textbooks of any sort, there will be no reform.”

What will it take to bring about the death of the textbook?

What comes next must be created by passionate educators who, in the words of John Carver, superintendent of Van Meter (Iowa) Schools, collectively decide that no one should have "ownership" over what is taught in schools.

iBooks fall far short of this ideal:

• iBooks are created by education companies that are susceptible to politically driven agendas. This is a phenomenon that has been around long before the 2010 Texas controversy.

• iBooks reflect the perspective of a small number of writers and editors, rather than the collective wisdom of experienced educators.
• Like  conventional textbooks, iBooks are geared towards requiring students to memorize particular "facts" and viewpoints, rather than encouraging them to explore the full range of a topic on their own, think for themselves, and form their own perspectives.

• iBooks largely impose a textbook's "one size fits all" approach to learning on a diverse group of students, with different interests, abilities and needs;

• iBooks will not reduce the $8 to $15 billion the U.S. education system spends on text books each year.  iPads are required to read them, and, given the large file size for each textbook, students will likely need the 32GB iPad, which currently retails for $699; furthermore, the $15 textbook is not transferable from one student to another, and thus the cost is the same as a $75 textbook that lasts five years.

How can educators collaboratively develop a tool that solves all of these problems?

For many years now, a rapidly growing number of innovative educators around the world have been using the Web to deliver the best educational experience to their fortunate students. They are finding, and sharing with their students, outstanding Web resources - including primary sources, expert analysis and countervailing viewpoints - that dwarf the information available in any textbook. This information is the virtual version of a "course pack" of articles that many college professors curate for students.

What is needed is a single, central repository that aggregates the work of these educators and makes it easily searchable. Teachers would be able to access assignments created by other teachers, learn from them, build on them, and then contribute their own, improved versions to the repository. 

To put a smiley face on a despised term, it would create a "Race to the Top" unburdened by federal oversight.

We’ve created a prototype of such a repository, called findingEducation (a name unlikely to endure). It's in Alpha stage, but in its current form, it has several useful features:

• Its back-end helps includes selective tools that help educators easily find the best online resources about any subject.
• Its “My Library” enables teachers to save the links they find to a bookmarking tool, which can be viewed by other educators;
•  Educators than share the links with students on a blog-like assignment page, called a “digital classroom.”
• Teachers are welcome to "frame" the page for the digital classroom so that it appears integrated into the school Website.
• For findingEducation, or any other tool, to replace textbooks, it needs a critical mass of educators from one subject using it regularly. Educators must be permitted to make use of each other’s work, without restriction.

For example, once a few dozen U.S. History teachers create innovative, resource-rich assignments relating to the U.S Civil War, a new teacher entering the fray can synthesize the best of the existing lesson plans to create his or her own.

See a sample page: http://markskillman.findingeducation.com/

For more information on findingEducation:

Take a site tour.

See our help section for our FAQ and other tips for using findingEducation.

How Dulcinea Media Helps School Librarians Serve Teachers & Students

At Dulcinea Media, we view school librarians as our best allies in helping us fulfill our mission to help students learn how to use the web effectively.

We've attended the past two AASL shows and many local library conferences, and we've spent plenty of time visiting schools and monitoring LM_Net to learn how we can help librarians help teachers and students. We've also become one of the most ardent advocates for school librarians in the face of clueless school boards that want to cut their positions.

Click here to read reviews of our work. Perhaps the kindest words in the many reviews of our products come from Temple University Professor Renee Hobbs, who wrote to us, "your website is such a treasure trove of fascinating stuff! I want every educator in America to know about it."

We agree with that aim! To that end, here is a brief discussion of our products and how they help school librarians serve:

1. In April 2012, we'll be releasing our Web Research Tutorial; it is the only product for which we will charge a fee, and a modest one at that. Based on research studies and the result of extensive interviews, it will teach web research skills to educators and students in a way that no other product does. Using a multimedia, varied format, it meets them where they are and uses pragmatic analogies and examples to bring them along to where they need to be.

