Brad McDiarmid's List: Instructional Strategies

Students today have instant access to information through technology and the web, manage their own acquisition of knowledge through informal learning, and have progressed beyond consumers of content to become producers and publishers.

There has been growing concern that computers have failed to live up to the promise of improving learning for school kids.

His lastest book, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, which will be published in September, includes a chapter on University 2.0. 
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/08/11/f-school-tapscott.html#ixzz0wsbn9Xsd

Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels are pretty daunting fodder for the average English class, no matter how they're approached. But Diane Hamstra, a teacher at Park Tudor School, in Indianapolis, found a way to get her tenth-grade students to dive enthusiastically into the nineteenth-century moralist's dark thicket of language.

Ask preschooler Zane Pike to write his name or the alphabet, then watch this 4-year-old's stubborn side kick in. He spurns practice at school and tosses aside workbooks at home. But Angie Pike, Zane's mom, persists, believing that handwriting is a building block to learning.

Today’s students are raised in a completely different technology-rich world than previous generations.  Typewriters are non-existent and cursive writing is becoming an art of the past.  For our students, video games, laptops, MP3 players, cell phones, online gaming, and social networking are, and always have been, a part of everyday life.

One of my favorite visuals regarding “classroom discipline” is Carolyn Webster-Stratton’s pyramid. She advocates for a 7-tiered approach to dealing with challenging behaviors.  At the base of the pyramid is Teacher Skills and Strategies. These are the foundation for great classroom management and positive culture. The insinuation here is that the bulk of management issues will be avoided if a teacher is skilled, experienced, and knows how to teach. Encompassed in this concept, I believe, is a teacher’s ability to engage children and challenge them appropriately.

Some innovative teachers are turning the traditional classroom model on its head in an effort to make instruction more valuable to their students.

Students love it! There is more face time with their teacher, more active learning in class and no more "lectures." "Homework" will never be the same.And you'll love it too! Classroom anxiety decreases as your ability to teach to each individual student increases.The Flipped Class Certificate is endorsed by Capella University and was developed in collaboration with School of Education faculty.