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Interactive Educational Tools for Children

2011-02-05T08:42:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Hohn]Matthew Hohn

Even though the concept of education stays the same, the method is fleeting. Children, as young as they are, have brains that can be compared to as sponges -- they absorb everything they see and hear. With their creativity and curiosity, diligence on the part of teachers and parents can help in molding a brilliant child. Although children learn fast, it does not follow that the rate of learning is the same. The undeniable truth is that a child learns according to his own pace. Some may pick up lessons faster than the others. Teaching should never be used with a one size fits all technique.

Teachers have different approach to teaching. Their approach is based upon their character. Some have the passion to teach, while others simply do it for the job. In that regard, whether you are a passionate teacher or a teacher by heart, it is important to determine the learning needs of the children being taught. The help of educational tools can also go a long way. While there may be different teaching skills, there are also different learning tools that the children of the future can rely upon.

Some people have observed that as technology advances, the intelligence of children advances as well. If you have noticed, lessons that were once taught at 8 years old are now being introduced to 6-year-olds. With this great advancement in children's intelligence, the technology needs to keep up as well. So, here are some educational tools that can be a great help in molding the future intelligence of children:

CD's and DVD's

In the olden days, we have been used to looking at pictures of encyclopedias and other hardbound references. There are soft copies of these which have been burned in either CD's, DVD's and other forms. Indeed, these are much easier to handle, store, and see. With its alluring pictures, the features are really impressive. In fact, some of it comes with music, too.

Television

Television is a great learning tool that can broaden the knowledge of children. Unlike before when cartoon characters do nothing but fight, modern animated characters shown on television these days actually teach the child while giving them some fun.

Internet-based Tool

There are internet-based tool in the World Wide Web which are focused on giving children choices between learning, playing, and drawing. There are those which can teach math to a child as young as 4 years old. As a matter of fact, the variety of choices is practically endless -- from storytelling (reading), solving problems, art, there are so many subjects to choose from. Once you put all of these together, the child will become brighter.

Children learn according to their preferences. There is no saying whether a tool can work if it has not been tried. But, keep in mind that aside from the cognitive skills of children, they still need to learn how to interact with other people. Keeping the balance between learning, playing, and socializing should be noted especially if their brain is still developing.

Matthew Hohn enjoys writing for Ssidisplays which sells [http://www.ssidisplays.com/content/back-projection-screens]back projection screen and [http://www.ssidisplays.com/products/projection-films]projection on glass as well as a host of additional products.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Interactive-Educational-Tools-for-Children&id=5828767] Interactive Educational Tools for Children

How A School In The Kingdom of Bahrain May Hold Keys To The Future

2010-11-04T12:40:00.001-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=E._Alana_James]E. Alana James

As mentioned in a previous article, the world's education systems are challenged to transform themselves to meet the needs of the knowledge economy. For world economic growth their graduates need to be able to get jobs or start their own businesses. There may be validity in the idea that education needs to remain somewhat separate from the needs of business, otherwise we have schools becoming little more than factories that turn out that people required by industry. At the same time the products that education graduate are people, and people want to have jobs and employment as well as to enjoy not mere survival but also the luxuries that they see others enjoying. This is the second in a series of articles on the challenges and potential changes that face education in the 21st century.

The obvious direct approach to preparing people of all ages for new work, is to teach them that work. This has led educators to see education in two tracks: one the academic that teaches students to think, process ideas, problem solve and to be scientific. The other, alternate track was vocationally driven. This often implied a somehow "less than" status to vocational work. Students were slotted to go one way or the other. The modern world is less compartmentalized than that, and seeing vocation or academics as two separate ways of being will no longer function. The modern employee or entrepreneur is required to maintain many of the same skills as the academic. Everyone needs to research information, organize it to meet the needs of their particular context, publish it in digital and non-digital formats, and be prepared to engage in active debate on the ideas they are working with. This is as true for a group of tradespeople as it is for professors, managers, business owners. The disconnect is that while some of these skills may develop during group work or project-based learning, most of the world still learns in classrooms with rows of desks, a teacher at the front, and students madly scribbling notes preparing themselves to regurgitate the content being handed to them when it comes time to take a test.

What would a school look like if we started over? The answer to that question is being addressed in the Kingdom of Bahrain by their new Polytechnic University. This article briefly discusses those ideas in the hopes that they are interesting to others and that they start a debate about new possibilities that are can be employed to transform education.

Bahrain Polytechnic University

All good action research starts with delving into current circumstances and understanding what is needed, perhaps that is the reason I like Bahrain Polytechnic so much. They started to design a program by conducting a series of interviews with human relations department to find out what they expected from the graduates they hired. Their findings demonstrated that the current perception of employers was that 49% of college graduates did not have the soft skills they needed (i.e. teamwork communication and problem-solving), 44% did not have the requisite language, math, or vocational skills that were needed, and 42% did not have an understanding of professional conduct or were not properly motivated to do good work. This puts a heavy burden on employers because their recruiting and training process is expensive and if almost 50% of the people they hire do not have the basics, they are inclined to go out of country for their recruiting.

Using the interview process the design team for Bahrain Polytechnic then decided that they needed a curriculum that embedded these skills in the curriculum not just as an add-on or byproduct of the educational process. They concluded that traditional context and knowledge-based education must change and rapidly. This is not easy, it has a lot of things pushing against it. For instance, when you're starting something new people don't have confidence that you know what you're doing, especially if what you're doing implies that what they are doing is not good enough. Also there is a difficulty in finding staff through who will carry through on your vision, because, after all, your vision is new and likely to be misinterpreted. Finally, the facilities that you inherit from other models are, by definition, outmoded and get in the way of what you were trying to accomplish.

In spite of these challenges Bahrain Polytechnic has come up with three sets of skills, or types of growth, that will be overlaid and worked on concurrently throughout the students tenure at the University. There will of course be the academic studies, but alongside direct instruction will be employ-ability skills, and a continuously developing self-knowledge profile. In other words, these students will be continuously evaluated on their attitude, their delivery, and the coherency between those and how they see themselves. Marvelous!

Educators will say things like, "that all sounds great but how are you can measure it?" Although this is still a work in progress, Bahrain Polytechnic has made great strides in answering that question. Still two years away from their first graduating class, they see their graduates having three transcripts that they will bring to future employers. The first provides an overview of the range of achievement levels on academic content, the same as provided by universities worldwide. The second is what they call an employ-ability profile in which the student has had to demonstrate and been continually assessed by staff on what are considered the soft skills of communication, teamwork, problem solving, initiative and enterprise, planning and organization, self-management, learning and technology. Those same skills are evaluated by the students themselves in their self-knowledge profile. Then all three are graphically laid over one another in order to give the employer a visual representation of the whole person who is applying for the job.

How is this done? Through a curriculum that builds on the foundation program of strong English skills, the ability to research, use of information technology and math. The degrees offered are bachelors or diplomas in: visual design, international logistics management, information and communications technology, business, office management, web media, and engineering technology. They are just starting the process of design for the new campus, where the architecture of the buildings they inhabit will help rather than hinder their mission through wide-open spaces, easy places to meet, an atmosphere that promotes project work 24/7 etc. It was my pleasure to be able to sit in on their discussion with the architect, and that alone should dramatically increase the ability to think creatively, as the students will no longer be contained in rows of boxes. Their campus fits with the lifestyle engendered by digital natives, who jump easily between social, organizational, and project design work.

This article looked into an innovative solution to the problems addressed in previous writing about the apparent disconnect between education graduates and the needs of the employers who will hire them. Even as a start-up, this university has good management and solid backing from the Kingdom of Bahrain. At this points it looks as thought there is every likelihood that it will fulfill its mission. I said elsewhere, it is easier to start fresh in some instances such as when you are making dramatic change, then to refit existing structures. Future articles in this series will look into the ways and means in which action research can help when education and policy are faced with a "refit" rather than start over is good process.

If you are a student, a parent, an educator or any other type of concerned party who is interested in the future of education, you may want to look into the range resources available on: [http://www.futureofeducationproject.net]http://www.futureofeducationproject.net. Register and we will keep you in touch with new ideas as they develop. Dr. E. Alana James, writes on and facilitates participatory action research studies where people research their own particular dilemma is an effective way to address complex issues that otherwise can cause despair. Through PAR, local adaptations can be implemented and evaluated simultaneously. This strategy allows for a world of individuals to work together through the net to re-design education.

Other works on action research for personal and professional innovation can be found on Alana's personal site at http://www.reinventinglife.org

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-A-School-In-The-Kingdom-of-Bahrain-May-Hold-Keys-To-The-Future&id=5198725] How A School In The Kingdom of Bahrain May Hold Keys To The Future

Using Action Research To Change The Future Of Education

2010-10-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=E._Alana_James]E. Alana James

Learning in online environments is no longer a new idea. Around the world, in classrooms and in homes children and adults of all ages are learning in both structured and non-structured environments online. People from three to 73 are successful online learners. People who predict disruptive innovations have said that by the year 2025 over 50% of all the education in the world will be done through computers.

Changes present problems. If you change too early the new idea may prove to be a bust and there you are, having invested in an idea that quickly deteriorated. I remember the man in charge of technology at Columbia telling my class in the early 90's that online learning was not paying off - putting the content materials up online was too costly and too quickly out of date to ever be profitable. Of course you know now that these challenges were overcome. Universities with online platforms are the fastest growing anywhere in the world, and online schools for younger children are quickly gaining in importance, especially for children who live in remote areas, speak a language different from the country in which they live or who have difficulties socially with other students.

This article discusses how action research might be used to help parents, educators or concerned citizens design the successful integration of "new paradigms" of educational ideas (online or other), materials and content with traditional schooling- making the ideas of change within education less of a trauma and more of a seamless, integrated process. As I have written in other articles, it often seems challenging to average people to take on ideas that come from research, nonetheless the three steps in action research of discovery, action and reflection will seem familiar as indeed they are. What may be new will the unique blend of how they interact in the process to make seemingly difficult things become simple. This allows us to move ahead and make changes in your educational design that may not have previously been considered.

Discovery

During the discovery phase you learn about the attributes of both the paradigm or model that you are currently using and the one that you are considering for adoption. To use the redesign of schools as an example you might ask the following questions then go to the web, other people, professional journals and books, etc to find a range of ideas as answers. Notice that in the following list you look for both the positive and the remaining outliers who still may not be served by the known models.

What type of student learns best online? In the classroom? In a blended environment?
What type of student is not likely to learn in any of these?
What are the implementation costs of each model? Who pays?
How do these costs amortize over time? How does that compare to how the content becomes outdated?

Armed with answers to these and other questions that you feel are important for schools in your community, you set up a graphic organizer to help guide your decisions as to what changes you want to make to improve your schools. Across the top of your table you put the styles of education (both those that you are doing and those that you are considering). Down the left edge you list the attributes you are looking for in your ideal educational type. The end result will look like many lists that you may come across comparing the features on a product - and just like when shopping you chose the model that best suits your needs.

Measurable Action

As you were listing the attributes of your current schools against the ideals you were interested in striving for you were also establishing a baseline of what you currently do and don't have. Armed, with solid ideas of what is working elsewhere that you want for your own community you are now ready to take the first actions toward making change. Remember three things are almost always true about change: it takes longer, costs more and is more frustrating to implement that we think will be true when we start - that is where the second two steps take of action research help.

In the measurable action step you keep good records and twice a week you jot down what you have done and what the results were. As an example for a school reform project you likely need more partners to help you succeed. The first actions may include going to see important people, discussing your ideas and the discoveries you made in the discovery section. Before you leave you will ask for their help. Twice a week (often enough you won't forget the details) you make note of what you did and the outcomes. Pretty soon you will see patterns in the responses you get and you will refine what it is you are doing, also increasing the likelihood of success.

Your bi-weekly notes give you some advantages: First they keep you on track, making it hard for a week to go by and nothing happens. Second, you find success faster because your note-taking ensures you notice the details that help. Third, you lose your fear of trying new strategies as they all become just more data about what worked and what didn't. Finally, and without necessarily noticing it your notes will give you a sense of satisfaction that you have really tackled this hard problem and are making progress.

Reflection

It is likely that your ideas will not completely change education as you know it in your area. Our systems are doggedly conservative because all the people involved come with their own history of how things were done before now, defaulting to that easily. The more complex the system, and education is one of the most complex and the harder for sweeping change to take hold in a sustainable fashion. That doesn't mean your reform steps won't make a great impact, only that but both your new ideas and those that you want to replace will live side by side.

What is required is for leaders to be able to do this type of analysis in order to bring new ideas to their organizations without losing the stability created by the more familiar ones.

Would you like to learn more about how your voice can make a difference to the future of education? If you are a student, a parent, an educator or any other type of concerned party who may want to pursue the conversation or host strategy meetings with others, join the network by registering with http://www.futureofeducationproject.net and we will keep you in touch with the group as it grows. Dr. E. Alana James, writes on and facilitates participatory action research studies where people research their own particular dilemma is an effective way to address complex issues that otherwise can cause despair. Through PAR, local adaptations can be implemented and evaluated simultaneously. This strategy allows for a world of individuals to work together through the net to re-design education.

Other works on action research for personal and professional innovation can be found on Alana's personal site at [http://www.reinventinglife.org]http://www.reinventinglife.org.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Using-Action-Research-To-Change-The-Future-Of-Education&id=5160217] Using Action Research To Change The Future Of Education

Education For the 21st Century AKA The Hub Proposal

2010-09-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Phil_Wagner]Phil Wagner and Patrick Yurick

Creating a Hybrid Learning Community

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

What might a 21st-century community look in which students direct their own education? In this world, the following scenario could take place: a student, engrossed in his favorite video game, puts down his gaming console and decides that he has an innovative idea for a new game of his own. From the convenience of his home computer he signs on to his profile at his school website and posts a bulletin within the "projects" section of the school's online network. His bulletin states the reasons why his video game idea is innovative and what kind of people he needs to help him bring his idea to fruition. After a few hours, seven other students have shown an interest in his idea and want to join him in the endeavor. The intended critical mass of interested parties having been reached, they must now seek out the relevant information and processes to make the project happen.

The group is assigned a teacher/mentor that will aid them in facilitating the achievement of their goal. A meeting time is set and the interested parties meet up in a conference room located at the online school's Hub complex. The Hub Complex is a state of the art building that acts as a meeting ground for the physical aspects of project based learning. In some rooms there are students working on massive science projects while in other rooms students are studying the fine arts related to current cultural topics. The video game designing student has contacted fellow classmates in the carpool list, but due to no one traveling to the Hub at the time he had to travel via public transit.

With notes scribbled on whiteboards and paper, the student's initial idea is fleshed out. It is determined that computer programming, graphic design, and physics are crucial aspects of the forthcoming project and, while the students have some experience in graphic design, their first challenge is that they lack the requisite programming skills. The group decides to sign up for a programming session where other groups are learning the tools necessary to write video game code. A student with a strong interest in the visual aspect of the project works with a student from another group to walk through an online tutorial in game graphic design. The project continues with the mentor acting as consultant, ensuring that the students are not getting overwhelmed and are finding the resources they need. When the video game is completed, the students reflect with the mentor on what was the most difficult part of the project. It may be determined that the project would have gone much more smoothly if a tutorial on some particular facet of the process had been made available to them. This would have saved some time on trial and error and unnecessary difficulties. The group works to publish documentation wherein their reflections won't just benefit their own future project endeavors, but will also serve as an available resource to future student projects and other users around the world.

How do we achieve this vision while working to simultaneously ensure that our students are well educated and allowed to pursue their passions? Perhaps the Internet is the answer public education has been looking for. Over the past decade, online schools and universities have opened at radically increasing rates while many colleges are adopting some form of hybrid online/traditional classrooms to facilitate learning. In the traditional classroom, students interact with other students and teachers, an interaction which creates a relationship that can be treasured for a lifetime. Online lectures and textbooks are still lectures and textbooks, which can be very difficult and confusing. Without another person to help us and without challenging projects that require human interaction the online classroom will be devoid of the life naturally attained within the traditional classroom. Lectures and textbook based learning is why the current form of "online schooling" will never be completely successful. Project based learning with a human face to face component must be included in this new online paradigm in order to facilitate personal and meaningful engagement of students.

One of the principles that our public education system is founded on is the idea that a well-informed citizenry remain strong, free, constantly interactive and capable of diverse thinking. Educating to diverse communication standards (both new and old) is vital to strengthening the community of a multi-cultural society. It is becoming increasingly apparent as we move further into the twenty-first century that education should dovetail with rapidly evolving practices in contemporary communications. In fact, institutional policies are reacting to this demand across the United States. (1) Public education must be flexible enough to follow communities within its structure no matter where they exist. Online education becomes inevitable in this scenario because, as it has become the popular means of mass communication, it has also begun to supplant and augment the traditional loci of communities world-wide. The modern classroom has become the Internet, and vice-versa. Because of the limitless potential of human interaction made possible by the numerous technologies we find at our disposal in the twenty-first century, communities based on instantaneous communication have formed within a new frontier that exists worldwide. Public education, if it is to stay relevant to the needs of the modern community, needs to find its place at the forefront of this frontier.