2. SweetSearch, A Search Engine for Students, is a free tool that helps educators and students find credible, comprehensive resources about their subject, quickly (BONUS: librarians and teachers tell us it helps them find awesome resources as well!  We use it to respond to librarian queries on LM_Net and often find the requested info in seconds). SweetSearch searches only 35,000 websites that research experts have approved, and it does not contain offensive ads! We've also introduced SweetSearch4Me, the only search engine that prominently features on the first results page the high quality Web sites created for elementary school students. READ MORE.

We offer a widget for both SweetSearch and SweetSearch4Me, so you can embed them on your school Web sites. But the best way to get your students to use these superior tools is to add them on to every browser in your school; to do this for Firefox and Internet Explorer, just click the green Add-On box on the top right of SweetSearch.

3. Do your students write about the same events and people, year after year? SweetSearch Biographies is an indexed collection of more than 1,000 biographies, sortable by profession, gender, and race/origin. Students using this will soon be teaching you about people you've never heard of.

4. Access our landing page for Social Studies  In the left column, you'll find dozen of Web Guides that are comprehensive, narrated tours of the best content on the Web about the subject, that directly link to the best primary sources about a subject. We have hundreds of other web guides as well. For librarians, we offer Sweet Sites, a distilled version of our education Web Guides, divided into teacher and student pages for high school, middle school and elementary school. Feel free to link to these pages, or even copy the links you like onto your own library Web site.

The social studies page includes our seminal article, "101 Great Sites for Social Studies Class," that points teachers and students to a trove of great sites, organized by topic. You'll also find on this page links to articles that curate the best online resources, such as "Sites for Learning About Countries," "Sites for Learning About the 50 States," "9 Sites to find Interesting Interviews," and our Innovations series.

5. Our  On This Day articles explain an historical event, what led up to it, what happened that day, and the long-term recriminations and echoes in history. We also publish it in Spanish, as Hoy en la Historia. We've recently partnered with The New York Times to combine our respective On This Day products into "Historic Headlines," which relates historic events to today's world.

6. The many presentations we create each year are posted on Slideshare. The presentations explain, among other things, why so many websites restrict users under 13 and what you can do about it, and how to understand CIPA to fight overly restrictive Internet filters.

7. We've written thousands of headline articles in our "Beyond the Headlines" Section; Joyce Valenza wrote on her School Library Journal blog that our "discoveries are  timely and seem to continually attack those topics my students research." We find additional background or reference information on the topic, related topics and opposing points of view. We integrate all this information into a cohesive, comprehensive look at the topic, and link to our sources, which we align in a single box.

A white paper released in November 2010 by Temple University Media Education Professor Renee Hobbs, sponsored by The Knight Commission, included Beyond the Headlines in its "Portraits of Success: Powerful Voices for Kids" and wrote, "Finding Dulcinea... addresses the 'context deficit' that occurs with online searching."

Some examples of where we addressed the context deficit in a headline story:

• after the death of Osama Bin Laden, social media was clogged with the rampant use of poorly cited or fake quotes online. Many noted the problem, but none suggested ways to address it. Thus we wrote "Misquotes: Searching for Authenticity Online," which teaches students how to verify quotes.
• Because we know schools struggle with how students can use Wikipedia effectively, we wrote, "The Top 10 Reasons Students Can't Cite Wikipedia."
• When Iran violently suppressed protests last year, we provided context by writing about the History of Iranian Revolutions.
• When a killer whale tragically drowned a Sea World trainer, leading to calls for its release into the wild, our article about it summarized and linked to a PBS documentary that provided a chart discussing all 133 killer whales that had ever been captured in the wild for use in shows.

8. We know your hectic schedule doesn't have always a slot that says "visit findingDulcinea." So we come to you! Our free e-mail newsletter arrives at your inbox with an overview of On This Day and our Happy Birthday biography feature, as well as links to our best education articles.

