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For adolescents, adequate sleep is crucial for proper growth. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine reports that teens need a little more than nine hours of sleep each night. Previous researches have highlighted how lack of sufficient sleep puts teens at the risk of cognitive and emotional difficulties, disciplinary problems, negative moods and lack of attention at school.Their latest study, led by researchers at Uppsala Universitet, highlights other problems linked with lack of sleep. This September 24, 2014 Science World article by Benita Matilda reveals that adolescents who suffer from sleep disturbance or habitual short sleep duration are unlikely to progress academically as compared to those who receive sufficient sleep.

Posted by Sherwen Mohan

Original Source 

A new Swedish study links lack of sleep among adolescents to an increased risk of failure in school.

For adolescents, adequate sleep is crucial for proper growth. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine reports that teens need a little more than nine hours of sleep each night. Previous researches have highlighted how lack of sufficient sleep puts teens at the risk of cognitive and emotional difficulties, disciplinary problems, negative moods and lack of attention at school.

The latest study, led by researchers at Uppsala Universitet, highlights other problems linked with lack of sleep. They reveal that adolescents who suffer from sleep disturbance or habitual short sleep duration are unlikely to progress academically as compared to those who receive sufficient sleep.

The finding is based on the evaluation of more than 20,000 adolescents, aged between 12-19 years, from Uppsala County. They noticed that risk of failure in school increased if the adolescents slept for less than 7 hours per day. .

“Another important finding of our study is that around 30 percent of the adolescents reported regular sleep problems. Similar observations have been made in other adolescent cohorts, indicating that sleep problems among adolescents have reached an epidemic level in our modern societies,” said Christian Benedict, lead researcher of the study.

Recently, a study conducted by the University of Pittsburgh found that increasing the amount of sleep helps teens improve insulin resistance and prevent the future onset of diabetes.

The study was documented in the Journal Sleep Medicine. It was supported by the Swedish Brain Foundation and Novo Nordisk Foundation.

©2014 ScienceWorldReport.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The window to the world of science news.

This wonderful article by Rafranz Davis was originally published in Edutopia on September 24, 2014. She writes about creating a “Wonder Shelf” – a shelf full of digital and non-digital discovery tools for students to play with. What a wonderful way to move beyond self discovery to self directed learning.

Posted by Sherwen Mohan

Original Source 

As a high school math teacher, it was important for me to create a learning space that welcomed on-demand wonder and exploration. I knew that I planned to have a few essential hands-on math tools, and in the last few years, I also knew that I needed to have other items that were essential for providing kids more creative freedom. With a few containers, manipulatives, and supplies, along with some technology, I created a space that my students would go on to name “the wonder shelves.” What you are about to read was not an overnight process, but one that grew over an eight-year span.

Components of the Wonder Shelves

A few years ago, the wonder shelves housed our classroom math manipulatives sorted into individual or group containers. I knew that I wanted our learning tools to be accessible as needed, but I also knew that I needed to keep them organized to save time. Using disposable food containers individualized by purpose or tool, I created a system for organizing tools that kids could explore during lessons, after lessons, and sometimes before or after school.

As I got to know my students, I began learning about their other interests outside of class. I found that many were dabbling in the creative arts, so I added quite a few things specific to those pursuits during the course of the year. Our shelves grew to hold art pads, sketchbooks, air-dry clay, molding tools, various markers, art pencils, beads, string, Legos, K’nex, and glue.

While this may sound a bit much for a high school algebra 1 or geometry class, it was amazing to see students use their downtime to explore their interests, create, and learn. On many occasions, I found them creating items specific to areas that we were studying, like making bracelets or necklaces that involved recursive or geometric sequences, and then challenging their peers to determine the equation. They created structures using Legos and K’nex to build us a geometric city where we explored concepts like taxicab geometry, angle pair relationships, and even measurement.