Online communities have replaced geographical ones. While many are unable to name one of their neighbors, they connect daily with hundreds or thousands of like-minded people for various reasons. These communities are in place, yet education has not effectively found a way to harness these connections for meaningful learning-even while meaningful learning is taking place within them all along! As public educators work to discern and define the function of the K-12 classroom in this new era of communication, they must strive to meet the demands brought forth by new and ever-emerging technologies while still working to create a school that will-above and beyond all things-facilitate learning for the K-12 student. But moving towards a methodology which no longer focuses strictly on the "traditional" means of communication does not mean that teachers need to abandon their basic instinct, viz. to learn we need to interact physically with one another. The traditional concept of a school as being a place where students come together to learn in the same physical environment is not a concept that should be abandoned. Rather, public educators need to change their preconceptions of how and when students come together to learn so that their education can support this new type of technology driven classroom.

Since very early in American history, educators have worked to ensure that all students are prepared and well rounded. Every year more and more people are choosing to enter a college or university; choosing to go beyond their required education in order to receive training in areas about which they are passionate. Yet, in the last couple of decades we have seen technology explode onto the scene, permanently changing the way we live, interact, and learn. While schools have worked hard to ensure that students are equipped with the tools needed in today's society, we can always ask: is technology being used its fullest extent? The above scenario, in which students utilize available technologies to the fullest extent in order to complete a complex project, outlines a possible situation in which students, rather than simply making use of technology to absorb disjointed and only marginally useful facts, employ such technology to learn and develop within a tightly-knit community.

Is it possible to envision a world where an online student body is able to complete a project that they are interested in while still obtaining the skills and facts necessary to fall in line with the National Standards of Education? How can schools stay in touch with the world if they are not part of the mainstream student communities of the 21st century? All humans have a natural inclination towards learning; whether learning to walk, read a book, or to take a car apart and put it back together again. It is the responsibility of public educational institutions to mentor these natural motivations and to encourage a productive and collaborative society. Can this be successfully achieved and supported within the confines of a hybrid school? If public educators are to rise to the challenges of our times, the answer must invariably be, "yes."

The Internet has become the unofficial 21st century method for learning. Almost anything can be learned by simply watching a YouTube video or following along on someone else's blog. News is transmitted instantaneously throughout the world creating an almost unlimited supply of information for almost any need. However, when we look in the classroom, we find information continuing to be disseminated in the same way it has been for centuries. Where information comes out of the Internet like a waterfall, students are asked to sit for eight hours a day and move through information at a trickle. This is why public education needs to follow the community, especially when the community is obviously shouting that it knows where it wants to be.

So how do we tap into those communities? If there is one thing that has truly kept the fire of learning alive, it has been the library. Imagine a super-library, a kind of K-12 learning center that has been built to be alive and able to act a resource for an online community. A place that would support a kind of project-based learning that could be facilitated anywhere there was an Internet connection. This online school Hub would be filled with teachers and experts who could be present both physically present and virtually for students to interact with no matter where they are. This place would also serve as an easy meeting place for the physically interactive parts of project-based learning that are required of its online student body.

We propose that this Hub be the school that actively engages with the 21st century community structures. This high tech Hub facility will be a place where teachers no longer become the gatekeepers of a rigid grading system, but rather start acting as mentors and facilitators within a complex hive of student activity. Why this hub would be successful as a base for an online/virtual school is because it would enable what public education has been seeking to accomplish all along - it would allow students to naturally gravitate to the school out of the want for learning. The basic idea is that human beings learn while uncomfortable, i.e. in new situations where they are forced to be alert. If students were able to first engage with a school from a comfortable place it is our theory that these students would in turn be not only motivated to come to school they will be drawn to it. A "Hey, what's going on here?" attitude will be fostered when a student is able to observe the classroom before entering it.

It is of our opinion that if a High School were to utilize new technologies to expand the classroom and support its communication between all parties involved the result would be a class that is no longer confined by the walls of one room. The classroom could then become earth and the world we live in would become the teacher. This "free from physical constraints" classroom would be populated with students who are able to communicate anywhere that they can receive Internet bandwidth. Projects could take place in the African bush or in a coffee shop in Bern, Switzerland.

As we move into the future of learning the question of how to combine truly personalized education and online learning becomes self-evident. There are many more conversations that must come up to answer this, but none can arise until we have a core understanding as a community of what we are trying to achieve and what we are trying to teach as educators.

1) For a detailed elaboration of this phenomenon, see John Watson, Butch Gemin, and Jennifer Ryan. "Keeping the Pace with K-12 Online learning: A Review of State-Level Policy and Practice." Rev. of K-12 Online Learning. Nov. 2008: 1-163.

Phil Wagner - Math/Physics/Robotics Teacher

Patrick Yurick - Graphic Design Teacher and Founder of the Graphic Novel Project.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Education-For-the-21st-Century-AKA-The-Hub-Proposal&id=4904802] Education For the 21st Century AKA The Hub Proposal

Father, give me back the hands of Dita.. .... ...

2010-08-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Create all of which have become parents or expectant parents and .... Remember .... Upset of any kind, let us not overreact ... As parents, we ought to look after each other we act specifically on the problem child is still small because they still do not understand.

Here is the true story called "Father, give me back the hands of Dita ... ... ..."

A husband and wife - like other couples in big cities leave their children cared for while working housemaid. This couples only child, a beautiful woman aged three and a half years. He was alone at home and often left assistants for busy working in the kitchen.
Play him with swing-top cradle swing in which his father purchased, or pick flowers and others in his yard.

One day he saw a nail rust. And he crossed the floor where her father's car was parked, but since the floor is made of marble, the streaks are not visible. She tried again on a new car his father. Yes ... because the car was dark colored, so his writing is clear. Moreover, these children were scribbled in accordance with his creativity.

That day my father and mother motor into the workplace because he wanted to avoid the jams. Having the right car is full strokes so he switched to the left of the car. Made a picture of mother and father, their own image, painting chickens, cats and others to follow his imagination. The incident took place without fully realizing the maid of the house.

When I got home late, troubled couples that year saw a new car purchased with installment payments that are still the old hull. The father who had not yet entered into this house continues to scream, "who's this job!" ....
Housemaid who was struck by a scream and it ran out. He also beristighfar. Flushed face scared after seeing the face of ruthless master. Once again the hard questions submitted to him, he kept saying 'I do not know .. sir. "" You're home all day, what pot are you doing? "Snapped the wife again.

The child who hears his father's voice, suddenly ran out of room. With full pampered she said "Dita's father who makes the picture .. beautiful ... is not it! "she said as she hugged her father with spoiled as usual. The father who had lost patience took a small twig from a tree in front of his house, struck again to keep her child's palm. The child who does not understand what what crying in pain, pain and fear. Satisfied hitting the palm of the hand, dad is also hitting the back of his hand. While the mother was just silence, as though blessing and is satisfied with the punishment imposed.

Housemaid during free, have no notion what hrs do for a long time ... The father pounded his right hand and then replace his left hand. After the father went into the house followed by the mother, the maid holding the little boy, took him to the room.

He was shocked at the palm of the hand and back hand of the little boy who hurt and bleed. Maid was bathing the child. While douse it with water, she began to cry. The boy was also arrested painful screaming when the wound was exposed to water. Then the maid to sleep little boy. The father had left the child sleeping with a maid. The next day, the child's hands were swollen. Maid complained to her employer. "Apply the medication alone!" Answered the father of the child.

Home from work, she did not notice the little boy who spent time in the maid's room. The father is reportedly willing to give lessons to his son. Three days passed, the father has never visited his son while the mother was too, although every day asked the maid. "Dita fever, ma'am" ... aides said succinctly. "Love Panadol drink it," replied the mother. Before the mother entered the bedroom he visited the room attendants. As seen in the arms of his son Dita housemaid, she closed the back door of the room attendants. Sign fourth day, housemaid tells her master that Dita's body temperature is too hot. "This afternoon we'll take it to the clinic. 5:00 am ready "said his employer was. Until the time the child is already weak brought to the clinic. The doctor directed that he be brought to the hospital because the situation is serious trouble. After several days of inpatient care doctor called the father and the mother of the child. "There are no options .." said the doctor who suggested that the boy's hands cut off because the pain was too severe. "It's been festering, for the sake of saving his life, both hands should be cut from the elbow down" said the doctor. The father and mother were hit by lightning like to hear those words. It seemed the world stopped spinning, but what can be said anymore.

Wailed the mother embracing the child. With a heavy heart and tears melted his wife, the father shook his hand signed letter of approval from the surgery. Exit from the surgery, after the drug was injected up, the child crying in pain. He was also surprised to see his hands wrapped in white gauze. He looked at her mother and father face. Then to the maid's face. He frowned at them all cry. In the torment of pain, the child's voice in tears. "Daddy .. ... Dita's mother would not do it anymore .... Dita o'clock father did not want anymore. Dita would not mean more ... Dita dear father .. dear mother. ", he said repeatedly failed to make the mother hold grief. "Dita is also Mbok Narti dear .." he looked at the faces housemaid, while making the woman screamed hysterically.

"Daddy .. Dita hand it back. For what is taken .. Dita promise ill will repeat it again! Dita how to eat later? ... How Dita want to play later? ... Dita promise ill be writing in the car again, "he said repeatedly.
Seemed to come off the heart of the mother heard her son's words. She cried as hard as the strong but the fate that had occurred no man can resist. Rice has become porridge. In the end it was a beautiful child to continue his life without both hands and he still does not understand why his remains should be cut even have to apologize.

The story above is a reflection and learning to become successful parents. The story above dikutif of Facebook friends a message delivery "1000 GRANTS ARTICLES Sympathetic Islami Corps Ajengan Ubed Galmasi"

Mobile Learning - In the Beginning, There Was the Abacus

2010-08-24T17:03:00.001-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Vidya_Varadarajan]Vidya Varadarajan

"Math is hard. Math is complicated. Math is boring."

Fortunately or unfortunately, math is important. Mathematics is the most widely used subject in almost every career, and often high paying jobs demand someone who can "do the math".

According to 2007 Department of Education statistics, only 31% of eighth graders score at or above "proficient" level on standardized math tests. In some school districts, high-school-algebra failure rates approach 50%.

From the very first abacus, the teaching and learning of mathematics has always been a challenge. Over the last two decades educational 'technologists' have developed and studied uses of computers specifically for mathematics education. The necessity of a handheld device for mathematical uses has been in development for the past few decades.

The recent past saw advanced calculators created by a few leading makers, like Casio and Texas Instrument, which were designed to provide specific applications for mathematics learning.

Similarly, TI's handheld mathematical PDAs offered solutions to many challenges such as helping teachers know which students had trouble with which mathematical concept in "real time", and enabling students to independently experiment and explore concepts as they are taught.

The availability of a ubiquitous technology like m-learning can play an effective part in teaching and learning of mathematics.

In the rel=nofollow [http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/140/cellphonometry.html?page=0%2C0]article, "Cellphonometry: Can Kids Really Learn Math From Smartphones?" the writer details how schools are successfully partnering with mobile-phone companies to help kids conquer math. The results speak for themselves.

Similarly, an experiment conducted by the National Taiwan Normal University indicated that mobile learning improves students' ability to connect the dots between mathematical theories and practical problem solving, as well as their attitude towards learning math.

The reason conventional math is considered tedious is often because lessons are taught as static numbers on a page. Math itself is an interactive subject, and students need to be able to visualize and grasp math concepts to understand them. Mobile learning enables just that.

By including video examples of data collection, animated graphs and packaging math lessons with unique embedded media, mobile learning lets students maximise the interactive nature of technology to effectively communicate what is otherwise a hard subject to learn.

Read more about rel=nofollow [http://www.mobl21.com/mobile-education-in-action/]Mobile learning in Mathematics

Sources:

"Mobile phones in Education: the case of mathematics", by Michal Yerushalmy & Oshrat Ben-Zaken

"Constructing Mathematic Paths in a Mobile Learning Environment", National Taiwan Normal University, Lin-Jung Wu, Kao-En Chang, Hsien-Sheng Hsiao, and Yao-Ting Sung

Vidya Varadarajan is an experienced blogger and writes on mobile learning, among other things.

For similar articles on mobile learning visit: http://www.mobl21.com/blog

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Mobile-Learning---In-the-Beginning,-There-Was-the-Abacus&id=4655278] Mobile Learning - In the Beginning, There Was the Abacus

Political Correctness is Reducing All Genius Level Thinkers Into Silence - How Pathetic!

2010-08-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow]Lance Winslow

As many of you know, I run a think tank, and there's nothing too spectacular about that considering there must be some 500 think tanks around the world, and someone has to run each one of them. However, there is something I've noticed within our think tank, and that is if we let too many politically correct individuals into our groups, at whatever level. And, we have a significant problem because they disallow folks to speak their mind, otherwise they chastise for using improper politically correct phrases, thus, no one listens to their brilliance, and eventually they stop talking.

The reality is with all brilliance comes with some baggage, and we as a society and civilization have to deal with that if we wish to come up with the best solutions, as inevitably they will come from someone who thinks slightly differently than the rest of us. However, if we reduce all geniuses and genius Level thinking into silence, making it very hard to express themselves without making a small verbal slip of political correctness, that we defeat the purpose of thinking at all.

But personally, I think we are doing the same thing in our schools, and yes we expect all of our children to do rote memorization, and we call that learning, really, and why bother memorizing any of that stuff, it's all on Google. Kids are not stupid, they know where to find information, and asking them for the information and testing them on it doesn't make much sense, unless you make it open-book test and allow them to ask their personal tech device to go online and put the answer in the right column, or check out the right multiple choice answer.

Still, if we allow them to use the Internet to find all the answers, that is to okay, but it still just teaches them to give us the answers we are looking for, and to use a search engine by typing the right Question into a little box, and yes, it is important to ask the right questions, but is that really teaching them to think?

And we either use rote memorization and try to catch them for cheating or we have them go find the right answer and put it into a space, all so they can get a grade and go home for the end of the day. How does this help learning - how does this teach people to think. Now then, I use this example because I have been absolutely adamant in chastising The World Future Society, yes, I admit it, I am a member. It seems that many people in The World Future Society are extremely leaning left in their political thinking, almost to the point that I could call them straight out socialists.

And here we have the problem again, if everyone has to think the same, in the same politically correct motive, to be in that group, then there is no out-of-the-box thinking, all they've done is expanded the box, made more rules, and silenced the true geniuses within their group, if there are any, which I really haven't found any, though, I'll admit there are a couple, who do hang around that grouping of futurists.

But I would suspect most of the real geniuses, well they are merely a member of the group to soak up information, and because it may be one of the only group that stands for forward thinking, and innovating towards our future. Even if the resultant is nothing to write home about.

Personally, I refuse to be drown in political correctness, I am a genius, and I'm not afraid to say it. And I refuse to be silenced, and maybe you can tell by my almost 21,000 articles online. What have you written today? Do you have a single original thought? Well if you do, I'd sure like to talk to you, and let's skip the political correctness, we don't do that in our think tank.

Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you've enjoyed today's discussion and topic. http://www.WorldThinkTank.net - Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Political-Correctness-is-Reducing-All-Genius-Level-Thinkers-Into-Silence---How-Pathetic!&id=4881880] Political Correctness is Reducing All Genius Level Thinkers Into Silence - How Pathetic!

Changing Trend in Management Education

2010-06-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Mukesh_Maheshwari]Mukesh Maheshwari

The entire society and humane life both have changed considerably since that a few years back. Information Technology has increased the pace of development and we have developed hundreds time more in last few years than we had in hundreds of years earlier. Everything has changed tremendously including morals, ethics and significance. So is true for education patterns and traditions. Here is what management education in India lacks most and what needs to be done to develop successful global entrepreneurs.

Earlier students were forced to concentrate and mug up what was written academic books and were forced to take exam on that knowledge only. Anything done on personal observations, skills and knowledge was out of curriculum and worth not considering for awarding ranks. They system was certainly flawed and deterred natural development of children and marred their ideation abilities. Consequently people were living within limited scope and had no access to the things, views, knowledge, and realities beyond their orbit.

With the advent of Information Technology, and most importantly Internet has changed the whole picture and has redefined the meanings and standards both. Today, students are encouraged to realize their own potential of achieving success in the field they may feel inclined to. The world is open at your disposals and only sky is the limit. Results are obvious, even young students are doing wonders in the world.

The same change has been introduced in professional level of education, like management studies. Students are provided internship and practical exposure of the situation, but to a limited extent only. Therefore they are still unable to emerge fully confident even after completion of their degrees and diploma programs. In fact, the things should have been upside down.

These professional courses should be more on real life industrial exposures and less on literature. The reason is the speed by which the world is changing. Teaching from the books written years before would not be inducing a practical approach and realistic behaviour in students. They need to be made aware about the current business scenarios with direct exposure to industrial affairs.

There are some institutes which have identified this deficiency of the existing management courses and, in order to make its students more competitive in global environment, has introduced Academia Industrial Interface in its curriculum, wherein the institute involves industry into education process of its students. They invite representatives of leading industries and share their real life experiences and current and emerging requirements from new age employees and professionals. The institute provides extended opportunities to its students to work in organizations on internship for a longer period than usual. The concept has clicked and more and more of its students are achieving success in jobs and businesses both.

The article goes to suggest all aspirants of management careers to choose such an institute / college which offers Academia Industry Interface in its curriculum for better future prospects.