Ask your students to become a fan of findingDulcinea on Facebook, and we'll occasionally interrupt their "urgent" status updates with some inspiring and educational content.

Please also follow us on Twitter  @findingDulcinea

Help us help you. Please send me feedback, questions, suggestions, etc. on our content and tools, to Mark.Moran@DulcineaMedia.com.

We’d love to hear from you!

 

Sincerely,

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

Dulcinea Media

findingDulcinea and LineTime Partner on History Timeline App

We're thrilled to announce a new collaboration with LineTime, a German group that develops mobile apps.

LineTime 1.o was introduced through the Apple App Store in January 2011. It received rave reviews, including a "Pick of the Week" nod from Apple Germany, and the top award at Appbackrthon Berlin, an iOS Hackathon.

LineTime 1.0 offered users the ability to view the course of modern history on a timeline, and to drill down into each century, decade or year. It was populated with history content from Wikipedia, and was intended as a demonstration of the app's potential when populated with additional content, or used in conjunction with other apps.

We immediately saw the tremendous potential for this app in education. It literally changes the way students look at history, enabling them to view historical events in full context, in a way that textbooks never could.  Most history courses are narrow in scope, and review a limited set of events that fit the theme of the course. Thus, students of United States History often study the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and then World War II, while barely taking note of the troubles of the Weimar Republic and rise of the Nazi party in Germany, the rise of fascism in Italy, the Spanish Civil War, or the start of the second Sino-Japanese War. With the right content, the LineTime App has the potential to enable students to see what was happening all over the world in a particular decade, year, month or day.

The app's search function also enables students to trace history through a single word. Search on "earthquakes," "assassination" or "treaty" and you'll find a list of every entry in the app that contains those words. Students can then tab through these entries and see history through yet another lens.

We promptly began collaborating with LineTime on a partnership to add findingDulcinea's On This Day content to the app. Our On This Day content is comprised of more than 400 well-researched articles about important historic events, providing full context about the event and links to the best online resources about it. It's the basis of our Historic Headlines collaboration with The New York Times, and we're thrilled to introduce this additional way for students and history buffs to interact with our content.

LineTime 1.5 is now available in the App Store for the introductory price of $2.99 (with bulk discounts for schools). We plan to move quickly to offer updated versions with substantially more content. While these future versions will surely be priced higher than this introductory price, anyone purchasing LineTime 1.5 will receive all future updates at no charge. Watch this video to see LineTime 1.5 in action!

We're also contemplating additional apps that will complement LineTime 1.5, for a modest additional charge. Some may focus intently on a particular time period or event; for instance, we may offer a separate app with hundreds or even thousands of entries about the U.S. Civil Rights movement, or another with minute-by-minute details of the assassination of JFK. We are also contemplating another app that would enable users to customize LineTime with their own custom entries, whether about their ancestors, their country or their local area.

As always, we highly value the feedback of educators, who have essentially written our product roadmap the past three years. Please write me at Mark[dot]Moran[at]DulcineaMedia[dotcom] with suggestions for how we can make the LineTime App an even better learning tool.

Sincerely,

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

 

 

 

 

Stop Searching, Start Finding

Dulcinea Media Announces A Book About Teaching Web Research Skills

February 5, 2013 – New York, NY – Schools in the United States spend literally billions of dollars every year on Internet access to the more than 15 million computers in schools.  Much of this money is wasted because not enough time is invested in teaching students and educators how to use the Web to research effectively - a critical skill for 21st century workers.

Studies have consistently shown that most students cannot effectively find information online, evaluate it, and put it to use. Recent studies show that many educators, who are overburdened by ever-growing paperwork and standardized testing, have, like most adults, not fully developed their own web research skills. Researchers now warn of a new digital divide, between students who do receive effective web research training and those who do not.

To help educators counter this new digital divide, Dulcinea Media, Inc. will release in March 2013 "Stop Searching, Start Finding," a research-based, multimedia tutorial that teaches effective web research skills to both educators and students.

