“What is it weakest part of your online or blended course?” is a question I have posed to faculty who teach online. A synopsis of one of the most commonly encountered answers is: I’m afraid my students feel the same about my discussions as I do. They post and respond, and I tell them “say Read More
There is so many ideas about teaching and learning that are kicking around in the literature, the blogosphere, and the popular culture that some of them must be incorrect–we know this is true because many of these are contradictory. Let’s clarify that we are wrong about three of these… and these are three that are Read More
As information and computer technology (ICT) has become more deeply embedded in curriculum and instruction, technology planning has become an essential part of school leadership. School leaders are expected to take steps to ensure students use technology for diverse learning activities, so infrastructure must be installed and managed, and teachers must be trained in its Read More
I write this in the midst of the pandemic. What the coming weeks and moths hold are unknown. All I can hope is that we are nearing the end of this rather than the beginning. For several days, I have been working with faculty to figure out how to teach online. We are preparing for Read More
Education is a technology that is built upon the natural phenomena of the human brain. It is only though changing the structure and function of this organ that we learn. Some experiences change the brain quickly and permanently; some experiences change the brain slowly and reversibly. Regardless of the outcomes a teacher plans, the results Read More
What educators believe about how human brains function and what causes brains to change is one of the most important factors that determines how they organize curriculum and deliver instruction. Even those educators who claim to be unaffected by psychology or learning theory (in my experience a large majority of teachers eschew theory), their teaching Read More
183: Education for Information-Rich Fields We all know the teacher who insists, “but my field is content-rich. I need to cover all of this, so that students are ready for next year.” This attitude is grounded in a sincere interest that students “know” what they should know. It also results in the teacher adopting the “fill their brains” with information approach Read More
Scaffolding is an approach that can be used to teaching for deeper learning. This is especially useful when an instructor wants to approach a problem from the whole task, but it is too complicate for the students to complete independently. In this case, the teacher introduces scaffolds so to problem enters the students’ zone of proximal development. With scaffolds, Read More
Are Twitter followers colleagues? My answer is yes, based on the number of times threads have led me to think about what I really mean in these short posts. Also based on the number of times Tweets cause me to look back at things that I recall as being effective in the past and I Read More
Teaching and learning are endeavors that have changed significantly in the decades since the cognitive science and the learning sciences emerged. More accurately, the nature of human learning has not changed, but our understanding of it has changed and this has led scholars and educators to redefine what they expect of students. Yes, teachers are Read More