IMI Imparts world class management education in Indore, Central India. This is one of the fastest growing management institute in India, and is the only institute in India having a Management Lab within its campus. Institute offers excellent infrastructure, and education facilities to all its national and international students. [http://www.imi.ac.in]Indore Management Institute, by virtue of its teaching and training excellence, has been awarded the opportunity to run MBA in Pharmaceutical studies in the region. IMI is currently accepting admissions in MBA, BBA, PGDM, B.Com and B. Sc for the coming session.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Changing-Trend-in-Management-Education&id=4474660] Changing Trend in Management Education

How to Quickly Put a Stop to Bullying in Your Classroom

2010-06-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Dobson]Jennifer Dobson

As an educator, you have a duty to protect your students while they are in your care, and unfortunately, this oftentimes means protecting them from each other. Bullying is prevalent in schools today, and many schools, in fact, have a huge problem with it. Bullies can make other student's lives completely miserable, causing them to dread coming to school where they are faced with jabs and taunts that are both physical and mental or emotional in nature. Students who are victimized by bullies often expend a great deal of their energy worrying about being bullied and afraid of the bully than focusing on their studies. And deep emotional scars from bullying can carry over into their adult lives, hampering their ability to become productive, confident, and mentally-healthy individuals. Sadly, many victims of bullies pay the ultimate price by committing suicide.

Forms of Bullying

Bullying can take two basic forms, and often goes well beyond a simple case of playground arguments. And although physical bullying is the most evident and readily obvious form of bullying, emotional bullying involves taunts and teasing that can be even more detrimental than the fear of physical harm, or the physical harm itself. And with the new face of communication, bullying can also be pulled off in midair via harassing and mean text messages and forwards. Recognizing bullying is the fundamental part of stopping it.

Signs of Bullying

It is important to watch for signs of bullying in your students, especially since many kids are apprehensive to discuss the bullying because they are ashamed, afraid, or both. And most students won't report incidences of bullying among their peers because of the fear of being labeled as a "snitch", or that the bully will seek revenge against them. The three most common signs of bullying include the unexpected and abrupt appearance of scratches, scrapes, bruises or cuts, unexplainable and sudden reluctance to go to school, and emotional withdrawal.

Steps to Take to Fight Bullying

If you find discover that a student in your school is being bullied, the first step that must be taken is to notify the principle or disciplinary figure at your school. Talk to the child who has been bullied, and assure him or her that it is not their fault. (The fact of the matter is that a bully is usually an insecure person that takes out his or her insecurities on someone who is perceived as being weaker than they are). Encourage the student that is being bullied to cooperate with school officials, and talk to the child's parents about the bullying incidence(s). Keeping an open dialogue is important, and it is also important that violence is not countered by more violence, which simply perpetuates a cycle. Hopefully, with watchful supervision, bullying can be controlled or eliminated in our school systems, but it literally does "take a village" to counter the problem. Toleration of bullying has gone on unchecked for a long time in many areas of the country and in many schools, but that trend is reversing. Many states now have legal ramifications for bullying. As an example, the Commonwealth of Kentucky recently passed the Golden Rule Act (HB 91) that makes bullying punishable by law, with charges ranging from harassment to harassing communication. Physical bullying can be considered as an assault.

As an educator, you can be the eyes and ears that can turn bullying around and make schools safer for everyone in attendance.

Jennifer Dobson invites you to take a look at her favorite online store for teachers, MPM School Supplies. On the site you'll find all kinds of great products including everything from classroom decorations like [http://www.mpmschoolsupplies.com/c-512-classroom-banners.aspx]classroom banners and [http://www.mpmschoolsupplies.com/c-548-classroom-charts.aspx]classroom charts to educational toys. Visit today and save 10% on your first order!

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Quickly-Put-a-Stop-to-Bullying-in-Your-Classroom&id=4487488] How to Quickly Put a Stop to Bullying in Your Classroom

Explore a Bright Future For Your Child - Top Careers in 2020

2010-04-14T00:28:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Isa_Kain]Isa Kain

As another year of rapid change passes and the shadow of recession lifts slowly, a slew of new careers are waiting to be explored in the new decade. How is it going to unfold for your children who will stand at important crossroads in 2020? What kind of career options will they have? As we grow into an information-driven society and technology advances, Generation 2020 will find itself caught in a brain race. The youth of the future are likely to consider becoming space architects or genetic counsellors, careers that we can only dream of at this point in time.

Lets take a look at some careers of the future.

1. Healthcare:

Healthcare involves the diagnoses, treatment and care of people, whether newly born, terminally ill or the elderly. The scope of this field has remarkably evolved over the last few years due to increasing investments, growing hospital chains, changing lifestyles and longer life spans. Apart from the traditional areas of medical practice (physicians, dentists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists etc.), careers such as hospital administrators, health technologists and technicians and medical research will see a surge in the long term. Nursing as a profession, will also evolve owing especially to rising numbers of the aged population striving for a better life. The latest additions to the series of upcoming careers in this field are those in brain analysis and genetic counselling.

2. Wealth-care:

Though the finance sector was badly hit by the recession, the clouds have slowly begun to shift and make way for new vistas. Individual earnings are on the rise and so is their willingness to take risks with their money. That being the case, there is a need for professionals who understand, explain, save and multiply their money for them. This opens up doors to careers in financial/investment advisory, risk management, wealth management, and corporate finance.

3. Engineering

With boundless innovation in technology, careers unheard of until now are being touted as options for the new generation. Move over computers and telecommunication engineers, your children will specialise in fields such as robotics, teleportation, simulation and space tourism.

4. Education:

Education is another field where investments are pouring in. Also, it is gradually taking a global as well as commercial avatar. As more foreign universities collaborate with Indian educational institutes and organisations, the latter have begun to move towards organised recruitment processes. Apart from the traditional positions such as chancellors and vice-chancellors, positions such as CEO and COO are also making way into the system.

As teaching methods continue to reform, the 'e' word has already made its way into teaching methods. Thus educational content developers will gain increasing importance in the years to come.

5. IT:

An intelligent network has become a necessity for any setup. Therefore web and system analysts, designers and developers will continue to remain in demand and will be required to undertake increasingly complex profiles. So will software designers and developers, web consultants and information mangers. Also, parallel programming is a relatively new career, likely to become popular in the years to come.

6. Green Jobs:

The pressure of demand on depleting resources is only likely to increase manifold in the future. In such a scenario, we will need people who can come to our rescue; people who specialise in 'resource recycling' and 'intelligent infrastructure'. So when your children grow up, you may see them working on jobs involving renewable energy, biogas, solar and wind power systems, environmental products and services and so on. Other areas include research and development, manufacturing, consulting, energy generation, energy efficient buildings and construction and project design and implementation. Sustainable environment-related fields are expected to lure future job seekers in huge proportions, akin to what IT did a decade ago.

7. Biotechnology Jobs:

Another sector likely to see high growth is biotechnology, which will also create several jobs in the fields of manufacturing, sales, research, development and so on. Careers options in this area include drug discovery, cell therapy and tissue engineering, bio-informatics, clinical research, intellectual property, bio-analytical chemistry, plant engineering etc.

8. Agriculture and other Agriculture-based careers:

Despite making progress in several sectors, agriculture continues to be an important source of income in India. The advent of agricultural technology is expected to foster growth in agriculture and other agriculture-based sectors. There is and will continue to be ample scope for making successful careers in flower farming, spices processing, pharmaceutics, dairy, fruit and vegetable, meat and fish and other food processing sectors. Also, several job seekers are expected to opt for the relatively less explored organic food and beverages industry.

9. Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is fast becoming popular and offers plenty of career options in fields as varied as medicine, engineering, cosmetics, computer hardware and software, robotics, defence, research and development and so on.

10. Other Opportunities:

a) Experimental Petrologist: These are people who study the evolution and formation of rocks on other planets.

b) Realizer: A realizer creates real versions of virtual objects.

c) Weather Modification Police: These people supervise over those who produce iodine induced rainfall from passing clouds. They are responsible for controlling the iodine quantities used for weather modification.

d) Unplugging: This is a mental health professional responsible to help wean people from excess technology dependence.

These are the promises that the future holds for children of today. It seems like a difficult path to tread, but then it always is and cannot be any different. One thing is for sure though, given the immense scope for exploring a wide array of career choices, providing your child the space for self exploration is imperative.

Also the future of your child, education and success depends on how well you plan today.
Be prepared and everything will fall into place.

One such device that can help you get started is the [http://www.educationisinsurance.com]Aviva Educost, which enables you to calculate the cost of future education and know the amount you would need to invest today for achieving required corpus.

Thanks & Regards,

Isa Kain, [http://www.educationisinsurance.com]Education in India

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Explore-a-Bright-Future-For-Your-Child---Top-Careers-in-2020&id=4014157] Explore a Bright Future For Your Child - Top Careers in 2020

How to Teach the Children of Our Future

2010-04-14T00:22:00.001-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Craig_Dean]Craig Dean

Schools are now faced with the need to offer careers support advice and teach skills for the future. We are preparing children for job opportunities that have not yet been created. Many of my friends are now working within web design and other IT jobs which were certainly not taught within the classroom 15 years ago. As globalisation allows markets to operate internationally, communications have improved significantly. Many of the pupils we teach today will be working alongside other global communities as part of their everyday working experiences.

We only have to look at the way in which the leading political parties within the UK are communicating with potential electorates in the upcoming General Election, and you will see that Global Social Networks are central to effective communications.

How often do people in full time employment, part time employment or even temporary employment work solely as an individual? Would you want to work in an environment without social interaction on a daily basis?

With this in mind, I wish you to consider some of the activities you may plan into your lessons, and how long, over a period of a week, pupils spend working on a task individually. Allowing the pupils you are offering careers support to and teaching to work independently, in silence, on a regular basis, for long periods of time is not conducive to preparing those individuals for future job opportunities whether in full time employment, part time employment or temporary employment.

Pupils need to develop their 'group work skills' and pupils regardless of academic ability really struggle with many aspects of team work. Indeed I know many adults that were denied the employment support they needed and are now uncomfortable in this role. I often wonder how this may have affected their own employment success.

Here I am going to suggest ways that you can embed some simple support structures within the classroom to enable the pupils to work with others, feel a sense of challenge and excitement within an inclusive, and not isolated or intimidating environment. I must go on to say that you must not deviate too far from the structures as it may make them less effective in terms of the employment support you are trying to deliver.

Employment Support - Rally Robin

This involves pupils taking turns in partners sharing information. Pupil one says a word or an offers an idea, then pupil two, then back to one again, and so on. This structure is ideal for getting pupils to think about a new topic, it can also be ideal as an assessment tool to start a lesson recapping what they remember about the previous lesson, or as a overall topic revision tool. This is great for self and peer assessment whilst remaining fun.

Employment Support - Round Robin

This structure is similar to Rally Robin, but involves students taking turns in a team, sharing information verbally. The information can also be shared by passing a piece of paper around the team and pupils adding a different idea each time. You can decide which style is more suitable for your pupils careers support.

Employment Support - Numbered Heads

Teacher poses a question, think time is given. When each pupil has given their individual choices they will show their team they are ready with a "thumbs up". Teacher then says "heads together". Pupils get off their seats and lean into the centre of the table to decide upon their chosen answer. When they all know the answer they sit down. When all teams are sat down you can tell that the whole class is ready. You can use a variety of techniques to choose a spokesperson from a spinner, to smallest shoe size, longest hair etc. The pupil from each team must pick up the whiteboard and pen on their table and write the answer and stand up. This must be done in silence. Give a signal and each team shows you their answer at the same time. A team point can be awarded for each right answer.

So how do structures help pupils to develop skills within full time employment, part time employment or temporary employment? Well it is quite simple. These structures enable he pupils to bring creativity to the table, to listen to other people's opinions, to contribute to decision making, and to work under pressure. These certainly are skills required in the workplace that I can identify with...how about you?

My name is Craig Dean and I have been massively successful in the recruitment industry for over 15 years and am considered as a specialist in acquiring real job opportunities for "go getters". I have successfully assisted thousands of people just like you in securing full time employment, part time employment, temporary employment and even working from home placements across all sectors. I invite you to read my articles and blogs for further advice at http://www.employmentsupport.net

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Teach-the-Children-of-Our-Future&id=4083085] How to Teach the Children of Our Future

The 3 Idiots of the Education System

2010-03-16T22:52:00.001-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sudhakar_Ram]Sudhakar Ram

"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think". ~ Anne Sullivan.

I was conducting a Discover Your True Calling workshop at IIM, Indore last week. I had the afternoon free and decided to see the much acclaimed, high-grossing Bollywood movie - "3 Idiots". I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, largely because it is a complete indictment of our education system. The message was strikingly similar to the theme of my workshop.

The film is about three students who do not really fit into the prestigious engineering college and are considered idiots by their professor. However, the movie clearly shows who the three real idiots are - the educational system, the teachers and the parents. Reflecting on the movie on the flight back to Mumbai, I realized that any real change in education is possible only by transforming these three constituencies.

Idiot #1 - The Education System:

Our current system is performance-oriented rather than mastery-oriented. The emphasis on examinations forces students to learn by rote. They focus on scoring high marks rather than investing the time and energy to understand the subject in depth. A system where true geniuses like Einstein and Ramanujan are considered poor students really needs its head examined. In the movie, this is brilliantly brought out by Aamir Khan playing Rancho - the truly outstanding engineer who goes beyond the book to gain mastery.

Idiot #2 - The Teachers:

Our current system of pedagogy is faculty-led and follows a fixed curriculum. The average teacher assumes that there is one right answer and that (s)he knows the answer. It is the rare teacher who has the ability to facilitate rather than teach, to nurture rather than preach and to support students who stray from the well-trodden path in search of creative ways to learn. Boman Irani as Viru Sahastrabuddhe does a superb job of bringing to life a dogmatic, highly competitive, over-confident college professor - the antithesis of an ideal teacher in every way.

Idiot #3 - The Parents:

When India's HRD Minister Kapil Sibal suggested scrapping of the 10th grade exams, parents were the first to stand up against the proposal. Parents want their children to be at the top of their classes, get admitted to the best colleges and follow traditional career options - engineering, medicine, management and the like.

Parents rarely encourage their children to discover their true passions and pursue mastery rather than mediocrity. The movie's middle class Quereshis, who want their son to be an engineer, and the poorer Rastogis, who see education as a way out of poverty, are typical of today's Indian parents. They would probably be the toughest nut to crack.

The 21st century calls for talented people who are masters in their chosen fields of work. It calls for collaboration among passionate individuals, from different disciplines, to address the truly challenging issues and opportunities that the world presents. The current assembly-line approach to education falls severely short. We are not equipping our children to succeed in their world. The appeal of the movie is universal and obvious.

But what will it take for all three of the constituencies above, as well as the student community to rally around to a new educational order? Please share your perspectives. We need to work together to bring about transformation in this vital area of our society.

Committed to transformation on all fronts, Sudhakar Ram has written articles on transforming India, corporate governance, financial markets and governments. He believes that we have the potential to create a sustainable world and live in harmony with our environment. However, this would require a fundamental shift in our mindsets - the "constructs" that drive our attitudes and actions. [http://www.thenewconstructs.com/]The New Constructs is his initiative to leverage Connected Intelligence in realizing the Connected Age. Please share. Stay active, stay engaged.

Sudhakar Ram is Chairman and Co-Founder of [http://www.mastek.com/]Mastek a leading IT solutions company specializing in providing IT platforms and applications for large and complex transformation programs like the London Congestion Charging Scheme, and the National Health Service in the UK.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?The-3-Idiots-of-the-Education-System&id=3627067] The 3 Idiots of the Education System

Mass Education Vs True Calling

2010-03-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sudhakar_Ram]Sudhakar Ram

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be" ~ Abraham Maslow

We were having an argument, but it was one of those arguments you can have with a l friend - polite, yet spirited. My friend is a great guy who has dedicated his life to teaching reading, math and science to government school children in Tamil Nadu. He has had a positive impact on thousands of kids over the last decade. But I was putting him on the spot.

"Why are you trying to make everyone an IIT aspirant" I asked him. "Are there not other careers which may be more in line with their natural talents?"

"Yes, there are other possible careers for many kids," he conceded. "But their parents and peer groups value math and science most. They are afraid their child is dumb if he or she doesn't score good marks in these subjects. I've got to concentrate on math and science to build self-worth in the child." I was still thinking about this later that day when my wife Girija and I visited my mother. We got chatting with the housekeeper, whose 12-year-old son is in 7th grade in a nearby government school.

The housekeeper complained that her son, although standing 4th in his class, got his highest marks in English and Math, which he liked, while barely achieving pass marks in the other subjects like science, social science and Tamil. She wanted him to go to college, but the boy did not seem very interested in academics; he was more interested in working with on carpentry and other crafts.

I recalled our conversation with Panchayat President Elango about the youth in Kuthambakkam village, and how so many of their parents view education as some kind of a passport to upward mobility. And, in some cases, it is. However, many villages are having problems with youths who fail 10th grade public exams - and then think themselves too good for farm work or other manual labor but cannot get better jobs. These youth tend to hang about as wastrels, living off their parents and falling prey to any corrupting influence in the village.

I am convinced that every human being on earth is born with innate gifts and talents. With effort and guidance, everyone can discover his or her own calling - we each have our own path to excel and make a mark in this world. Unfortunately, our education system interferes with this process with its "one size fits all" approach.

Further, society and economies create their own complications, especially in India, by glorifying and rewarding certain vocations more than others. It's sad: the further one is from producing something useful to the world, the more the person earns. Thus a person who produces goods and services is worth 'x". The person who markets and creates a business out of these goods and services earns '10x'. And the person who provides the financial inputs to this venture earns '100x'!