Through our school’s Upward Bound Math and Science program, which I sponsored, we inherited a Lego Mindstorm kit and that opened up an entirely new world to students in the area of robotics. We had no idea how to actually program the robot, but the Mindstorm kit didn’t sit idle on the shelf. We learned together, and in the process, we developed meaningful relationships that enhanced our growth in and out of class.

When I received classroom technology like laptops and iPads, they were housed on the wonder shelves and not locked away in a cabinet. Doing this created a space where learning extended to whatever students could create and interact with on a device. I was pleasantly shocked to turn on an iPad and see a stop-motion creation using clay to illustrate changes in volume of a cylinder — and this was something that I hadn’t assigned! When you give kids space and access to explore, this is what can happen.

Our latest addition was a MakeyMakey after I learned about it through Twitter. I never told the kids what it did. They looked it up on their own, and before long, it became the hit of the wonder shelf as if their daily goal was to try “crazy” ideas and test them. These were the moments that the early-morning Edmodo alerts came through. Kids wanted to make sure that I was there!

From Wonder Shelf to Makerspace

What I created in my classroom space was a place where kids could explore learning and create. Until this summer, it never occurred to me that what we had developed was in essence the “theoretical” definition of a Makerspace. As I talked about this space over the summer, many teachers asked how we did this with administrative holds on creativity outside of the curriculum. Simply put, my students and I had designed in-class learning that adhered to our goals. What kids did when they met those goals or on their own time was fair game, and this space gave room to the idea of learning beyond our standards.

The wonder shelves also meant that my students, with a majority of them falling into more marginalized populations, were provided experiences that they would not have had in any other learning venue.

Do you have a wonder shelf or something similar in your classroom? Please tell us about it.

Dr. John Hattie, from the University of Melbourne in Australia, has written several incredible books, including his latest one – Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn. His books represents the largest-ever collection of evidence-based research about the strategies and approaches that work and the strategies and approaches that don’t work in improving learning in the classroom. Hattie’s books are amazing – he has done more than 1000 meta-analyses of tens of thousands of studies that involved tens of millions of students that shows the effect size of using different instructional strategies. An effect size is a quantitative measure of the effectiveness of using a specific teaching and learning strategy. He has identified the effect size of more than 50 educational strategies used today – some of which have been in use for 100 years. His research is remarkable because it definitively dismisses some of the longstanding beliefs, assumptions and practices that continue to be used in the classroom today.

Posted by Ian Jukes

Original Source

http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/

John Hattie developed a way of ranking various influences in different meta-analyses according to their effect sizes. In his ground-breaking study “Visible Learning” he ranked those influences which are related to learning outcomes from very positive effects to very negative effects on student achievement. Hattie found that the average effect size of all the interventions he studied was 0.40. Therefore he decided to judge the success of influences relative to this ‘hinge point’, in order to find an answer to the question “What workAs best in education?”

Hattie studied six areas that contribute to learning: the student, the home, the school, the curricula, the teacher, and teaching and learning approaches. But Hattie did not merely provide a list of the relative effects of the different influences on student achievement. He also tells the story underlying the data. He found that the key to making a difference was making teaching and learning visible. He further explained this story in his book “Visible learning for teachers“.

Here is an overview of the Hattie effect size list that contains 138 influences and effect sizes across all areas related to student achievement. The list visualized here is related to Hattie (2009) Visible Learning. Hattie constantly updates this list with more meta studies. You can find an updated version in Hattie (2011) Visible Learning for Teachers.

I’ve really enjoyed the articles posted by from fractuslearning.com – lots of very topical, useful stuff. This is a terrific September 22, 2014 article by Wade Gegan. Note that some of the sites do bring up commercial images. I found that Photo Pin and Flickr were pretty much the “F Word”…free!!!

Posted by Ian Jukes

Original Source
 

Overview

Photos, logos, graphics and images are an important part of any multimedia creation that students produce. A few well placed, high quality images ca

n transform class work from amateur to spectacularly professional. So, unless you plan on taking your own photographs or creating your own artwork, finding legitimate Creative Commons images is an essential digital skill.

