Raul Kohl's List: Learning

For many curious folks, their impassioned yearning to soak up as much of the world’s wonders as possible completely transcends the boundaries of a traditional classroom. Armed with an insatiable lust for knowledge, they set out to acquire it on their own terms, although a few pointers obviously can’t hurt before departure and landing! Not every possible technique will necessarily stick with all self-motivated learners, of course, but the only way to find out is to test them. Try some of the following and experiment with what works in a more independent educational setting.

In this post, I am going to share the reasons I love infographics. Let’s see if you agree, disagree, or have even better reasons to love them.

What do you do when you have an elaborate project, assignment, or paper that needs to be quickly organized? Do you fire up Microsoft Word and whip up an outline? Do you pull out a pen and paper and start sketching?

What if you could have the best of both options with a free online tool? It’s called ‘mind mapping’ (“Mind Map” is a trademark of the Buzan Organization.) and it’s basically a fun and intuitive way to visually organize your thoughts. Thanks to a recent article, I received an influx of mind-mapping web tools that I wanted to pass along to the Edudemic audience. Enjoy!

We’ve heard arguments from ed tech experts about how using technology for learning may in fact deepen the divide between wealthy and low-income kids. Students who have access to technology and are encouraged by teachers and parents to leverage it for new ways of learning, the argument goes, will leap even further ahead than low-income students who are forbidden to use it in public schools.

Blogger Andrew Marcinek shares some ideas for jump-starting a tired classroom.

When students let their minds drift off, they're losing valuable learning time. Here are ten smart ways to increase classroom participation.

How to use project-based learning teaching strategies everyday to improve your everyday classroom experience.

Let’s look at a good set of essential skills that I believe children should learn, that will best prepare them for any world of the future. I base these on what I have learned in three different industries, especially the world of online entreprenurship, online publishing, online living … and more importantly, what I have learned about learning and working and living in a world that will never stop changing.

Gamification has tremendous potential in the education space. How can we use it to deliver truly meaningful experiences to students?

Technology is an excellent resource to help teachers support differentiation in their classroom. Technology can be a resource for extra help, a different way of presenting material and content, or a different way for students to demonstrate their learning and mastery. Here are some of my favorite technology tools to support differentiation in the classroom.

A great LiveBinder on "Differentiation for High Ability Users" that has some great ideas, links, resources and lesson resources for differentiating lessons, assessments, and more for high ability learners. The ideas are also great for differentiating for every learner.

Differentiating Using 21st Century Tools is a site created by an educator that has resources and information for using technology and new tools for differentiating in the classroom.

There are some great ideas for using tools like Google apps, blogs, wiki's and more in the classroom as well as information on differentiating and how to differentiate teaching and learning in the classroom.

This is a great resource for all educators.

The Differentiator is a simple web app that helps you create objectives based on Bloom's Taxonomy. You simple click on the thinking skill, content, resources, product, or group tabs and then select what you want the student to do by clicking on the sub categories.

Technology is a tool that can be used to help teachers facilitate learning experiences that address the diverse learning needs of all students and help them develop 21st Century Skills. At it's most basic level, digital tools can be used to help students find, understand and use information. When combined with student-driven learning experiences fueled by Essential Questions offering flexible learning paths, it can be the ticket to success. Here is a closer look at three components of effectively using technology as a tool for digital differentiation.

So much have been written about Bloom’s taxonomy; one click in a search engine will flood your page with hundreds of articles all of which revolve around this taxonomy. Only few are those who have tried to customize it to fit in the 21st century educational paradigm. As a fan of Bloom’s pedagogy and being a classroom practitioner, I always look for new ways to improve my learning and teaching, and honestly speaking , if you are a teacher/ educator and still do not understand Bloom’s taxonomy then you are missing out on a great educational resource.
The following article is a summary and a fruit of my long painstaking research in the field of Bloom’s taxonomy. The purpose is to help teachers grow professionally and provide them with a solid informational background on how to better understand and apply Bloom’s taxonomy in classrooms in the light of the new technological advances and innovations..
Bloom’s taxonomy of learning as Wikipedia has put it is “ a classification of learning objectives within education proposed in 1956 by a committee of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom ”. Although it received little attention when first published, Bloom’s taxonomy has since been translated into 22 languages and is one of the most widely applied and most often cited reference in education.
Bloom, being convinced of the importance of thinking behaviors in the processes of learnign, had spearheaded a group of brilliant educational psychologists to undertake the task of classifying educational goals and objectives. They first came up with a general framework which was turned later on to a taxonomy of 3 domains.

Let me start this article with what Obama says in a speech at the Center for American Progress :

“ Let’s be clear — we are failing too many of our children. We’re sending
them out into a 21st century economy by sending them through the
doors of 20th century schools.”

This is a true statement issued from the lips of a political person rather than an educator. There is a profound disconnect between what students are being taught and what the actual world is demanding of them as adults. It sounds like there exists two worlds one inside the school and the other outside. This double faced situation has a direct impact on today's educational landscape and therefore the workplace leading to “ the right person in the wrong place “ dilemma.

My top three intelligences are
1. Logical-Mathematical with 88%
2. Interpersonal with 88%
3. Intrapersonal with 81%

Upon watching the video "Multiple Intelligences Leave No Child Behind" I learned how the policy No Child Left Behind is hurting schools that don't follow a curriculum based on testing. The Key Learning Community in Indianapolis was extremely eye-opening to me because I did not know such schools existed. The key Learning Community allows students to focus on their personal strengths and allows them to discover ways they can use those gifts in the real world. I believe that if there were more schools like Key Learning Community more artists, musicians, athletes, technicians, etc would emerge as a result.