The question we need to ask ourselves - and argue, cordially, with our friends and family - is whether this distortion of value needs to persist in the Connected Age - with its reduced asymmetry of information and opportunities. Will the New Age bring new opportunities to pursue one's true calling and make a good living by doing so, rather than having to pursue specific professions purely for the money, but with no joy?

Will our education system be able to honor the individuality and uniqueness of every one of us, and nurture it rather than lock us to the lowest common denominator under the pretext of leaving no child behind? These are questions that I'd like us to discuss, politely and rationally, as a community.

Sudhakar Ram is Chairman and Co-Founder of [http://www.mastek.com/]Mastek, a leading IT solutions company specializing in providing IT platforms and applications for large and complex transformation programs like the London Congestion Charging Scheme, and the National Health Service in the UK. He believes that we have the potential to create a sustainable world and live in harmony with our environment. However, this would require a fundamental shift in our mindsets - the "constructs" that drive our attitudes and actions. [http://www.thenewconstructs.com/]The New Constructs is an initiative to promote independence in all facets of life in our journey to create an interdependent, connected world. How are you progressing through your life? What suggestions do you have for the rest of us in our lifetime journeys? Please share. Stay active, stay engaged.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Mass-Education-Vs-True-Calling&id=3888233] Mass Education Vs True Calling

The Future of Educational Technology and Education 3.0

2010-02-15T17:58:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Steve_McClard]Steve McClard

Thinking of what education might look like in the next decade, one quickly realizes that the trends in technology are leaving a large number of our students behind. We no longer live in an age of visible movement when it comes to progress and innovation. Today is an age of exponential change. New and ever-improving technologies are popping up every day and in every corner of society.

Educating the best and the brightest in this brave new world will take a new and improved educational paradigm. Allowing our educational tools to age in the corner of the classroom will be the mistake that may cost us our future. Throwing away masses of children to inequitable access will ensure that we languish at the bottom of the global pool of employable workers for decades to come.

The New Toolbox

I was at an auction a few years ago and noticed a few old woodworking tools that I thought I could use. For a few bucks, I was able to snag an assortment of hand tools that may have been in someone's toolbox for a generation or more. As the next decade passed, I used these tools in my shop for a wide variety of projects until my projects outgrew these old, dull tools. My woodworking creations continued to improve as did my skills and artistry. I quickly discovered that using improved tools would translate into improved craftsmanship. As any woodworker will tell you, new tools require new skills.

Woodworking is a great metaphor for shaping and molding students. There is simply no good substitute for a sharp tool. If you want to build the best projects possible, you need to use the best tools possible. Thinking in terms of the next decade for our country, we will be sorely disappointed in our projects if we fail to improve our tools.

Over the course of the next few days, I will attempt to paint a picture of how technology will shape the way we educate students in the next decade. I will attempt to show the amazing possibilities that lay before us if we will simply walk through the doorway of opportunity that is open to us.

My main focus in this series of articles will be this idea: Transforming the student from being a passenger to becoming a "user." You may be wondering what I mean by this. Let me explain.

Ask yourself what it means to be a "user." A user is not simply a person who uses. For the student, being a user should involve using the latest technology in a free and autonomous manner. This new-found freedom will allow the student to become an active participant in his/her education instead of a passive passenger. No other time in history have we been so able to make this a reality.

In our current technological society, being a user also means being tracked. Tracking has become a major part of our daily lives and is precisely the engine that should drive our educational process for the foreseeable future. Tracking a student means having the ability to target education toward weaknesses and strengths. The ability to accurately customize curriculum to the individual has been the holy grail of educational philosophy for many years. This golden age of technological development may soon enable this dream to become a reality.

Current educational curriculum and individual assessment is arbitrary at best. Being able to accurately asses a student can only be achieved by using modern tracking and database technologies. The means by which we can make this a reality is readily available and only needs to be taken off the shelf to be used. If Congress is looking for a shovel-ready project, this may be the one.

Imagine a world where every child has a tablet computer with ready access to the App of virtual photographic memory (internet). Further, imagine that every student can access all the knowledge of humankind freely at any moment in time. Continue to imagine a world where a misspelled word brings up a spelling challenge application instead of an auto correction. Try to contemplate what it would mean for a teacher to have a database of every misspelled word, every misunderstood concept or every missed equation for each of their students. Try to envision a teacher with the ability to customize the experience of the individual "user" with minimal effort. Imagine the curriculum being automatically targeted to the user through an intuitive educational platform that knows every strength and each unique weakness. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

The company that makes this standard available to the educational community will be the company that shapes the future of humankind. Will it be Google, Apple, Microsoft, or some other yet unknown pioneer?

Continuing from the thoughts in my last post, I would like to elaborate on the idea of the student as a user of a new standardized educational platform. It is obvious to me that the future of education will always mirror our everyday lives in one way or another. If you examine how technology has influenced your daily life already, you begin to put together a snapshot of what it will mean to be educated in the next decade.

In the last few hundred years, most individuals would consider an education as something you receive. You often hear the question asked, "Where did you receive your education?" As we proceed through the next decade, education will slowly move away from reception and toward being custom designed for the individual user. New technology will not only allow us to receive an education, but also develop an education. The question we might ask in 10 years is, "How did you develop your education?" The question of where will still be important, but the how of the matter will be the focus that defines the individual.

To make this a reality we will need a standardized platform from which to develop a student's unique education. This standardized platform will allow us to tailor a custom curriculum that will be matched to talents, interests and life goals. For the educator, a standardized platform will create a way to assist the student in discovering a true purpose in life through a unique educational experience. The basics of reading, writing and arithmetic will not be taught as much as they will be discovered and used. Learning will become a reciprocal experience between the teacher, the student and the machine.

Under a standardized platform, each of these three participants will have a role to play. The teacher will be the facilitator, assisting the development of the curriculum and inspiring the direction the student takes. The student will be the user, gathering resources, skills and knowledge in an efficient and measured sequence. The machine will do the work of data gathering and analysis, which will assist the teacher and student in refining the curriculum. This data gathering work of the machine will also free the teacher from the burden of record-keeping and tedious tasks that currently distract from the real job of teaching and learning.

Under a standardized system, grade level will be far less important. Achievement and progression will be measured by accomplishment and intelligence as a benchmark for success. The question of failure or success will be irrelevant and replaced with a standard and consistent measurement of potential and overall intelligence. Information will no longer be missed but continually rehearsed and monitored for retention by the machine.

In our current educational paradigm, the teacher is in charge of arbitrarily constructing curriculum. This approach to curriculum development is based on inexperience in some cases, outdated materials, inadequate funding and a shortage of time. Measuring the success of a specific curriculum is currently impossible. With a standardized system, comparisons of curricular success can be made across the entire spectrum of education and then continually reformulated and enhanced by the machine.

Sadly, teachers today are bogged down with an assortment of mind-numbing tasks that would be better suited to an off-the-shelf automated system. Tasks such as data tracking, reporting and record keeping are currently accomplished manually. These tasks could easily be delegated to an intuitive database. Developing a standard to follow would eliminate these tasks and free the teacher to do their main job of teaching students.

Education 3.0

Throughout history, man has sought to pass on knowledge to the next generation. This process started with oral tradition, storytelling and writing. With the advent of the printing press, knowledge and information slowly became available to the masses. The amount of information that could be gained by one human in a lifetime was severely limited by his access to printed materials and wealth. The majority of learning was gained through observation and imitation. We can call this Education 1.0.

Education 2.0 starts around the late eighteen hundreds with universal literacy movements throughout newly industrialized regions of the world. Improvements in education slowly transitioned from apprenticeship to formal education and training. Despite our movements toward universal education, access to knowledge and opportunity continues to be inequitable throughout the world. Even with the arrival of the computer revolution, access to the tools of learning continues to define the learner.

The next decade may mark the moment in history when all men are granted equal access to the greatest treasure a soul can possess. I use the word may in the last sentence because there is the chance that we will miss this golden opportunity. Access to Education 3.0 will only be gained through investment and universal standardization. If we continue to divert wealth toward fruitless goals and corporate greed, this opportunity will be lost or hopelessly delayed.

Education 3.0, when it arrives, will be the age of universal enlightenment. Platforms for education and learning will slowly standardize and become globally accessible and affordable. The poorest to the wealthiest will have access to the machine that runs the platform.

The thought on your mind at this point is most likely wondering what machine I keep referring to. The machine in question is the one we have been so busy teaching and training since roughly 1969. You've probably guessed it by now that I am referring to the internet. The great cloud of knowledge that we call the internet is precisely the mechanism that we will use to build the platform of Education 3.0. When the platform is finally in place, the decade to follow will see the greatest amount of wealth, discoveries and use of human potential that we have witnessed during our time on this earth. The only question that remains to be answered is the point at which I will leave this series of articles.

When will we allow the user to use the machine to its potential?

Stephen McClard has been the Director of Bands at Bolivar High School since 2002. Mr. McClard graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in 1990. He started his teaching career in Southeast Missouri before moving to Illinois where he taught band for 8 years.

Mr. McClard's bands have consistently received superior ratings at contest as well as many other awards and accolades. Since 2002, the band has traveled twice to Chicago, where they won 1st place class 4A and 1st place overall at the Midwest Music In the Parks Festival. The band also traveled to Cincinnati in 2006, receiving the same honors. In 2006, Mr. McClard was named by SBO Magazine as one of the 50 Directors Who Make a Difference. In 2006, 2008 and 2009, Bolivar RI School district was named one of the "Best 100 Communities for Music Education" in America by the American Music Conference. Mr. McClard was previously featured on the cover of the 2003 issue of SBO Magazine for his work with music technology.

In addition to his career in education, Mr. McClard maintains an online woodworking business and is a 3rd generation piano technician. His woodworking creations include custom bass guitars, which have sold all over the world and one-of-a-kind computer desks made from old pianos. His piano desks have been featured in magazines such as Business 2.0 and Piano Technicians Journal and in many other newspapers and television news features.

His first book, The Superior Educator, A Calm and Assertive Approach to Classroom Management and Large Group Motivation, is available on Amazon as well as other book outlets.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Future-of-Educational-Technology-and-Education-3.0&id=3639988] The Future of Educational Technology and Education 3.0

Why Teach Art?

2010-01-30T02:02:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lois_Dewitt]Lois Dewitt

Thinking Skills

An article written by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland for the Boston Globe in 2007 promotes creativity in learning: "There is, however, a very good reason to teach arts in schools, and it's not the one that arts supporters tend to fall back on. In a recent study of several art classes in Boston-area schools, we found that arts programs teach a specific set of thinking skills rarely addressed elsewhere in the curriculum - and that far from being irrelevant in a test-driven education system, arts education is becoming even more important as standardized tests like the MCAS exert a narrowing influence over what schools teach."

And why shouldn't they? Dr. Betty Edwards, best-selling author of "Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain," advocates the use of our right brain hemisphere and has written great coursework that reveals are inherent underdevelopment of this side of the brain. Most educational programs, established in the United States back in the 1800's, site a preference for left hemispherical instruction. Understandably, we were still essentially agricultural at the time, and steadily emerging to play a major part in the Industrial Revolution. Whatever music, drama and art instruction existed in the one room schoolhouse, soon migrated to larger and larger classrooms where the early technology of manufacturing in the New World was a bright glow on the future horizons of American young people.

Space Race

Into the 1900's, those artful programs diminished. The "Space Race" and Sputnik, launched an all-out emphasis on Science and Math learning and changed school curriculums forever. With the realization that America, in the 1980's and 1990's was fast become a service and technology oriented nation, our manufacturing industries diminished and a New Age of Technology changed the future glow for school children. Again, in public and private schools across the nation, the importance of that left hemisphere, so amply delineated by Dr. Betty Edwards as the time-counter, the data finder, the logician, the number-cruncher, the financier, the worker of charts and graphs would again dictate what our schools taught our youth.

Rich Creative Thinking

What we haven't quite figured out yet is that most scientific, mathematical, legal, financial positions require creativity and that great progress has been made in these areas by "thinking outside the box." For that matter, creative thinking enhances any part of our lives. How?

When we receive information, if we are basically trained in the American educational system, we process it as data, that is, it represents dates, times, charts, factors, elements that regulate our lives in monetary, fiduciary, fact-oriented ways. This is our perceptual reality. Indeed, the best trained to process this data have a good chance of doing well in our culture. Could creativity make us better? Yes, because, with the emphasis on just one hemisphere of our brain, we don't really have the whole picture. We are not cognitive to all of the options that our wonderful brains can render. Therefore, we are severely limited: economically, culturally, politically and spiritually.

The Total Brain

Developing our total brains, more the cerebral scenario of ancient Western culture, is still alive and well in many cultures today. But as the global economy spreads the word, educational patterns lean towards left hemisphere education. Will we ultimately inherit a global, lop-sided perspective, severely limiting our brain capacities in favor of the left and retarding the use of the right? In the future, will bear offspring that are limited that way?

Sci-Fi?

This prospect is dismal and hopefully, just science fiction. If we chose to, via cultural choices, cut off the very rich resources of the right side, are children and future children will inherit a two-dimensional world which stifles creativity, shuns invention and creative research, blocks poetry, the theatre, and artists endeavors and, ultimately, cuts off a very powerful resource. It could be that the world will suffer for our restrictions on creative thinking.

Here is my challenge. Learn your right side! You will become stronger, better equipped to deal with what the world has to offer and, if at first, you are uncomfortable, well, go ahead, jump into to the hot tub of creativity.

Lois's website offering free online art classes and many art resources, includes a gallery of her own paintings and pastels, as well as her videos demonstrating a wide variety of skills and techniques in the lessons: http://www.free-online-art-classes.com

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-Teach-Art?&id=3639891] Why Teach Art?

Technology in the Classroom - Six Easy, Inexpensive Ways to Use Technology in Your Curriculum

2010-01-17T12:03:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=James_Guilford]James Guilford

Educators worldwide have been issued the same challenge: integrate technology into your curriculum. Still, teachers are hard pressed to find concrete suggestions for using technology. Never fear. There are many ideas on this page. What follows are six easy ways to integrate tech into your curriculum. These suggestions will make your tech use organic to your classroom and user-friendly for you and your students.

1. Appoint an Expert. During readings and discussions, appoint a student as the class librarian. This student can use a computer to access online encyclopedias, dictionaries, author websites, and other references. As unknown references come up, have the librarian do quick research and then report back while the class moves forward. This is a great way to increase understanding without interrupting the flow of the class.

2. Add Commentary. Have students submit writing assignments to you as email attachments. Then, use the Comment function in Microsoft Word to post responses on student writing. Save each draft to create an electronic portfolio for each student. You can refer to this portfolio in parent conferences, specialist meetings, and student meetings. You can also use these comments to help with your progress report writing.

3. Go Over Their Heads. Use an overhead projector or an LCD projector instead of handouts. This is especially useful for pop quizzes, directions to activities, or short whole-group reading passages. Using an overhead projector instead of paper is a great start towards a greener classroom.

4. Refer to the Text. Use text messaging to send quick reminders. Imagine a text to students about important projects or homework assignments. Imagine a text to parents reminding them about permission slips or parent-teacher meetings. Texting is greener, quicker, and more reliable than paper notices.

5. Fan the Flames. Start a Facebook fan page. Use this page to post discussion questions and website links. This page can also be used to initiate conversations about books or current events related to themes and activities in your class.

6. Add Hype with Skype. Skype is an Internet service that offers free calling and video conferencing between computers. Imagine facilitating a discussion with students from a school across the country-or across the globe-about a novel or a current event. Many authors offer free or inexpensive online book chats. Use Skype to bring experts into the classroom without the hassle or expense of airfare, hotels, cabs, or other scheduling nightmares.

Integrating technology in the classroom need not be frustrating or gratuitous. Moreover, using technology does not require that you teach at a school with millions in endowment or Ivy-League-level resources. The above strategies will help you incorporate tech into your classroom in ways that are easy, valuable, and inexpensive.

ONLINE BOOK CHATS AND FREE ONLINE RESOURCES

James Guilford is the author of the young-adult novel, THE PENCIL TEST. Have an Online Book Chat (OBC) with James Guilford. With an Online Book Chat, you can easily integrate technology. Moreover, you can give your students an in-depth understanding of the novel, the writing process, and the life of a writer. Visit http://www.jamesguilford.com/speaking__workshops for more information. Find more free resources for parents, teachers, and home schools on the author's website.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Technology-in-the-Classroom---Six-Easy,-Inexpensive-Ways-to-Use-Technology-in-Your-Curriculum&id=3577453] Technology in the Classroom - Six Easy, Inexpensive Ways to Use Technology in Your Curriculum

How Do You Imagine Your Ideal School?

2010-01-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Zoltan_Cserei]Zoltan Cserei

Have you ever thought about why you are going to school? I mean, literally thought about it and not just the "damn, it's school time again" things:D Through our lifetime, we change our environment several times, we move house, change jobs, partners, and we do change school. These changes are always subject of hard decisions, and we all see the pros and cons of these, having an ideal of where we would like to end up. Let's talk about this. How do You imagine your ideal school?