To help students (and teachers) navigate and understand the often confusing space that is digital copyright, here are five tools that we recommend using to to search, reference, attribute and download Creative Commons images.

1. Photo Pin

Photo Pin is one of the best tools for using with students for both the results it returns and its focus on correct image attribution. My favorite feature is to sort results by what they call ‘interestingness’, this places the images that just look great first. When selecting an image, you are given links to download all image sizes as well as a ready made html block giving the correct reference and attribution to the image creator.

2. Iconfinder

Iconfinder is a little different to other Creative Commons image searches as it specializes in returning icons and logos. The tools is especially useful if students are looking for well known brand logos or are trying to find generic glyphs and symbols to place in their work. I find the detailed filtering options especially useful in Iconfinder, allowing you to refine results by styles such as flat, handdrawn, 3D and much more.

3. Pixabay

Pixabay is a very popular image search tool among educators due to its huge catalogue of hand picked photos, vectors and art illustrations. One feature that can help students think outside the box when searching, is the ability to browse by tags. This means students can find an image close to what they want and then click associated tags to find similar images.

4. Flickr (Creative Commons)

The original and some would say the best source for Creative Commons images, Flickr has an amazing selection of amateur and professional Creative Commons photos available for use. Although the level of filtering and browsability may not be as full featured as Photo Pin or Pixabay, the interface is beautiful and slick and it is a wonderful experience to browse.

5. Freepik

Created originally for graphic and web designers, Freepik’s image collection revolves more around vectors, icons and illustrations. These graphic designs and often modern artwork can be used directly by students, but are also an excellent source of inspiration if creating their own digital pieces.

Links and Next Steps

• Creative Commons: About The Licenses -Details on CC image licensing
• Choosing a License – Interactive tool to help define the right license
• Wikimedia Commons – Database of 22,836,421 freely usable media files
• Flickr: The Commons – Share hidden treasures from the world’s public photography archives
• Getty images – Royalty free image search
• The Best Online Sources For Images – Huge list by Larry Ferlazzo
• The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons

What tools have you used to help students find Creative Commons images? Let us know your picks in the comments below.

Feature image courtesy of Flickr, Giuli-O.

Katie Lepi from Edudemic lays out in simple terms a consumer’s guide to the Creative Commons in this September 14, 2014 article.

Posted by Ian Jukes

Original Source

Enter Creative Commons. (And thank goodness). The Creative Commons licenses allow any internet user to easily understand how they can (and can not) share what they find on the web. The licenses are visual, and if you aren’t sure of what you see on the work you’d like to use, you can refer back to the CC website to see. The handy infographic below gives a pretty thorough overview of the licenses and what they mean. Whether you have a personal blog, a class blog, or your students want to use a photo they’ve found in a presentation, this guide will be super handy!

Guide To Creative Commons Licenses

• More than 90% of CC photos on the web are not attributed
• More then 99% of CC photos on the web are not attributed properly!
• ALL CC licenses allow you to: copy the work, distribute it, display it publicly, make it digital, and shift it verbatim into another digital form (eg: pdf to jpg)
• ALL CC licenses: Apply worldwide, last for the duration of the copyright, are non revocable, and are not exclusive
• There are conditions that may be applied beyond that. For example, some say: You must attribute the work, you may not make money off the work, you may not make a derivative of the work, or you may distribute derivative works only under the same license as the original work
• It is preferable to place your attribution below the photo (for photos), or at the bottom of a blog post (if you’re sharing online).

This article was originally written by Laura Devaney for eSchool News on September 17, 2014.  It outlines five steps to building a problem-solving culture. These include Conjecture, Communications, Collaboration, Chaos and Celebration.

Posted by Ian Jukes

Original Source
 

Problem solving is one of today’s top skills—students who apply problem-solving strategies in the classroom are building important talents for college and the workforce. The math classroom is one of the best places to help students build these skills.

