Engaging Students

I just finished reading a great article in Edutopia called How to Keep Kids Engaged by Tristan de Frondeville. He explains 10 strategies for turning dead time into active learning, such as: start class with a mind warm-up, use movement to get kids focused, and use quickwrites when you want quiet time and student reflection. This excellent articles explains these strategies and includes examples at different age levels.

I have seen several great teachers who “Use a Fairness Cup to Keep Students Thinking,” which involves drawing out a Popsicle stick with a student’s name to select who responds to a prompt. Personally I prefer a number  spinner. I would organize my class into teams, and number the desks 1 through 4 at each team. The first spin of the overhead spinner would select the team, and the second spin the student on the team. Students didn’t raise their hands in my class, because we always used the spinner to determine who would respond. The students knew they had to always be ready to share their thoughts. Once a student answered a question, he or she wasn’t “off the hook” for the rest of lesson.

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Image Credit: Paying Attention by SFB579 Licensed CC by-nc-sa

Thinking Critically

Came across this great post by Scott McLeod in my Google Reader tonight:

Because the need to store information in our heads has diminished yet again as our storage media have become more sophisticated (this time it’s computers and the Internet instead of books), the value that our graduates bring to their jobs increasingly is dependent on what they can do with what they know, not merely what they know. Because previously-scarce information is now freely and abundantly available on the Web, the value that teachers bring to their current jobs is not how well they can spew forth content and then assess what kids can regurgitate but rather how well they can – and their students can – think critically about and act upon important facts and concepts.

Image Credit: Light of the moon by Pieter Musterd Licensed CC by-nc-sa

Screenagers

Below is an 8 minute YouTube video excerpt of Ian Juke’s Understanding Digital Kids presentation.

Andrew Churches, on his Educational Origami wiki (an amazing resource filled with pedagogy/edtech resources), provides a great chart comparing Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. I also like the summary of the key concepts from Ian’s Understanding Digital Kids paper that it provides. It gets me thinking about changing teaching practices. What does it mean to be a 21st Century teacher meeting the needs of our Digital Natives?