Opinions vary. Some say that a school should present classic, sometimes inclement values; that a school should be a gauge for regularity, for precision set in stone. Others vote for a vibrant student life, full of parties and different events. From another point of view, some people prefer following the curriculum strictly and work hard for obtaining as good marks as possible, while others don't care as much about following the set out layout and rather engage in different activities. This is not just a question of the individual, the school is also responsible for providing its students with enough good opportunities. I consider myself lucky regarding my schooling so far: I have quite good academical results, and also like to participate in leisure time activities provided by our school and our youth council. I am proud to be able to learn where I do. Education is an important aspect of our lives, and no phase from kindergarten until university can be accentuated enough. There's no country in the world where the educational system doesn't receive heaps of critique, and just like the hundreds of journalists who don't have anything better to write about, I also have a strong opinion on how schooling should work, and what is not right. So, how do you imagine your ideal educational system? Let me share what I think. All the ideas may not apply to your country as well, because many things differ from country to country, however, I believe that most of what I'm going to say apply everywhere.

Freedom To Work On Your Own Projects

Everyone has to follow the curriculum to some measure, because a pinch of knowledge from every area is a great help in a deeper understanding of life. However, the value of the mastery of a given subject is unquestionable and insuperable. I believe that the knowledge acquired through everyday classes is enough to develop a very good skill in almost any given area. On the other hand, when you are given the choice libré to work on a subject that you really like, and you can dig deeper: now that's a totally different story. Last weekend one of my friends and I participated in a youth scientific research conference, where we presented our research about the causes and results of changes in tale telling habits and the negative side effects of violent cartoons. It was wonderful for me, even if I don't intend to become a sociologist or psychologist or anything similar (at the moment architecture seems the most compelling to me), it was still an experience full of new knowledge and ideas. I believe that anyone should be given the opportunity and also the support to be able to do serious research during school time (even before college).

Freedom To Learn According To Your Personality

We have specialized schools everywhere, art classes, social sciences, sciences of nature, information technology, and so on.. however, even if we have this choice to continue our studies in an environment tailored to our needs, some evident problems still arise. I'm talking about rating. It doesn't matter whether it's done using letters or numbers, percentage, or the devil knows what else, the result is always the same: students are classified and measured. How do you measure a man? I don't have the answer. But I don't think that if my thermodynamics test result is higher than my buddy's than he should feel like he is an inferior man. Okay, we are different, some are better regarding academic knowledge than others. However, the latter are not given a frigging chance of self-confidence, no one tells them that maybe their values are to be found elsewhere (everyone is valorous). I'm talking of the unmeasurable values: human kindness, self-sacrifice, imagination, practicality and so on. Some people excel at these areas of life, and these people are stigmatized as useless in school. We are different personalities, and deploy a whole range of different values. I'm not saying that anyone with a kind smile should be respected even if he or she has a strong belief regarding to equality of two plus two to five. I'm just saying that the focus should be rather put on learning and acquiring new ideas and becoming wiser in a way instead of creating a hierarchy of people according to their thermodynamics test.

We Need The Instinct To Learn

As a result of this wretched evaluation system, our instinct to learn new things has been largely eradicated. It would be great to have guidelines on what to read, in which direction to develop yourself, however, no one should be given so much compulsory reading that she doesn't have the time to read what she's interested in. Curiosity is among our biggest weapons. By overburdening ourselves, it might fade a little, thus lowering our appetite for fresh knowledge. I don't take compulsory tasks too seriously in school - I never did, and this is not an advice everyone should follow - but I try to always rank high on any activity (competitions, conferences, cultural events, etc.) that is outside of the rigid frames of robotic classes. What do you think, what is more important: to gate all the A++ marks and learn everything you're told to learn word by word, or to get active and climb the tree of knowledge, using the guides you were given in school.

Zoli Cserei is the author of [http://www.simplywilldo.com]Simply Will Do a thought-provoking blog about simplicity, productivity and greatness of life, providing useful tips and deep thoughts.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-Do-You-Imagine-Your-Ideal-School?&id=3488822] How Do You Imagine Your Ideal School?

Teaching Critical and Creative Thinking in a Global Education Setting

2010-01-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Cynthia_Stephenson]Cynthia Stephenson

I just finished reading A Critical Thinker's Guide to Educational Fads, which was published by The Foundation for Critical Thinking. In it the authors discuss the essential idea of various educational 'fads', proper educational uses and likely misuses of each. The fads range from school choice and Socratic questioning to integrated curriculum. Three of these fads stood out for me as important ideas that should be considered in more depth... and together as an educational strategy.

Critical Thinking

I believe critical thinking is the most important fad discussed, as it involves metacognition (thinking about thinking). When we think critically we reason, evaluate, judge and problem solve so that we produce the best thinking we can. When we think critically, we speak and listen with empathy, consider all viewpoints, think with an open mind, observe more carefully, persevere through a thought to an intelligent conclusion. Schools should teach critical thinking because this skill just might get us through any situation in life we might face.

I was not taught how to think critically in school... were you? We use critical thinking all throughout school (conducting science experiments, writing papers), but most of us are never specifically taught how and why it is important to think critically. We need to teach students this skill along with how to master test taking, how to develop good study habits and more. Most students muddle their way through and develop these skills and abilities on their own. Think of how much more successful they'd be if we'd just give them the right tools.

Educational Fads suggests the idea of teaching history as historical thinking, biology as biological thinking. Instead of memorizing our presidents, students should analyze presidencies in an historical context. Imagine the number of students who might be intrigued with science if it were taught this way. Our schools tend to teach in such a fragmented way that broad concepts are isolated instead of integrated into a larger perspective.

Citizens in today's global world need to know how to think critically in order to effectively communicate with and work alongside others from various walks of life. We must learn how to communicate with people who live in vastly different cultures where perspectives are different and backgrounds diverse.

Creative Thinking

Genuine creativity builds on critical thought, and as the authors of Educational Fads state, something is not creative simply because it is different. Creativity involves thinking 'outside the box' in order to solve a problem, create something new, do something differently than its been done before. Simply thinking creatively will only get us so far. Creative thinking must be combined with critical thinking to truly produce distinctive results.

Creativity sparks the imagination to think in unique ways to do things, to solve problems - even in interactions with others in non-conforming ways. Creativity and imagination allow us to fathom the concept of putting a man on the moon, connecting mankind through this thing called the internet, inventing silly shoes called Crocs.

Folk lore states that FedEx founder Fred Smith received a C on a term paper in which outlined the basis for his idea for FedEx. Smith describes his thoughts not as an eureka moment, but as a simple observation. He described his thought process in a 2007 interview:

"As society automated, as people began to put computers in banks to cancel checks - rather than clerks - or people began to put sophisticated electronics in airplanes - society and the manufacturers of that automated society were going to need a completely different logistics system." (From the May 6, 2007 blog posting: rel=nofollow [http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/interview-with-fedex-founder-fred-smith-yale-university/]Interview with FedEx Founder Fred Smith - Yale University)

Was Fred Smith taught how to think creatively and critically? If he wasn't, he was certainly doing it on his own. His idea began creatively, but was followed up with critical thinking in order to bring the idea to reality in a credible and viable way and it was thought out within a global perspective, and if it had not, FedEx might not be the company that it is today - or even exist at all. This is the kind of creative thinking which is combined with critical thinking that our schools must teach our students how to do. Instead of giving them a problem to solve that may have an obvious solution, we must challenge them to combine critical and creative thinking to seek new pathways to a solution or to a solution itself that would not have been reached otherwise, as Mr. Smith did - as so many innovators do.

Global Education

Educational Fads describes global education as curriculum designed through a global perspective. In our increasingly diverse culture which resides in an increasingly open global community, global education is crucial for this and every future generation to participate in - in an age of nuclear capability, growing terrorism and an ever-increasing pool of diverse perspectives that have a voice in the global community.

Our schools serve as a microcosm of the larger world, and educators must prepare our children beginning at an early age to not only accept but embrace everyone's differences - their differences in appearance, in thought, religion, ethnicity, background, and more. We must teach students to think beyond their classroom, beyond their community, instilling in them a global perspective from which to learn new concepts and ideas, new perspectives, new ways of considering the various aspects of the world.

We in the United States live at a physical disadvantage to most of the world, as we are separated by many miles and have developed preconceived notions about the world which in many cases are incorrect or flawed, due in part to our lack of critical thinking and to large degree due to our physical, emotional and intellectual separation from the rest of the world's population. As the world grows closer because of technological advances that allow us to video conference with people globally with the touch of a button, purchase products from the remotest corners of the world with the click of a mouse, everyone must check their egos at the door; fairly address viewpoints with which we disagree; and empathize with others' insights, perspectives and knowledge.

If educators worldwide embraced the idea of teaching critical and creative thinking in a global education setting, future generations would learn the importance of diversity, empathy and fair-mindedness - allowing us as educated citizens of the world to think about our world, those who are in it, and the problems we face as a shared civilization.

Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cynthia Stephenson brings 20 years of sales and marketing experience to her writing which has included corporate marketing materials, websites, blogs and more. Stephenson received her BA in Journalism in 1989 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and began her career as a graphic designer and editorial assistant for Northwestern University the following year. As a marketing communications professional, she believes that writing should be concise, persuasive and ultimately results-oriented, leading the reader to take action. Whether you need a sales calling script, a press release, or an outline for an online video, her writing style is sure to match your needs, as she understands how to write to her audience, whoever they are. http://www.c3stephenson.com

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Teaching-Critical-and-Creative-Thinking-in-a-Global-Education-Setting&id=3208812] Teaching Critical and Creative Thinking in a Global Education Setting

Musim Award

2010-01-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

musim2 award (bukanlah,,hanya karena barusan aja ol yang lama gini kan..)..
kali ini dari jagania karomu utk jadikan award backlink...sebenarnya sich ada 2 award dalam 2 waktu yang berbeda, tp kita cek dulu ya award pertama supya kesannya ga serakah gitu...
award ini adalah award backlink yang dimana jika teman2 yang menerima awards ini harus meneruskan pada blogger yang lain sehingga blogs kita akan menerima banyak backlink...
apa aturannya dunk??
Tenang dulu ya...
Saya pengen membagikan awards kedua saya ini utk 10 teman saya di dunia maya yakni :
asepsupr , Priagung Pamuji , Mas tariq , Medbook, Richie , Jeda Sejenak , Amatullah, al basri , jatger , bunda

Tugas teman2 yang mendapatkan award adalah : eng ing eng dapat tugas nech
maaf yah, terpaksa copas, panjang kalo dikata2in sendiri...hehe..dasar...

agi siapa saja yang menerima award ini diharuskan untuk membagikan kembali award ini kepada sepuluh orang temannya. Dan selanjutnya si penerima award harus meletakkan link-link berikut ini di blog atau artikel kamu :

1. omtami

2. blognyaipank

3. blognyaipank

4. avancalinux

5. designofpassion

6. deogracias86

7. Akhi Rido Wahyudi

8. Hana Mugiasih

9. jaganiakaromu

10. nuansa pendidikan

Aturannya begini :
sebelum kamu meletakkan link di atas, kamu harus menghapus peserta nomor 1 dari daftar. Sehingga semua peserta naik 1 level. Yang tadi nomor 2 jadi nomor 1, nomor 3 jadi 2, dst. Kemudian masukkan link kamu sendiri di bagian paling bawah (nomor 10). Tapi ingat ya, kalian semua harus fair dalam menjalankannya. Jika tiap penerima award mampu memberikan award ini kepada 5 orang saja dan mereka semua mengerjakannya , maka jumlah backlink yang akan didapat adalah

Ketika posisi kamu 10, jumlah backlink = 1
Posisi 9, jml backlink = 5
Posisi 8, jml backlink = 25
Posisi 7, jml backlink = 125
Posisi 6, jml backlink = 625
Posisi 5, jml backlink = 3,125
Posisi 4, jml backlink = 15,625
Posisi 3, jml backlink = 78,125
Posisi 2, jml backlink = 390,625
Posisi 1, jml backlink = 1,953,125

Dan semuanya menggunakan kata kunci yang kamu inginkan. Dari sisi SEO kamu sudah mendapatkan 1,953,125 backlink dan efek sampingnya jika pengunjung web para downline kamu mengklik link itu, kamu juga mendapatkan trafik tambahan.
Nah, silahkan copy paste saja, dan hilangkan peserta nomor 1 lalu tambahkan link blog/website kamu di posisi 10. Ingat, kamu harus mulai dari posisi 10 agar hasilnya maksimal. Karena jika kamu tiba2 di posisi 1, maka link kamu akan hilang begitu ada yang masuk ke posisi 10.”

Selamat mengambil award-nya, sobat. Tetap jalin silaturrahim kepada para blogger agar blog sobat cepat naik trafik pengunjungnya. Selamat kepada para sahabat blogger yg mendapat award.
Dikutip dari Jaganiakaromu.blogspot.com

Technology in Schools is of Ultimate Importance

2009-12-30T15:51:00.001-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Henry_Jeon]Henry Jeon

Technology has changed the lives of all human beings. It has brought revolution to the way we communicate and the way we carry on with our work. With time, nearly all working sectors functioning on this earth are influenced with technology. Technology has made many things possible that weren't thought possible before for instance taking a trip to the moon or exploring the depths of the sea. Millions daily are reaping profits on technology. However, one sector that is lacking behind in the use of technology are the educational institutes and the schools curriculums.

Today the world is the world of technology. A child ever since is born is exposed to technology from saga games to remote controlled cars and internet games to iPods and MP3 players. The truth is that children are growing up in world that is very different from the world parents or grandparents grew in. they get excited by technology and are motivated by technology. This aspect is however ignored by those who make the school curriculums. They do not pay much attention to introducing technology in the subjects. As a result the subjects are much deprived of one thing kids are truly fond of: technology. Children find the subjects boring, devoid of any interesting and challenging and thus lose interest in their studies.

Research has shown that technology creates many useful impacts on the students. Firstly, it prepares the students for the realistic world outside the classroom. When the students go into professional life they are not dumbfounded at looking at the technology, rather they are prepared as they know how to use it and make the best use out of it. They display impressive traits by making proper and effective use of the technology, thus success comes easy to them.

Technology opens many doors for the students. The first major thing it does is that it generates extreme interest of the students. The forums present online for the students, motivate them to discuss their subjects with the other forum members and get rid of any confusions regarding the subject. There are also forums and discussion boards that promote student teacher coordination. The teacher can leave her lectures or notes on the website and give her students access to it, or even give them online tutoring during the examination days when school is closed.

Students should be taught to make proper uses of the resources available online so that they can make better assignments or gather useful material for their exams. They should also be taught how to solve problems online and how to make creative strategies, this is definitely help them in the future life.

Of course, schools are always limited in budget and they cannot blindly introduce all kinds of technology in the school, as technology needs constant upgrading and maintenance which is costly. As an effective step, the school administration should start with one technology at a time. When benefits start reaping from that particular technology they should move to the next one.

Technology in schools is of ultimate importance, but the school administration should be careful to not to expose anything harmful to the students. Special care should be taken on the kind of websites students have access to in the school.

Henry has been writing articles for nearly 3 years. His newest interest is in the Shure SM57 microphone. So check out his latest website that discusses deals and information on the [http://microphonesforrecording.com/shure-sm57-microphone]Shure SM57 microphone, as well as other [http://microphonesforrecording.com]microphones for recording, so you can make the best choice for your recording technology needs.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Technology-in-Schools-is-of-Ultimate-Importance&id=3498286] Technology in Schools is of Ultimate Importance

How to Get Your Teens Ready to Learn What Other Teens Could Not Until They Entered College

2009-12-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jim_Chan]Jim Chan

Truly, madly, deeply, you want your children to learn and to prosper in this finance-driven competition-heavy society. Many parents dream the same all over the United State, seeking to give their children the best education they could afford before they go independent. What many parents could not dream of is, how? How is it possible to get my kids to actually learn to achieve their dreams? How is it possible to show my kids the materials they will be learning if they want to be a biologist? over 80% of college students in the United State could not decide on their future careers, after realizing that the course materials for their dream career are way too complicated or boring for them. And worse, our Junior and Middle Schools hardly provide any materials essential to our kids' future success in life. Interest in your career is important, but comprehending the course material is equally as crucial. That is why learning about your career materials in detail before you enter college is essential so that you will not be wasting time in college trying to find a major suitable to both your interest and comprehension.

"What in the world should I do to get my kids interested in learning about college course materials? I don't have the money to pay thousands of dollars for tutors or courses!"

Frankly speaking, no average American family can afford private tutors or courses for that matter. In fact, buying textbooks alone would have cost you $300 per textbook. If one buys from nearby college bookstores, they still charge you 90% of a new textbook if you buy the used ones. Overall, getting your kids to learn about what they are interested in could be a challenge. After all, you will need to buy a few textbooks from all kinds of majors for your teens in order for them to choose the one major that he/she believes to be most interesting and understandable. I, for one, never buys from any college textbook stores, yet I have a large collection of textbooks used by many top private and public universities. Some of these books include materials about microeconomics, management science, statistics, business, thermal dynamics, advanced calculus math, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, biochemistry, electrical circuits, physics, genetics, mammalian physiology, etc. Learning from these books, teens will be more ready to enter college with a major they like and be more motivated to achieve good grades after they already possess a fundamental knowledge of the materials.