Please view our video explaining the SweetSearch Web Research Tutorial.

Alternatively, view our SlideShare presentation, without the voiceover.

Lastly, click here to preview the educator version of the tutorial.

The company plans to release several versions of the Tutorial:

• For K-12 educators, titled “Stop Searching, Start Finding;”
• for students in Grades K-6, titled “How to Be a Rock Star Researcher;”
• for students in Grades 7-12 and college, titled “Stop Searching, Start Finding: Get Better Results in Half the Time;” and
• versions of the above titles for Spanish-speakers 

The planned full release schedule is as follows:

• the educator version will be available in March 2013;
• the version for older students will be released in March 2013;
• the version for younger students will be released in September 2013.

The Company will also release additional information about the Web Research Tutorial, in accordance with the above schedule, through its blog.

Composition of Tutorial: 

Stop Searching, Start Finding is published as an electronic video book, with 16 chapters. Each chapter offers an introduction, a 3 to 5-minute video, a print guide to the topic, links to expertly curated third-party resources, and a self-quiz to help the viewer evaluate retention of the core concepts in the chapter. Each chapter builds upon, and reinforces concepts taught in the previous chapter. The company is also creating posters, glossaries and other visual elements to aid learning.

Chapter titles include:

• Planning and Adjusting Your Research;
• Using Special Search Functions;
• Finding and Using Primary Sources;
• Why Did the Author Write This;
•  Thinking Critically; and
• Synthesizing Your Sources

The content engages the reader and respect the way people learn best today. Unlike many professional  development systems that involve a lengthy, one-time presentation with little follow-up, Dulcinea Media’s tutorial offers a self-directed program of video tutorials, with several types of supporting materials and frequent follow-ups.

Dulcinea Media will update the book twice a year to incorporate new developments in web research and to leverage new learning tools.

Summary of Research Basis for Tutorial:

A 2006 report by the Educational Testing Service found, “students can use technology for socializing or entertainment but still have problems finding information, evaluating it and then putting it to use.”[1] Authors of a 2010 Northwestern study of college students reported that “students’ level of faith in their search engine of choice is so high that they do not feel the need to verify for themselves who authored the pages they view or what their qualifications might be.” [2]

Many other studies have similarly concluded that students do not know how to search the Web effectively, and struggle to synthesize multiple resources. Furthermore, no consensus has emerged on how to teach students Web research skills. [3]

Stop Searching, Start Finding is based on: (i) a thorough analysis of research studies of the habits of both skilled and inexperienced web users [4]; (ii) input from leading educators; and (iii) the research habits of the staff members of findingDulcinea, who have collectively written thousands of articles that effectively synthesize the best online resources about a topic.

Pricing: 

The annual license cost per school for Stop Searching, Start Finding is based on total student population:

 

Student pop.	Annual Pricing
1-249	$719
250-499	$919
500-749	$1099
750-999	$1269
1,000+	$1399

 

All versions will be made available to all scholls purchasing the tutorial.

Pricing does not include the option for an in-person or virtual presentation by a Dulcinea Media staff member or consultant, for which an additional fee, and reasonable travel expenses will apply.

The license term is for one year and may be renewed annually.

Schools may acquire a permanent license with a one-time payment equal to 4x the annual fee.

Standards Alignment:

Stop Searching, Start Finding aligns to the Core Common State Standards for English and Language Arts. In particular, it addresses the standards relating to:

• conducting research projects based on focused questions;
• tailoring searches online to acquire useful information efficiently;
• gathering relevant information from multiple print and digital sources;
• assessing the credibility and accuracy of each source; and
• integrating the information while avoiding plagiarism. 

The book also aligns to standards set by ISTE, the ALA, and NCTE/IRA.

Delivery of Tutorial:

The e-book will be web-based, accessed through password protected accounts. In coming months, it will also be made available as an app on the iPad, iPhone and Android phones.

