Week 4: Blogs to Follow

Hello again, everyone!

Welcome to Week 4 of CALL's Technology in Education's on-line discoveries. See here for my introduction to CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning). The course's topic this week is "Working with Images". I learned what a linguistic landscape is. Then I added a banner to my blog with the help of a Word it Out word cloud created not from a text, but a list of words I compiled specifically for this cloud, and the "Open Book" effect (one of 526!) from PhotoFunia.

The Teaching & Learning Center, Using Visuals and Visual Learning, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville will be a valuable resource too.
My blog topic this week is the three Technology in Education blogs which I have chosen to follow on a weekly basis. I will not be posting every week about the blogs, but when I do, the title of the post will be the current week followed by "Blogs to Follow".

Alice Keeler, Teacher Tech, recently hosted a guest blog, Kleenex is Not Proficiency, by a language teacher, Nicole Naditz. I will admit that the title caught my eye, and would not let it go: What connection could facial tissue possibly have to proficiency in anything? (It has none. In some schools students receive grade points, under the category of "extra credit", for maintaining the classroom's supply of tissue.) The blog, which deals with the importance of directly relating grades to language proficiency, is well worth reading for language/future language teachers so I linked it in addition to a post specifically about technology in education.

Now for technology: In Google Classroom: Turn in Group Work with a Google Form, Keeler offers a plan, in the form of hacks, to circumvent the fact that, "Weirdly, Google Classroom is not designed for group work." Her suggestions are detailed and she includes clearly labeled examples.

In Learning is the Reward, Eric Sheninger of A Principal's Reflections, points out that "Learning, not grades, should be the reward for students. Helping them recognize this is the challenge we must all accept." Sheninger explains the positive aspects of James Nottingham's The Learning Pit (see the image below) and why students should not avoid struggles.
As R' Yitzhak said in Tractate Megilla 6b: "If a person says to you... 'I worked hard and found', believe him."

Image credit: http://francinemassue.weebly.com/

In 3 Ways to Combat Recipe Learning, Steven W. Anderson of Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom – A Blend Of Technology And Education, warns teachers not to "assign recipes" which will yield identical results from every student who successfully completes the assignment, but rather to assign projects which will genuinely foster and assess learning.

"Choice In Content, Process and/or Product- Allowing students to discover their own paths to content and process and products helps invest them in their learning. While content may be set by standards or expected outcomes, students can get creative in how they learn that content, the methods by which they connect that content to already known knowledge and especially in how they demonstrate their understanding."

Anderson provides examples of worthwhile projects and directs teachers to the resource section of the The Buck Institute for Education, "for example problems, assessment ideas and project guides" of PBL. The acronym is defined as both Project Based Learning and Problem Based Learning.

Perhaps every problem should be considered a project?

Have a wonderful week of inspiring discoveries,
Hadassa