Buying these textbooks used to be my biggest challenge that I ever faced in my life. The expenses were just too great until I found this website that sells the same textbooks college students are using now with a discount of 50-80% off all year long. This may be a little cliche, but I seriously couldn't believe what I was seeing, books that sell for $300, only sell for $90 on that website. The books are well-kept and without much damage when I receive them. Amazing shipping time!! I love to see what I bought as soon as possible, and this website did just that. Any parents who feel the urge to save some big money, please read more at: http://moneysaverbookdruggie.blogspot.com/

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Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Get-Your-Teens-Ready-to-Learn-What-Other-Teens-Could-Not-Until-They-Entered-College&id=3394618] How to Get Your Teens Ready to Learn What Other Teens Could Not Until They Entered College

Teaching Critical and Creative Thinking in a Global Education Setting

2009-12-15T18:45:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Cynthia_Stephenson]Cynthia Stephenson

I just finished reading A Critical Thinker's Guide to Educational Fads, which was published by The Foundation for Critical Thinking. In it the authors discuss the essential idea of various educational 'fads', proper educational uses and likely misuses of each. The fads range from school choice and Socratic questioning to integrated curriculum. Three of these fads stood out for me as important ideas that should be considered in more depth... and together as an educational strategy.

Critical Thinking

I believe critical thinking is the most important fad discussed, as it involves metacognition (thinking about thinking). When we think critically we reason, evaluate, judge and problem solve so that we produce the best thinking we can. When we think critically, we speak and listen with empathy, consider all viewpoints, think with an open mind, observe more carefully, persevere through a thought to an intelligent conclusion. Schools should teach critical thinking because this skill just might get us through any situation in life we might face.

I was not taught how to think critically in school... were you? We use critical thinking all throughout school (conducting science experiments, writing papers), but most of us are never specifically taught how and why it is important to think critically. We need to teach students this skill along with how to master test taking, how to develop good study habits and more. Most students muddle their way through and develop these skills and abilities on their own. Think of how much more successful they'd be if we'd just give them the right tools.

Educational Fads suggests the idea of teaching history as historical thinking, biology as biological thinking. Instead of memorizing our presidents, students should analyze presidencies in an historical context. Imagine the number of students who might be intrigued with science if it were taught this way. Our schools tend to teach in such a fragmented way that broad concepts are isolated instead of integrated into a larger perspective.

Citizens in today's global world need to know how to think critically in order to effectively communicate with and work alongside others from various walks of life. We must learn how to communicate with people who live in vastly different cultures where perspectives are different and backgrounds diverse.

Creative Thinking

Genuine creativity builds on critical thought, and as the authors of Educational Fads state, something is not creative simply because it is different. Creativity involves thinking 'outside the box' in order to solve a problem, create something new, do something differently than its been done before. Simply thinking creatively will only get us so far. Creative thinking must be combined with critical thinking to truly produce distinctive results.

Creativity sparks the imagination to think in unique ways to do things, to solve problems - even in interactions with others in non-conforming ways. Creativity and imagination allow us to fathom the concept of putting a man on the moon, connecting mankind through this thing called the internet, inventing silly shoes called Crocs.

Folk lore states that FedEx founder Fred Smith received a C on a term paper in which outlined the basis for his idea for FedEx. Smith describes his thoughts not as an eureka moment, but as a simple observation. He described his thought process in a 2007 interview:

"As society automated, as people began to put computers in banks to cancel checks - rather than clerks - or people began to put sophisticated electronics in airplanes - society and the manufacturers of that automated society were going to need a completely different logistics system." (From the May 6, 2007 blog posting: rel=nofollow [http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/
interview-with-fedex-founder-fred-smith-yale-university/]Interview with FedEx Founder Fred Smith - Yale University)

Was Fred Smith taught how to think creatively and critically? If he wasn't, he was certainly doing it on his own. His idea began creatively, but was followed up with critical thinking in order to bring the idea to reality in a credible and viable way and it was thought out within a global perspective, and if it had not, FedEx might not be the company that it is today - or even exist at all. This is the kind of creative thinking which is combined with critical thinking that our schools must teach our students how to do. Instead of giving them a problem to solve that may have an obvious solution, we must challenge them to combine critical and creative thinking to seek new pathways to a solution or to a solution itself that would not have been reached otherwise, as Mr. Smith did - as so many innovators do.

Global Education

Educational Fads describes global education as curriculum designed through a global perspective. In our increasingly diverse culture which resides in an increasingly open global community, global education is crucial for this and every future generation to participate in - in an age of nuclear capability, growing terrorism and an ever-increasing pool of diverse perspectives that have a voice in the global community.

Our schools serve as a microcosm of the larger world, and educators must prepare our children beginning at an early age to not only accept but embrace everyone's differences - their differences in appearance, in thought, religion, ethnicity, background, and more. We must teach students to think beyond their classroom, beyond their community, instilling in them a global perspective from which to learn new concepts and ideas, new perspectives, new ways of considering the various aspects of the world.

We in the United States live at a physical disadvantage to most of the world, as we are separated by many miles and have developed preconceived notions about the world which in many cases are incorrect or flawed, due in part to our lack of critical thinking and to large degree due to our physical, emotional and intellectual separation from the rest of the world's population. As the world grows closer because of technological advances that allow us to video conference with people globally with the touch of a button, purchase products from the remotest corners of the world with the click of a mouse, everyone must check their egos at the door; fairly address viewpoints with which we disagree; and empathize with others' insights, perspectives and knowledge.

If educators worldwide embraced the idea of teaching critical and creative thinking in a global education setting, future generations would learn the importance of diversity, empathy and fair-mindedness - allowing us as educated citizens of the world to think about our world, those who are in it, and the problems we face as a shared civilization.

Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cynthia Stephenson brings 20 years of sales and marketing experience to her writing which has included corporate marketing materials, websites, blogs and more. Stephenson received her BA in Journalism in 1989 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and began her career as a graphic designer and editorial assistant for Northwestern University the following year. As a marketing communications professional, she believes that writing should be concise, persuasive and ultimately results-oriented, leading the reader to take action. Whether you need a sales calling script, a press release, or an outline for an online video, her writing style is sure to match your needs, as she understands how to write to her audience, whoever they are.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cynthia_Stephenson http://EzineArticles.com/?Teaching-Critical-and-Creative-Thinking-in-a-Global-Education-Setting&id=3208812

5 Creative Ways to Decorate Your Classroom Bulletin Board This Winter

2009-12-13T04:24:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Dobson]Jennifer Dobson

Back to school, fall leaves, Thanksgiving and Christmas all easily lend themselves to great decorating themes, but what to do when those are over and spring is months away? Invigorate your classroom this winter in color and pizzazz with some simple and quick designs. Use the five ideas below to get you started on your winter bulletin board planning.

You Are Unique

Students are unique. Each child comes with a wonderful personality, personal interests, goals and ideas. Why not highlight the differences in a positive way on a winter snowflake bulletin board. Allow each child to cut out snowflakes while tying in a quick science lesson on how snow forms, what it is made from, and some interesting snowfall facts. After the snowflakes are cut, have the children write unique things about themselves on the cut-outs. Integrate a lesson on adjectives by having them only write descriptive words about themselves. Glitter, sparkles or tissue paper squares may help to liven up a light blue background before the snowflakes are hung.

Who is Hibernating?

Bulletin boards can also be teaching tools, so why not incorporate science into a winter bulletin board titled, "Who is Hibernating?" Using a list of animals that hibernate in the winter, cutout or draw them in their winter nook. If an interactive bulletin board is needed, place the animal on one side of the board labeled with numbers and the winter hibernating location (i.e. - nest, cave, hole in a tree, etc.) on the other side. Use clear pockets and small number cards that correspond to the animals for the children to match the animal to the correct hide away.

Acceptance Starts With Me

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday falls mid-January and there is always talk of equality and diversity around this time. With a bulletin board background of stark white paper place traced and cut-out hand prints of all colors all over the board. Have students trace and cut out both of their hands on colored construction paper. On the hands the students can write, "Acceptance Starts With Me," "Tolerance Begins Here," or another appropriate slogan to address the issue of accepting diversity. Not only does the bulletin board teach a lesson about tolerance and acceptance, it also opens up the discussion about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life and purpose.

100 Days

Typically, the 100th day of school falls during the winter months. This celebration of the power of ten provides a rich opportunity to integrate math into the classroom bulletin board. Displaying sets of 100 items like gumdrops, Popsicle sticks, pencils or erasers make for a quick visual lesson. It is also a simple and potentially colorful bulletin board opportunity.

Have a Heart

Nothing says Valentine's Day like a heart, but this year make the heart more significant by creating a bulletin board of an actual heart. This teaching board will help with lessons on circulation, exercise and general health. To tie it in with the holiday, have students write and post things that they love about their heart on paper heart cutouts.

Bulletin boards are a fantastic way to reach students with a quick visual impact. They give teachers an opportunity to highlight the uniqueness of their class and teach important lessons in a non-obtrusive way. Be creative with bulletin boards and do not be afraid to work outside the borders.

Jennifer Dobson invites you to take a look at MPM School Supplies. It's a great site where you will find all kinds of [http://www.mpmschoolsupplies.com]teacher supplies, resource books, classroom decorations, [http://www.mpmschoolsupplies.com/c-37-school-furniture.aspx]school furniture, classroom rugs, educational toys, and much more. The best part is by shopping at MPM School Supplies you are helping children in need all around the world because 50% of the gross profits are donated to children's charities!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Dobson http://EzineArticles.com/?5-Creative-Ways-to-Decorate-Your-Classroom-Bulletin-Board-This-Winter&id=3395843

3 Ways to Avoid Teacher Burnout

2009-12-13T04:16:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jurinsthea_Smith]Jurinsthea Smith

For long time and new teachers, how to avoid teacher burnout is perhaps the top thought that they always want to solve. But with pressure, stress and routine activities in school, a majority of our teachers are left tired, uninspired and unenthusiastic even before they start their working day. This is actually a taboo that not all teachers are willing to discuss and share.

You might not know it, but you might actually be experiencing teacher burnout already. Common burnout signs that lead to such a scenario are anticipating the end of the day, the next weekend or the next probable vacation. In addition, diminished work interest, an unfinished work load and worst - quitting the said profession can occur. Little do we know that every teacher around the world is experiencing this in certain moments of their life. We may deny it but the signs are telling otherwise.

If you have been secretly experiencing this, do not fear. There are different ways to avoid teacher burnout. Try these tips and for sure it can drastically change your current state and can give great improvements towards your attitude and profession outlook.

Tip #1: Do not hesitate to ask for help. This is the hardest yet the most effective strategy to overcome teacher burnout. It is best to talk with your fellow teachers who might experience the same mixed with some colleagues who have overcome it. Manage to be open and vocal about your current situation. If you are not comfortable talking this with someone, an immediate family member can be an alternative. Share this with your loved ones like your spouse or your parent. I am pretty sure they can give you tips and ideas on how to avoid such a stressful black hole. They might even give you a hug or a kiss that can give you a quick mental boost!

Tip #2: Reserve some free time for yourself. When I say give time for yourself, it is a time away from your classroom and from the school. This can be a time that you can use to pamper yourself with the things you enjoy most. You can head up to your favourite spa or parlor and have that awaited massage, or better yet, try on a new hairdo. You can also invest this time towards a little hobby of yours. Furthermore, this can be a time for your family and friends. Stop yourself from thinking on your profession at this current state. And when you head back you will feel pretty refresh and renewed.

Tip #3: Know the reason behind your profession. New teachers are really the ones that have that enthusiastic atmosphere when they set foot in their rooms. But the longer they stay, the more dragging it will be, thereby leading to teacher burnouts. Thus, reconsider and rethink why you teach in the first place. This can rekindle the spark that you once had and can mean a great change to your current state of mind. Teaching is a noble profession. Look at it this way and you will definitely jump start a new day ahead.

There are actually more tips that you might want to add up to the initial three. But nonetheless, following the stated strategies can bring a whole new positive difference to you and your profession. Thus, avoid teacher burnouts by simply following it and for sure that certain grace a teacher must have will be evident next time you come to class.

Seeking for ways on how to [http://www.teachersbusiness.com/avoid-teacher-burnout]avoid teacher burnout? Don't hesitate to click http://www.teachersbusiness.com for tips on how to overcome such a dilemma.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jurinsthea_Smith http://EzineArticles.com/?3-Ways-to-Avoid-Teacher-Burnout&id=3410239

Teleclasses - A New Century - A Unique Way of Learning

2009-12-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Rick_Sherrell]Rick Sherrell

If you think continuing education, or lifelong learning, is important to the success of your business, then you need to think about how much time you, or your staff members, spend on attending a traditional class or seminar. First you've got to get into your car and drive to wherever the meeting is, wasting precious hours in traffic. And being on time just isn't enough! You'd better arrive early so you can get a good parking spot, register, and get a halfway decent seat. Then you can twiddle your thumbs or reread the agenda five or six times while you sit there and wait for the course to begin. And when it's over you've got to walk back to your car, despite inclement weather, and drive back to your office. So, now you've spent three or more hours of your busy day to attend a one-hour class.

Whether it's making the leap from employee to entrepreneurship and starting your own business, excelling in your current career, seeking a better job, motivating your staff or managing your time and money -- there is a way to gain access to personal and professional knowledge, camaraderie, and one-to-one interaction simply by using your telephone. Teleclasses are a great way to effect positive change in your life. Telecommunication is the buzzword - and virtual classrooms, teleclasses, tele-seminars, tele-learning or conference call classes are the wave of the future!

Teleclasses are offered on a wide range of business and personal development topics and are an exciting, innovative way to attain valuable information, explore new ideas and gain new skills. You can examine your spirituality, inspire your life through the arts, learn a craft, dialogue on best places to travel, learn to create better relationships, learn to eat better or exercise to improve your health and fitness, or just simply have fun.

A teleclass is much like a regular class - except it brings the classroom to your doorstep! The technology is as simple as punching the digits on a telephone and the returns are immense! You simply dial into the conference call at a designated time; announce yourself to the other class participants, and the program begins. The facilitator/teacher makes a presentation and there are usually questions and comments, followed by a lively and robust exchange of ideas. A major perk is that most teleclasses are offered at a variety of times and dates, allowing you to schedule them at your convenience.

Usually one-hour in length, and fully interactive, teleclasses can be accessed from your desk, your home, your car, a pay phone or even your hotel room. Best of all, the cost is significantly less than a traditional class or seminar when you consider travel and time; making tele-learning an extremely affordable knowledge tool. Teleclasses offer positive and essential education, using technology as a tool for communication with strong and consistently positive results. And when the program ends, you hang up the phone. And guess what, your one-hour class took exactly one hour!

One distinct advantage is that you can interact with other people that have different ability levels, skills and backgrounds, who can be from almost anywhere in the country or the world. You can take a class just for yourself or you can set up a teleclass that everybody in your company can take simultaneously. The groups are usually small, 20 or less, so everyone gets individual attention through instruction that is both topical and focused.

Teleclasses are a hassle-free, money saving alternative to traditional "in person" seminars and classes. NO Travel - NO Parking fees and you get cutting-edge, innovative and customized learning in an informal setting with a select group of people who, like you, want to take command of their learning experience and aren't afraid to take risks to increase their knowledge base and accelerate their development! So the next time you contemplate taking a seminar or a class to improve your business, personal or interpersonal skills -- you might want to make it a teleclass.

Rick Sherréll is the founder of Pro Speakers Bureau ( http://www.ProSpeakersBureau.com), an Atlanta-based agency that delivers high-quality speakers, trainers and subject matter experts as well as a variety of teleclasses, seminars and special events.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rick_Sherrell http://EzineArticles.com/?Teleclasses---A-New-Century---A-Unique-Way-of-Learning&id=73312

Give Us More Choice For Education

2009-12-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Russell_Hamel]Russell Hamel

Isn't More Better?

Students are writing more these days, with blogging, online chats and text messages taking up more time than their traditional homework. You would think educators should be happy. More is better; practice makes perfect, right?

As a private music teacher for the past 37 years, I have seen the effectual difference between students who are forced to learn a particular curriculum in order to pass examination requirements versus students who play strictly for enjoyment. The latter group plays more... far more, and they play better because they play more.

I observed that parents who insisted on pushing and dragging their children through a strictly classical approach in order to get a certificate ended up with a child who merely tolerated the 'torture'. These students literally counted down the days to when they could quit. Only weeks after passing their final exams, they couldn't remember how to play a single song.

Wake Up, It's 2009

Parents, teachers, administrators, and staunch supporters of traditional schools need to take note. The internet and cel phone have changed the way we communicate forever. People are writing more than ever, creating and sharing more information than ever before, not because they have to, but because they want to.

Yet, traditional systems argue that without formal training in 'good' writing and literature, students will suffer. The question is, who gets to decide what's 'good'?

In music, Bach laid the foundation for western music as we know it today. But Mozart came along and added to that foundation. His music was pretty good, too. Later came Beethoven who revolutionized classical music with his bold and daring changes. He was criticized and even cursed by the music afficionados of the day. Now however, we consider Beethoven's music to be 'good'.

Name the discipline, whether it be art or science, and you'll find that all throughout history, the associated governing boards for each particular field resisted mightily before change eventually was embraced. Imagine what would have happened if such notable 20th authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Mitchell, James Joyce, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley and countless others writers we revere were confined to write strictly in the style of Shakespeare.

It's the Education System That Must Change

Today in the news, U.S. President Obama is under criticism for supporting the Charter School in Education movement. For varying reasons, communities are rallying parents, teachers and school in education administrators to start charter schools in their area. They see the current public school system as inadequate and inflexible, leaving them with no choice other than to break away.

Paradoxically, this wasn't the intention at all for Dr. Ray Budde, credited with coining the term, 'Charter School'. His vision was to implement change in the current school of education system. His many disciples agreed but simply were unwilling to wait through all the bureaucracy and red tape necessary to implement change.