Ordering Information:

Please email info@DulcineaMedia.com or call (917) 597-3815 to discuss ordering the Stop Searching, Start Finding.

_______________________________

[1] Paul D. Thacker, “Are College Students Techno Idiots?” Inside Higher Ed, November 15, 2006 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/15/infolit

[2] Debra Viadero, “Collecting Evidence,” EdWeek, March 29, 2007 http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/29/30tcresearch.h26.html

[3] Eszter Hargittai, Lindsay Fullerton, Ericka Menchen-Trevino and Kristin Yates Thomas, Northwestern University, “Trust Online: Young Adults’ Evaluation of Web Content,” International Journal of Communication 4 (2010), 468–494 1932–8036/20100468 http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/636

[4] Anne Aula, Rehan Khan and Zhiwei Guan, “How does Search Behavior Change as Search Becomes More Difficult?” Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2010 http://dub.washington.edu/pubs/215

 

A Study of Students Online Research Behavior

In January 2010, Dulcinea Media created a survey to assess the online research skills of middle school and high school students in New York State.  With the help of several school librarians and classroom teachers, we surveyed 300 students at nine schools about their research habits.  After analyzing our results, we published our report on the findings and implications of our study.  Download StudyStudentsOnlineResearch

 The majority of students in our study have access to computers at school and at home.  Three-quarters of those surveyed self-describe as “excellent” or “very good” at search.  Nevertheless, most middle school and high school students cannot adequately explain their search strategies, or how they evaluate a website’s credibility.

 At the middle school level, when querying a search engine, more than half of these students use “natural language” instead of keywords.  It appears likely that many simply copy the question or problem assigned by their teachers into a search engine’s search box.  When initial search results are unavailing, both middle school and high school students simply “keep trying” or “re-word” their queries, but they cannot adequately explain their methods for doing so.

 When they do locate a source they deem useful, roughly one-third of middle school students report choosing it because it “looked good,” “sounded good,” or has “the correct information.”  One middle school student’s approach to assessing information boiled down to, “if it’s what my teacher told me to find.”  In other words, once students find “the answer” they seek, they spend little effort considering the credibility of a resource.

 When we asked students how often they evaluate the author of a document or website, or the date it was published, the majority of respondents answered “rarely or never.”  In the comment box, one student notes, “It doesn’t really matter who the writer is.”  As for the date an article was published, another student writes, “I can’t find it.”

Our survey suggests that students’ Internet research skills are far from adequate. All students must learn how to construct a query and evaluate the results, how search engines function and how to develop consistent habits or workarounds in response to poor result listings. Acquiring sound search strategies as well as critical evaluations skills while they are still in school will better prepare these students for college and their future careers.

In Summer 2011, Dulcinea Media will introduce the SweetSearch Web Research Tutorial, a comprehensive, multimedia approach to teaching students, and educators, how to use the Web to conduct research effectively.

Examples of Innovative Teaching Practices

 Since September 2006, we've been curating content and creating innovative tools to help educators integrate the Internet into their curriculum, and teach students how to use the Internet effectively.

A barrier to the wide adoption of our products is the status quo - textbooks and other crude tools from the 19th century that remain the primary method by which students learn. We've attended dozens of education conferences in the past two years, and have met thousands of passionate educators who are determined to bring about their own version of education reform - one that is focused on students. The goal of these efforts is to create a new system of education that is relevant to and engages students, addresses them as individuals, lets them develop their passions, and encourages the development of skills they'll need to succeed when they graduate, not the skills their parents needed when they graduated 30 years ago.

With the explosive growth in social media, it has become easier to interact with these educators on a daily basis, rather than at once-a-month conferences. The number of solid examples of innovative teaching practices we're seeing is growing exponentially. Here, we'll share just a few that we've come across recently.