Creating a culture of problem solving in a math classroom or in a school involves prompting students and educators to think a little differently and systemically.

“The world does not need more people who are good at math,” said Gerald Aungst [2], supervisor of gifted and elementary mathematics in Pennsylvania’s Cheltenhamn Township Schools. “What the world needs are more problem solvers and more innovators.”

“We want people who are innovators, and don’t assume that what people tell them is impossible is impossible,” Aungst said during an edWeb leadership webinar [3].

One of the most important mindsets comes in realizing that, even in math, the context of a statement makes all the difference. Students should understand more than just the mechanics of math, Aungst said—they should investigate the context, the meaning, and how math problems and concepts work in a particular situation.

The five steps to building a problem-solving culture aren’t quick fixes or easy tips, Aungst said, but can be impactful when applied with the bigger picture of the classroom environment in mind.

Conjecture

“Our need to have things explained is as strong an impulse in our kids, and in us, as being hungry and thirsty,” Aungst said. “The problem with how we usually teach math is that we take all that wondering away.”

Educators usually teach math by laying out the facts, showing them processes, and asking students to practice until they achieve “mechanical perfection”–students have nothing to wonder about.

“One element of conjecture is being able to provoke that sense of wonder in kids, and allowing them to look for explanations and let that drive keep them engaged,” Aungst said.

But it goes deeper than that, he said.

“It’s about students not just solving problems–it’s about them looking for problems, too,” he added. “Innovators are looking for problems and they try to solve them before anyone even realizes the problem exists. We need innovators. Math class is a great place to start doing that.”

Educators should strive to avoid ending with the answer. Instead, they should ask students why they think the answer is what it is, how they arrived at the answer, if other answers are possible, if other methods of solving are possible, if students encountered difficulty, and if so, how they overcame it.

Digital tools to support conjecture include:
http://data.gov [4]
http://edte.ch/blog/maths-maps [5]
http://www.geogebra.org [6]

Communication

When students are able to explain their thought processes and understanding, their own knowledge increases.

One way to promote better math learning is to think of math as if it were a foreign language.

“If all we’re doing is teaching students how to move the symbols around and get an answer out of it, without embedding meaning into that, then the meaning behind the math is completely lost,” he said. “Learning how to do math is like learning how to read a foreign language.”

Students should be able to explain, in their own words, what numbers and symbols mean and represent.

Instead of asking students to show their work, ask them to convince mathematical experts that their solution is a good one–students understand what they do, but communicating it to someone else is a challenge.

Digital tools for communication include:
Infographics such as http://piktochart.com [7] and http://infogr.am [8]
Social media (speaking to others about the math students are doing)
YouTube and Vine
Classroom blogs

Collaboration

“Problem solving in the real world is nearly always collaborative,” Aungst said. “In fact, competition might even serve to dampen innovation. We want to get our kids working together.”

Working together inspires students to consider other points of view and other approaches to problems. This, in turn, informs, and may change, their thinking.

Educators could begin with a “You, Y’all, We” approach: present the problem first, and let students work on that problem individually. They’ll struggle, Aungst said, but that’s OK. Then, move to small-group discussion, before involving the whole class in the discussion or in solving the problem.

Aungst also recommends the “three before me” strategy, in which students consult three other resources or people before bringing an “unsolvable” problem to their teacher.

Digital tools for collaboration and building classroom teams include:
Wikis and Google Sites
Google Classroom
Skype and Google Hangouts
Wiggio
Edmodo

Chaos

As odd as it seems, chaos promotes learning and discovery, Aungst said.

“What it really is about is the fact that problem solving is messy–it’s not a linear step-by-step,” he said. “Real world problem solving is a messy thing.”

Students should struggle in productive ways, and if they’re not, instruction isn’t particularly effective. In short, they need “cognitive sweat,” Aungst said.