Arguments abound that without certain standards and structures of well-established institutions, we will surely produce a generation of illiterates incapable of functioning in society. Yes, today's writing style employs a seemingly different language, with chat room and text-speak abbreviations and emoticons becoming more pervasive.

Note to Schools - Resistance is Futile

These however should be seen as options - tools, if you will - no more different than the choices available to artists to use pointillism, cubism or expressionism. Schools must let go of the idea that their way is the better way, or as they more often think, the only way.

The internet has indeed opened many doors for the next generation to express themselves. More and more, young people are gaining notoriety and even outright fame for their blogs and social media participation.

Educators take note - the next generation is already communicating through writing more than ever before. And they are advancing rapidly in spite of all the attempts to push and drag them through traditional methods.

I applaud President Obama for bringing the need for sweeping, radical changes throughout the school systems to public awareness. I admire the courage of the charter school parents, teachers and administrators for re-shaping the education landscape.

However, with or without the debate and ensuing struggle, dramatic change is taking place and will continue to do so as it always has for millennia. Indeed, resistance is futile.

The world can seem like a crazy place sometimes...

OK, a LOT of the time!

However, no matter what is going on in your life, magic happens when you learn how to choose better feelings now! [http://lovethatfeeling.com/blog/give-us-more-choice-for-schools-in-education/]You're Gonna Love That Feeling

All the best from Toronto

Russ Hamel

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Russell_Hamel http://EzineArticles.com/?Give-Us-More-Choice-For-Education&id=3328200

Teaching Effectively With School Videos

2009-11-27T20:12:00.000-08:00

School videos have the unique ability to introduce new individuals, resources, experiences and locations into the classroom in such a way that can engage your students like no other medium can. The strength of visuals and audio will appeal to both your learners that rely on these sensory aspects. When you incorporate activities that are hands-on, the use of video will engage your learners that are kinesthetic.

Whether the video is used to expose students to a lesson or concept, reinforce content that has already been learned, or to enhance or extend the content, you can consider video and its use as a process that includes four aspects. When you implement these aspects in this order, you can deliver a better experience for your students and create an environment where they will learn something, too!

Step 1: The Temptation
Teachers often use school videos to merely tempt the student into wanting to learn more. This type of video is generally a short piece that is typically no longer than roughly 15 minutes. It will often represent a new concept in such a way that it makes students asking to learn additional information about the specific topic.

Step 2: The Main Event
When it is used as the primary tool within the lesson, the video offers all or most of the critical information that is needed to be covered to learn a particular objective. Even if the video is long enough and includes enough information to cover the topic, it should not be used without additional activities. You should always incorporate the video into discussions, questioning, hands-on activities or writing activities.

Step 3: The Extras
The video does not always have to be used to tempt students or to cover the entire lesson. It can be used as something a little bonus to enhance the lesson that is delivered in the traditional method. This step allows you to provide a new perspective that is then reinforced with a key concept.

Step 4: The Finish
You can also use a video to complete a lesson. One method for doing this is once you finish reading a book, students might enjoy watching the video of the book and comparing how the video version is either similar or quite different from the book version. This encourages reinforcement of the lesson while also providing an environment where students think beyond the lesson itself.

Video as a Tool
Keep in mind that school videos are designed to be tools to help enhance the lesson, not as a replacement for the lesson. To ensure you accomplish this goal, manipulate the medium by "directing" the experience. Pause the video to discuss what your students have just seen, introduce a new concept in a hands-on exercise or ask questions so students can guess what is going to happen next.

You can also mute the sound to have students apply their own or turn off the picture so your students can use the sound to create their own imagery. Both methods can be effective for creating an environment where students must think beyond the information in the video and apply abstract thinking to determine how the concepts fit into their world. It sounds much more complicated than it is and a little bit of planning can help you to make the most of the use of school videos in your classroom.

The most valuable and affordable resource for enhancing your classroom lessons is still educational videos and educational DVDs. So make sure you're using video the right way and see immediate benefits in your students' engagement, retention and test performance by downloading and watching "The 7 Biggest Mistakes Teachers Make Using Video in the Classroom" right NOW!

The small company, SchoolVideos.com, I work for is committed to creating quality educational videos for classroom instruction. From the earliest script stages, all subject area content, images, and music are intensely reviewed and selected for meeting appropriate grade level, curriculum objectives and standards for our proprietary productions. The videos we distribute are also screened to meet our high standards.

Teachers in the 21st century classroom will be better educators if they understand how to use multi media in their lessons, if they understand the processes that research has shown to be the most effective for improved student performance, and if they know how to find quality video resources that will enhance their lessons.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kimberly_Stohlman

The Advantages of Recording Lectures

2009-11-22T23:48:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=J_Finnis]J Finnis

The formal lecture has long been at the heart of university education. Large numbers of students form the audience while the professor holds center stage imparting his/her wisdom. That lectures have remained for so long as a major method of education is testament to their effectiveness, however, the traditional lecture does have certain disadvantages.

The typical human concentration span is reckoned to be around 15 minutes. After this time the audience's minds are likely to be on many things other than the topic at hand. That lectures are usually passive experiences doesn't help the concentration problem. The lecturer's personality also affects audience attention. Lecturers are generally selected for their expertise rather than their engaging delivery.

Lectures often provide a barrage of facts. The nature of the medium cannot provide sufficient time for reflection, and even the most alert student will be unable to absorb or understand everything first time around. Everyone gets the same lecture, regardless of aptitude, prior familiarity with the subject or whatever. For some it may be too easy, for others impossibly difficult. Lectures are generally one-off events, a student can miss a presentation through numerous reasons eg illness, traffic delays etc.

Many institutions are now investing in lecture recording technology, such as Echo360. This technology is being used to capture curriculum lectures as well as one-off seminars and guest lecturers. Recording may happen routinely, or on an ad HOC basis. Current lecture recording technology enables recording to be scheduled automatically according to the institutional timetable and on completion to be sent to a server, processed, and made available for viewing within an hour or so. Where lecture recording technology is installed its use is likely to become routine, or at least the default option, for all lectures.

Students have the opportunity to review lectures whenever and however they choose, and can often gain something new from each subsequent viewing. The institution can also leverage lectures, eg making the material available to distance learners, who in turn benefit from content that is significantly more engaging than ink on paper (or text on screen). This begs the question of whether there is a continuing role for the traditional lecture, or could faculty simply spend a few hours in front of a video camera recording their classes for the whole year (or for many years where subject matter doesn't change)?

I would suggest traditional lectures will be around for a long time to come. Recorded music has been around for many years and yet people still flock to live performances. For many the experience of sitting in a lecture theater listening to a live speaker will have a greater impact than watching a re-run on a computer screen. There is also the opportunity to raise one's hand and obtain instant clarification on a point of confusion. The audience also affects the presentation in more subtle ways. A good lecturer always has their antennae open for audience reaction, and will adjust their delivery accordingly, eg giving a more detailed explanation to material met with blank expressions.

Johnny runs [http://edtech.twinisles.com]Educational Technology Insight for Educators and Technologists providing an introduction to the philosophy and technology of e-learning. Johnny is available for educational technology consultancy at [info@twinisles.com]info@twinisles.com

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Career Spotlight - Adult Education Teacher

2009-11-11T22:57:00.000-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Erik_R_Johnson]Erik R Johnson

Adult education basically consists of self-enrichment, adult literacy, remedial education, and GED instructors. Individual working as an adult educator may work for state and local governments, providing basic education at juvenile detention and corrections institutions. From week-long self-enrichment workshops to year-long certification courses, adult education teachers primarily offer a variety of class types and schedules. In addition to this, these days many adult educators work for job training facilities; nonprofit, religious, and social service organizations; and residential care facilities.

In terms of job responsibilities of adult education teacher, it basically revolves around providing reading and writing instruction to adults, including high school dropouts or those immigrants who are in need to have better literacy skills. In addition to this, an adult educator may also require to provide instruction in a wide variety of subjects. There are many who teach a series of classes and provide or educate about useful life skills, like cooking, time management or personal finance.

Adding to this, at times adult education teachers may even require assisting students in acquiring successful study skills and the self-confidence. They may also be requiring setting clear objectives for students and guide or counsel them, and track their progress. Teachers also may encounter students with learning or physical disabilities, so teachers must possess an understanding of how to help these students achieve their goals.

Salary Outlook In relation to the yearly income, the profession offers a salary that is simply one of the best in current scenario. Generally, the median hourly earnings of adult education teachers are $43,910. Nevertheless, the most inspiring picture of this career is that the lowest 10 percent earns less than $25,310, and the highest 10 percent earns more than $75,680. Though there are much adult literacy and remedial education instructors who work on a part-time basis, but they are usually paid a good amount by the hour or for each class that they teach.

Employment Prospect In the past few years, teachers of adult literacy held about 76,000 jobs. Many of these jobs were federally funded, with additional funds coming from State and local governments. However, in next few years the employment is further expected to grow much faster than the average for all occupations. In fact, a large number of job openings are anticipated due to the need to replace people who leave the occupation or retire.

Today there are lots of institutions and schools that are offering educational programs in adult education. The program can vary depending upon the institutionalized learning methods or specific areas for an effective adult education. No doubt, it is surely one of the best options that can help you make most of your career potential. Though, working as an adult education teacher requires handling some of the major responsibilities, but it offer rewards that can beyond the comparison of any other profession.

Want to become adult education teacher, find complete information on [http://www.educationmajorsu.com/]top education colleges that offer [http://www.educationmajorsu.com/program.php?discipline=adult-education&id=210]top adult teaching programs and courses to start teaching career in adult education. Choose the best education courses for you and start your teaching career now.

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An Outline on an Instructional Leadership Educational Program

2009-11-01T22:10:00.001-08:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Erik_R_Johnson]Erik R Johnson

Are you one of those who are looking forward developing or improve classroom skills and follow a career as a curriculum supervisor or become an educational leader with the instruction as your main focus. If your answer is yes then making a career as an instructional leader can be the best option. Though, it is very important to comprehend that the role of an instructional leader differs from the traditional school administrator in a number of ways.

Basically, a conventional principal usually spends most of his/her time dealing with administrative duties, but a principal who is an instructional leader is primarily charged with redefining his or her role to become the primary learner in a community striving for excellence in education. As a result, it definitely becomes the principal's accountability to work with teachers to identify and classify different educational objectives and set school-wide or district wide goals. In addition to this, he or she must provide the essential resources for learning, and generate new learning opportunities for students and staff. Ultimately, ability to follow this responsibility requires deep understanding of leadership qualities. Fortunately, today there are number of colleges and universities that offer programs like instructional leadership that primarily focus on this objective. This education specialist program in instructional leadership principally emphasizes the core skills including comprehensive planning and implementation, curriculum theory and design.

The typical coursework of this program includes: curriculum development, educational topics and trends, and cultural diversity. In addition to this, the program endeavors to promote the values, knowledge, and skills needed to renew and improve education across the state, region, and nation. Once you complete the program, you will be able to:

Analyze and classify the uniqueness of an effective and successful leader

Study leadership attributes, styles and their significance for leaders to be successful

Express strategies for facilitating teams competently and managing clashes

Implement and facilitate collaborative professional development activities including team learning communities

The course enables you to learn many characteristics that can be very beneficial to your school and communities. You learn to exhibit a clear sense of direction for your schools and prioritize attention on the things that really matter in terms of the work of students. The program helps you identify your leadership strengths and gain knowledge of strategies that may engage students in the classroom using a team based learning. The program even enables you to discuss your role as a catalyst leader inspiring others to act; develop your personal leadership development plan and discuss methods for similar types of plans in the classroom.

Today instructional leadership can be broadly considered as a thoughtful journey that builds a learning culture. The program is a specialization that emphasizes leadership and managing other teachers with an eye towards a move into school administration. In recent years, this education program has gained enough popularity and expected to earn more recognition in next few years.

Want to start your career as instruction leader? Find complete information on top instructional [http://www.educationmajorsu.com/program.php?discipline=instructional-leadership&id=248]leadership education programs and top education colleges that offer hat Offer Instructional Leadership Courses at EducationMajorsU.com. Choose the best [http://www.educationmajorsu.com/]teaching majors for you and start your career now.

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Internet Delivery - 21st Century Classroom Educational Resources

2009-10-16T02:10:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kimberly_Stohlman]Kimberly Stohlman

We are now nearly a decade into the 21st Century and we should be getting used to it by now. While we can't yet predict what a classroom will look like in ninety years' time, we should have some idea of what a 21st Century classroom should look like, at least during the first few decades of the century.

Just stop and think how classrooms have changed even over the last twenty years. At the end of the 20th Century (in the 1970s and 1980s), the closest most of us got to having computers in the classroom was a pile of that continuous feed paper with the tear-off sides and obscure figures and code on the back. When computers came in, they were a real novelty, but to use them, you had to go to a special computer lab - laptops were almost as much of a status symbol as a mobile phone. Typing was taught on typewriters (albeit electric ones) and if students wanted a nice font (a word we didn't even use back then) for a project, this involved meticulous copying out of one of those books of lettering using tracing paper and window or squared paper. The 21st Century classroom looks completely different.

In a 21st Century classroom, you'll probably find a laptop or two with a printer and wireless internet. You'll find the computer lab still there, of course, but the equipment has been added to with a webcam and a digital camera, and the computers are able to run much more sophisticated programs.

Now, most teachers in the 21st Century classroom have grasped the idea of using the internet for research. This is pretty much a "given", and has been ever since the internet explosion and the dot.com proliferation. With faster bandwidths and more content being available, this opens up a vast library for use in the classroom - a library of educational tools ranging from worksheets to educational videos. This use of the internet in the classroom is still very valid today, but this is now known as "Web 1.0".

Teachers in the 21st Century classroom need to look at the potential of "Web 2.0". Now, the internet is not just a place to find information; it's also a place where anyone can share information and communicate with each other. This also has great potential for use in classroom.

Here are a few ways that the internet is starting to be used in the 21st Century classroom:

· The class website. The class website can be used to post completed projects for the world to view (or members only, depending on what sort of security you want). Creating the website in the knowledge that it can be viewed by people everywhere is a way of stimulating excellence, and requires a range of skills, from research to writing to graphic design.

· Blogs. These would probably be linked to the class website, but a teacher can post blogs giving inspiring thoughts, reminders about homework and projects due, links to good sites for research, etc.

· Communication with other schools: Students can set up a site where they post pieces of work (e.g. essays or short stories). Other students from other schools around the USA or even further afield can view these and post their own material, as well as offering helpful criticism and suggestions. This doesn't have to be limited to literature: it can also be used for art or science projects.

· Communication around the world: In the 20th Century, the closest you could get to having a visitor from the country you were studying in social studies was probably a film or documentary video - unless you were lucky. In the 21st Century classroom, you can easily get in touch with US troops serving overseas, people in aid agencies, park rangers, senators, etc., and you can ask them questions and find out what you really want to know.

Don't get left behind in the technology revolution. Multimedia is the way to go when presenting lessons. [http://www.schoolvideos.com/expert/7_mistakes]Download these free tools for improving your classroom lessons by using videos more-and more effectively.

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One Way Technology in the Classroom is Transforming Education

2009-10-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kimberly_Stohlman]Kimberly Stohlman

The British comic writer Terry Pratchett once wrote that you could tell that his office was a paperless office because you could see paper everywhere. Classrooms, like offices, will never be 100% free of papers, but technology in the classroom is making the idea of a "paperless" classroom more feasible. How much easier would your job as a teacher be if you didn't have a multitude of papers (books, black line masters, flash cards, attendance rolls, notes-to-send-home-to-parents, handouts, quiz sheets) to cope with?

Technology in the classroom is becoming more and more extensive. It would be a rare classroom today that doesn't have at least one PC or laptop set up with a good internet connection (possibly even wireless), and nearly every classroom has its own VCR or DVD player (or at least, there's a player that's shared between two or three classrooms, depending on who's using it today). Some classrooms have multiple computers, and some even have data projectors. Certainly, most schools would have a computer lab where each pupil can work individually on a computer.

Society today is becoming more and more computerised, so it is vital that your students don't get left behind and they know how to use digital tools. They'll be using them in the workplace, so they'd better get familiar with technology in the classroom first.

What are some easy ways that you can cut down on the amount of paper that you have floating around your classroom?

· Use a spreadsheet for attendance. Once you've called the roll, you can email the result of who is and isn't here to the secretary, or let him/her access it via the school's intranet.

· Use webquests instead of textbooks for some subjects. If you haven't used them before, a webquest is an online teaching tool that sets your students various tasks that will require online research to be done. The best ones include helpful links to sites that can help in research. You can create your own customised webquests for your class.

· Use computer games instead of flash cards for drilling your students in time tables and spelling words. You can use online computer games or buy software for doing this. One of the better ones for multiplication is Times Attack from multiplication.com, which has the look and feel of a classic dungeon-style first-person-shooter game but provides an intensive drill in times tables.

· Use videos and DVDs instead of textbooks to explain a concept. Videos and DVDs can also take the place of information handouts. Better still, online video clips can be used, and your students have the chance to re-view these as part of their revision.

· In senior grades, it may be possible for students to submit papers and essays online. This prevents the "Well, I'm sure I put that paper on your desk or in your pigeonhole. The wind must have blown it down and the janitor binned it," excuse. If you're worried about plagiarism (which is one of the pitfalls of modern technology in the classroom), then sign up for Copyscape, which will let you see if anybody's created an essay by cutting and pasting.