In a blog post aptly titled, "Own It," Andy Marcinek writes of how he assigned his English 101: College Composition course what he termed, "not a standard, written essay, but a focused collection of media that they will use to inform, to persuade, to challenge or defend." He gave them a simple writing prompt, and then had them gather links, images, videos, and other media to synthesize, with his guidance, into a final presentation. Andy explains, "I am making an attempt to harness all the great resources we have available at the moment. I feel it is my moral obligation as a teacher to open up all learning avenues to them, not hide them." He then provides a new prompt, this one for his fellow educators: his work is "not the pinnacle of classroom innovation. It is a start. It is an idea that I hope you steal, remix and make your own, for your own students. Don’t we owe them that?"

One educator who feels Marcinek's sense of obligation to students is Lisa Neilsen, Technology Innovation Manager in NYC's public schools. In "Advice for Choosing Pages, Groups or Profiles When Using Facebook for Education," Neilsen gives advice and specific examples of educators who are using Facebook to teach, collaborate with students, and communicate with students, parents and others in the community. Nielsen writes that, "in schools where we’re doing what is right for kids, you see engaged youth who use the filter between their ears to determine how to best access information. Students are empowered rather than restricted from using personally owned digital devices in school.  At these schools they understand that people, not tools, have behavior.  Fortunately, more and more often these schools that mirror the real world are starting to crop up." 

One of the exemplars that Neilsen cites is Michelle Luhtala, whose library program at New Canaan High won the ALA's 2010 National School Library Media Program of the Year. Luhtala maintains separate personal and professional profiles on Facebook, as well as a Page for her library. In response to Nielsen's post, Luthala explains how friending students through her professional profile enabled her to, among other things, (i) get student input for the post, at 10 pm on a Friday night, (ii) collaborate with two groups of students who decided to enter a video contest at the last minute, and (iii) coordinate a trip by a large group of students to Philadelphia, for a Model UN.

Another teacher who is a living example of effective and innovative practices  is Pulaski (WI) High School English teacher Kim Noe, recent winner of the "Golden Apple Award" from the Green Bay (WI) Chamber of Commerce. According to the Green Bay Press Gazete, Noe's philosophy when it comes to technology is that students, “don’t turn it off very often, so why not tap into it?" The Gazette reports that, in Noe's classes, "tasks like memorizing vocabulary words are accompanied by related YouTube videos," students receive MP3 files with feedback to essays, and authors visit via Skype. Further, Noe chats with students every night on Facebook; she says, “I have found Facebook is one of the greatest tools to reach kids I could imagine.” How do the students react to Noe's practices? Her co-principal, Dan Slowey, tells the Gazette, “it becomes kind of a small, close-knit family in those classrooms.”

The last "practices" I want to note were not actually put into place by a classroom teacher; they were suggested by Ashley Appozardi, a student teacher who is observing classes. She sat in on the class of a teacher reviewing fractions, in the wake of a test where students had not performed well. In Azzopardi's view, the teacher:

"- Moved through the questions very quickly

- Did not give the students enough time to answer her questions

- Did not rub off the writing on the whiteboard once moved onto the next question

- Did not provide much praise to the students

- Did not allow the students to write anything in their books

- Did not allow the students to use concrete materials, and

- Did not use the interactive whiteboard."

Azzopardi believes that the students learned little from the lesson.

She echoes the calls from Marcinek and Nielsen to build upon the innovative work of other educators, as she writes, "we need to acknowledge that our students have changed radically. The educational system wasn’t designed to teach today’s students....Adapting materials to the language of this generation has already been done successfully, in particular the creation of games which help teach the content, even the most serious....I can only imagine how different that lesson could have been if the interactive whiteboard had been turned on. Instead of the students looking out the window, hoping not to be the one chosen to answer a confusing question next, they could have been excited, engaged, learning and participating in a visual and interactive math lesson."

These four educators are a very small sample of the passionate educators from all over the world who are beginning to offer up examples of innovative, and effective, teaching practices for educators to follow.

Mark E. Moran
CEO

 

In the comments, please offers your own examples that you invite others to "steal, remix and make [their] own."