Digital tools to support chaos include:
http://enlvm.usa.edu [9]
http://ohiorc.org/for/math/stella [10]
http://mathpickle.com [11]

Celebration

Educators should celebrate students’ growth, successes, “and even their failures, and what you can learn from their failures,” Aungst said.

Sometimes, a “catch me if you can” strategy works well. Educators tell students they plan to make mistakes, and students must try to identify those mistakes. This makes it safe for students to point out errors.

“It’s really important that you validate effort, and not answers,” he said. “It’s really important that we recognize that the students who start out as the smartest at the beginning of the year may not be the smartest at the end of the year.”

Posted by Nicky Mohan

Original Source

Technology is disruptive. Education technology is in a whole new league. Breaking down the traditional barriers of the school system, it has led to revolutionary changes in the education sector. Where once the golden rule of the classroom was “no talking”, we now have teachers encouraging open collaboration. Where once we had students falling behind without being noticed, we now have systems pinpointing a student’s weaknesses and providing instant help. Where once all communication between student and teacher was lost once outside the classroom, we now have social media to connect at all times. It’s simply indisputable that technology is impacting education for the better, and while some remain sceptical, the proof is in the pudding.

1. It’s Making Learning Personal

One of the biggest benefits of education technology is its ability to facilitate one-to-one instruction. Long considered the most effective form of teaching, it has been deemed an impossibility given the ratio of teachers to students in our system. Technology makes it possible to reach every single student on a personal level, delivering personalized resources and a personalized learning experience to every single student. Fishtree does this by assessing students’ Learning DNA, generating resources specific to their needs, and tracking student progress on a continuous basis, with instant help at hand.

2. It’s Making Learning Adaptive

In much the same way as personalization, adaptive learning keeps the focus on the students, moving with their rhythm, adapting to their every need. Technology has allowed us to keep students learning at their own pace, in their own way, tailoring the learning experience as it continues. Fishtree’s adaptive platform identifies a student’s learning path, provides tailored resources, tracks a student’s learning, and ensures every specified target is reached in an adaptive way.

3. It’s Making Learning Mobile

Technology has finally given learning the legs it needed to ensure the process never comes to a halt. Through the use of mobile technology like Fishtree, educators can keep students learning long after leaving the school gates. Through the use of personalized resources and lessons, students are encouraged to indulge in independent learning and self-assessment, fueling their creativity and critical thinking skills.

4. It’s Making Learning Social

In a world increasingly dominated by social media, integrating social networking in education and encouraging positive collaboration is more important than ever. Technology has given us the key to bringing the social aspect into learning, along with the added bonus of keeping educators, students, and peers connected. Fishtree gives educators and students a safe, monitored, social media-based feature that encourages open, respectful collaboration at all times, further promoting the importance of digital citizenship and online safety.

5. It’s Making Learning Transparent

While technology certainly makes it easier to facilitate better learning, it goes a step further, giving educators complete transparency into the learning process. With the help of technology, we can now see exactly how each student is learning, using what resources, and at what pace. Fishtree provides key insights into student learning, identifying the specific path taken by each, and translating the personalization process step-by-step, keeping the teacher involved at all times.

6. It’s Making Teaching Easier

There’s nothing easy about teaching. Simultaneously acting as counsellor, mediator, parent, supervisor, educator and nurturer is never going to be easy. Yet the administrative duties of teachers have piled high in recent years in response to state demands. Technology can take the pressure off by tracking student progress and performance for you, building an organized system of student portfolios. What’s more, a platform like Fishtree offers a lesson planner with millions of standard-aligned resources at the ready, saving a lot of precious time. While it could never replace the key instructor in the classroom, technology really does make the process a whole lot easier.

About the author:
Lorna Keane is a teacher of French, English and ESL. She specializes in language teaching and has taught in second and third-level institutions in several countries. She holds a B.A in languages and cultural studies and an M.A in French literature, theory and visual culture. Subscribe to her blog or follow her on Twitter.

Image credits: Brad Flickinger  / CC BY 2.0