Don't let the words "technology integration" scare you. It's not as hard as you might think, and you don't have to get a paperless classroom overnight. And if you have used a video in teaching before, then, you have some of the basic skills already. Standard methods for using media in your elementary lessons are still the benchmark for an effective lesson. Technology should be seen as just another tool in your lesson-not the lesson. Check out [http://www.schoolvideos.com/expert/7_mistakes]the free video tutorial to see how your lessons measure up.

The small company I work for is committed to creating quality educational videos for classroom instruction. From the earliest script stages, all subject area content, images, and music are intensely reviewed and selected for meeting appropriate grade level, curriculum objectives and standards for our proprietary productions. The videos we distribute are also screened to meet our high standards.

Teachers in the 21st century classroom will be better educators if they understand how to use multi media in their lessons, if they understand the processes that research has shown to be the most effective for improved student performance, and if they know how to find quality video resources that will enhance their lessons. http://www.schoolvideos.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kimberly_Stohlman
http://EzineArticles.com/?One-Way-Technology-in-the-Classroom-is-Transforming-Education&id=3045689

Classroom Technology to Support Teaching

2009-10-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kimberly_Stohlman]Kimberly Stohlman

When you were going through your teacher training, did you ever wish you could be a fly on the wall in an experienced teacher's classroom so you could see exactly how he/she handled things? You always change the classroom dynamics by introducing a novelty in the form of an observer, so actually visiting a class for real has its disadvantages as well as its advantages. But by using classroom technology, you can be an observer in someone else's class.

Of course, this innovative use of classroom technology doesn't just apply to beginner teachers and trainee teachers. Even more experienced teachers need to upskill and learn new techniques of doing things in class. Again, watching someone else who has done the hard work of developing the new technique is a great way to learn - after all, you probably know how your pupils pick up concepts and techniques by watching them demonstrated on video (if you haven't learned this, you really need to upskill!).

This new development is possible, thanks to a new secure website being set up by a group of Californian educators. This innovation, created by LessonLab, consists of a collection of exemplary lessons by experienced teachers in a real class. Of course, with classroom technology being so common these days, the presence of a Webcam in the classroom is no novelty and the children in the class act like they normally act. The lessons are presented on a split screen, so the viewers can chat online while they watch, and receive answers from an education coach.

Many companies and publishers are interested in this new development. You are probably familiar with books and encyclopedias that are designed to be used in tandem with that most familiar form of classroom technology: the internet. These "internet linked" encyclopedias have now been extended to textbooks, and publishers such as Scholastic Inc. and Pearsons are beginning to produce textbooks linked with exemplary lessons and demonstrations.

You have probably already learned about the different learning styles and how to cater to them in your classroom. And these techniques also have to be remembered by those who teach the teachers. Teachers have their own learning styles, too, and up until now, reading educational journals (and websites and online articles like this one) and listening to presentations at training days have been the main ways of learning about new tools and techniques. Now the visual learners at the front of the classroom are being catered for, as well as the visual learners sitting in the desks.

You may be tempted, when you hear about these exemplary lessons, to just let your class watch the demonstration lesson linked with the textbook so you can both learn at the same time. Don't do this. All videos and all classroom technology has to be used correctly to be effective. Mistakes you don't even know you're making can be impacting your lesson.

Watch this free video (which isn't from LessonLab but does cater to visual learners) for some important information on why and how you should be using school videos and [http://www.schoolvideos.com/expert/7_mistakes]download the expert guide for easy solutions.

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The Need of a Reform on Integrity Education

2009-10-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Artur_Victoria]Artur Victoria

Over the last 25 years a compelling body of evidence has been accumulated concerning the harm and waste caused by corruption and low levels of public integrity. The sums estimated are vast. The impact fails disproportionately on developing countries and on the poor within these countries. Flows of aid and structural lending remains significant to many developing countries are significant in terms of GNP. Aid and the development it is intended to spur are, however, often caught in a negative relationship, in which aid can fuel negative outcomes through its impact on corruption. It is largely against this background that a civil society and donor movement to counter corruption and establish high levels of public integrity has evolved.

This pro-integrity reform movement has undergone three major phases in its recent history: the first being awareness raising, the second the creation of conventions and international legislative structures and the third, in which we are now situated where implementation and enforcement are the overriding imperatives.

Despite the diligent efforts of many committed people reform successes remain relatively few and far between, either they are relatively distant historically (the changes in Northern Europe one and two hundred years age) or relatively particular as in the cases of Hong Kong and Singapore.

There is widespread uncertainty about whether the way to achieve improvement in public integrity is currently well understood, even if many of the attributes of high levels of corruption are increasingly clear. The historically favored strategy of implementing international 'best practice' has overwhelmingly been a failure.

Implementing public integrity reform is a considerable strategic public management challenge that requires the mobilization of large numbers of skilled people and resources to succeed.

The need for an Education Network is therefore based on these key understandings:

• The benefit of high levels of public integrity has been established though the examination of the consequences of corruption (the failure to maintain high levels of integrity) especially on the most vulnerable countries and populations.

• Currently there is a highly dispersed set of experiences and practices, both in the research and practice domains. A large and relatively unsystematic body of knowledge has been built up. The reliable application of this knowledge in practice remains at an embryonic stage if we are to judge by changes in governance over time.

• Despite the concept of corruption gaining common currency in the popular consciousness of most countries, as never before, it remains striking that within the academic community research and teaching remain dispersed, with very few courses being offered to meet the huge challenge of providing skills to support the pro integrity reform process.

At present much of the knowledge creation and impetus for public sector reform is coming largely from international organizations, be they donors or No Governmental Organizations. These organizations have initiated or provided the knowledge for many of the reforms that have been attempted (World Bank, U4, UN and so forth). This 'supply' model has some strength in that it has been able to develop a high quality of material, and a critical set of methodologies. http://sites.google.com/site/arturvictoriasite/ http://sites.google.com/site/cliptheschoolbeginning/

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The "McDonald's-ization" of Education

2009-10-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ben_Carlsen]Ben Carlsen

McDonald's is astoundingly successful at purveying inexpensive fast food of consistently high quality. They have achieved this primarily through standardization and quality control. If you purchase an "Egg McMuffin," or a "Big Mac" at an outlet in Seattle, or Milwaukee, Chicago or Miami, it will be almost exactly the same.

Standardization is increasingly making in-roads into education. Once the realm of diversity (of opinion, thought, approach, teaching technique, classroom styles, etc.) and independence (academic freedom), the higher education classroom is being transformed into a "product" type delivery system. The "products" in this case are the concepts, lesson plans, group exercises, assignments, etc. - indeed, the education itself.

The intent of this transformation is to provide a "standard" high quality student classroom experience within disciplines, and across institutions. With the student being the customer (consumer) of the educational delivery system, we want to make sure he or she is getting the highest possible quality product, and the key to this is "quality control" and standardization.

Instead of the after-the-fact quality control offered through instructor "evaluations," " classroom observations," and the like, the approach introduces a far more intrusive and directive model. Lesson Plans, indeed, entire courses and curricula are loaded into pre-packaged modules, on thumb drives (USB) or onto computers, or servers.

As in the fast food business, manufacturing, or other product producing sectors, the product creation and delivery process is developed to gain the efficiency and effectiveness obtained in industry.

JUST LIKE McDONALD's

Just like McDonald's where the customer can expect to enjoy a standard, high quality product, served in a clean, well-designed environment, the student consumer can expect convenient delivery of the educational product, for his consumption, and enjoyment - "satisfaction guaranteed."

THE PROCESS

First, a product team is assembled. In this case it consists of academic experts, curriculum designers, course writers, technology experts, product representatives, trainers, content specialists, etc. The product development process is based on outcome objectives, i.e., "what do we want the student to know?," "what should he learn during this course?" and "how do we measure that?" This "beginning at the end" philosophy is crucial. It keeps the spotlight on the product, promotes quality, and ultimately, "customer satisfaction."

THE ENTERTAINMET COMPONENT

Gen Y students have different expectations from their predecessors, and are less likely to indulge obsolete or dated instructional methods and techniques. They demand to be engaged.

Instructors are partially selected on their ability to "entertain" as well as "inform." They are expected to be animated, humorous, engaging, and entertaining. They are expected to convey knowledge in convenient, enjoyable, and satisfying, bites.

STEAMLINING THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

The more standardized the process becomes, the less latitude for the educator, the more prescribed the content, exercises and learning activities are, the more the business managers of the career and "for profit" colleges like it. This concept may, however, benefit the student as it concentrates on a quality, standardized, classroom experience.

IT'S EASIER

Once the instructor has mastered the technology, the whole instructional process is easier under this model. Everything is pre-packaged. No messy development of lesson plans - they're already done - and done well. No thinking about creative learning activities and approaches - they're already there. You could almost do it in your sleep! (if it wasn't for the requirement to be animated and entertaining.)

STUDENT NEEDS

Students in this new education model will be immersed in technology throughout their degree program. This is the world of today, and the future. They will participate and interact with SMARTboards, laptops, WiFi, simulations, business games, remote "clickers," interactive learning, real-world relevant projects, presentations, etc. It's designed to match their learning styles and attention spans It is preeminently designed to prepare them for their careers. Although many students are "comfortable" with technology, fewer are proficient, and fewer yet have an in-depth understanding. The curriculum should help them become more proficient and better prepared for the technology demands of the future business environment. The intensely technological nature of the classroom experience also addresses the various learning styles. The auditory learner will have voice, music, and noise. The visual learner will enjoy the videos, powerpoints, and other visuals. The kinesthetic learner will appreciate the hands on components, especially the SMARTboard.

Student satisfaction is, of course, a primary objective. Education, especially for-profit education, exists to serve the student, while running a business. And, through serving and satisfying the student, ultimately the student will stay in school, graduate, and learn valuable knowledge and skills in the process. These graduates will benefit the business community, and society at large. An advanced society like ours is critically dependent on an educated and productive populous.

EMPLOYER NEEDS

What do employers want and need? The link to employer requirements is a vital one. Businesses need educated workers. They require technologically adroit employees who can meet the demands of a rapidly changing technological environment and a highly competitive situation.

Ours is a productive society. Businesses spend billions of dollars training and re-training their employees. "Business Ready" graduates will be more productive from day one and employers will appreciate this.

HAS EDUCATION COME TO THIS?

Purists would argue that the more traditional approaches are preferable, and that academic freedom is being infringed upon. They would say that instructors should be hired based on their knowledge, quality of education, expertise, research history and contributions to their field. They would undoubtedly prefer to see pure "academicians" and "scholars" in the classroom. However, there is room for an interesting debate here. Is it about the instructor or the student? Obviously, we understand that it's about both, but whose needs take precedence? The answer has to be - THE STUDENT! After all, the whole educational system is in place to meet the needs of the student, and ultimately, society.

Instructors with real-world, practical experience and without techno-phobia will be more adaptable to this new format, and perhaps better equipped to relate to the student.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In education there is always room for a broad range of opinions and approaches. Let's try this new one. It works in business - why not education? This is probably why Career Colleges are embracing the approach much more readily than their mainstream counterparts. The "for-profit" Career Colleges are definitely the forefront of this initiative, and "early adopters."

We all know that "quality " is an issue in education. Graduates with virtually identical credentials can have vastly different skills, knowledge, and abilities. This is, and always has been a concern. This standardized, quality-assured model addresses that issue.

Sure, this educational model is controversial, as it should be! But the end result may very well be that students have a reasonably similar experience, learn comparable skills, and become better "fits" within the business world. Employers can be better assured and confident that graduates have the knowledge and skill base they require to be successful contributors. They will probably, at some point, wish to be full participants in the curriculum development process. In the globally competitive market, this might just be what is needed.

When we're teaching Business we must be business-minded. Let's transfer those "best practices" from the business world to academia, keep our students involved, and better prepare them for their future careers. And, the lessons to be learned from places like McDonald's may be more applicable to education than we might have ever imagined.

Copyright ©, 2009, Dr. Ben A. Carlsen, MBA. All Rights Reserved Worldwide for all Media. You may reprint this article in your ezine, newsletter, newspaper, magazine, website, etc. as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, leave my name and bio box intact, and you follow all of the EzineArticles Terms of Service for Publishers.

Ben A. Carlsen, Ed.D, MBA, is an experienced CEO and manager. Dr. Carlsen has over 30 years experience in management, consulting, and teaching. Currently the Head of the Business Department at Everest Institute, Hialeah, FL., he was Chairman of the Los Angeles County Productivity Managers Network and President of the Association for Systems Management (So. Calif. Chapter). Additional information can be obtained at http://drben.info

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http://EzineArticles.com/?The-McDonalds-ization-of-Education&id=3005654

21st Century Skills - Beyond the Buzzwords

2009-09-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Annie_Condron]Annie Condron

Education is a field filled with buzzwords, from RTI to collaborative development to differentiated instruction to student-centered learning and beyond. The latest trend in this time of "change" is 21st century skills.

21st century skills encapsulate all that teachers have been begging for in the post-NCLB era: creativity, problem-solving and learning beyond fact recitation. Like most ed buzz words, this one emanates from a genuine, intelligent approach to preparing kids for their future. This approach would free teachers from the stifling bonds of NCLB and it just makes sense.

After pleas from teachers, Obama has picked up the 21st century skills torch and is blazing it through policy, tackling the easiest aspect first. Technology in the classroom is a commonsense factor to 21st century learning since ours is the internet age. Obama plans to fund computer and broadband access in schools nationwide. But tackling tech is the easy part. Implementing it on a nationwide policy level will be harder than installing computers. How do you give a standardized test on creativity? This murkiness led one Washington Post writer calls 21st century skills "a pipe dream whose literature should be tossed in the trash."

Personally, I'm reminded of an episode from The Office. The inept boss, Michael, asks the receptionist, Pam, to write down "everyone's indefinable qualities. Just write down what people are doing all day in a way that is helpful."

Later on, he asks about their scores from the day.

Pam: "I think they're even. At various times, you gave Jim 10 points, Dwight a gold star and Stanley a thumbs up. I'm don't really know how to compare those units."

Michael: "Check if there's a conversion chart in the notebook."

Turns out, there isn't a conversion chart.

And so goes the problem with generically testing for "the kinds of research, scientific investigation, and problem solving that our children will need to compete in a 21st-century knowledge economy." (Obama)

Regardless of how difficult and complex it will be to make this shift, I agree with policy analyst Elena Silva:

Whether or not the trendy label of "21st-century skills" lasts, says Elena Silva, a senior policy analyst at the Education Sector in Washington, what's important is the evolving research on how people learn. Teachers were long taught to cover content first and wait for children to get older before having them apply it, she says, but now research shows that "people learn best by learning content at the same time they are acquiring [and applying] new skills."

Annie Condron is the Editor in Chief at TeachHUB.com. TeachHUB.com is a new, online resource center designed by teachers, for teachers and is tailored to address the everyday needs of teachers both inside and outside of the classroom. To read more articles from Annie Condron as well as access other teacher recommended education tools, visit [http://www.TeachHUB.com]http://www.TeachHUB.com.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?21st-Century-Skills---Beyond-the-Buzzwords&id=2922182

Who Am I This Time? Role-Taking For 21st Century Learning and Growth By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Nicholas_Wolff]Nicholas Wolff

2009-09-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

Merlin the Magician, according to legend, trained the boy who would become King Arthur by transforming him into various animals through which he experienced different ways of thinking about power and groups. As a snow goose, he participates in a peaceful culture in which leaders are chosen based on their ability to navigate. Things are quite the opposite when he is turned into a falcon and nearly killed when a competitor picks a fight with him, or a fish when he is nearly devoured by a much bigger one. As an ant he can only adapt by becoming robotic, hearing "a noise in his head, like a song on the radio that repeats over and over, and he hears a voice, constantly giving him directions," because the ant culture has eliminated independent thought.

Merlin's method would be called "role-taking" in our world, a learning method that is powerfully effective for internalizing an unfamiliar skill or new information, e.g In a recent training seminar, employees of a large non-profit institution that serves the general public were reeling from the consequences of severe cutbacks directly due to donor money that disappeared down the Bernie Madoff rabbit hole. The employees felt understandably defensive and victimized, sandwiched between what felt like an indifferent and distant administration and unforgiving public. We used role-taking to help them view their daily stresses from a number of perspectives: long-term patrons with expectations that could no longer be met; newer patrons who were demanding and unappreciative; empathetic patrons; immediate supervisors; unavailable admnistrators; donors to the institution; investors who lost millions of dollars and shut down entire foundations. This role-taking exercise allowed emotional expression without too much personal exposure and united the group as they explored and practiced a variety of strategies for dealing with the daily frustrations.

Studies show that new learning acquired through direct participation is internalized more rapidly, something critically important in today's atmosphere of accelerated change. Here are some examples from the literature:

Educational Perspectives published an article describing the work of a Winnipeg, Manitoba science teacher who teaches about particle theory by having students "become," and tell stories as, actual particles. They integrate such complex concepts as conductivity and kinetic energy, interacting in skits, plays, puppet shows."[1] She also uses role-play to teach about the heart and circulation system by transforming the entire classroom into the heart system, using tarps and other props, the kids making the pumping and gushing sounds, and people in from outside the room treated as antigens.

The Astronomical Society of Australia studied the use of experiential methods in astronomy and physics classes. "Conventionally taught students tend to rote-learn," the researchers report, "they fail to integrate their new knowledge into their prior assumptions, and rarely think through the implications of what they learn,"[2] The study involved an interactive class assignment designed to teach about the formation of planets and stars through an imaginative, collaborative process. The students were told that each of them were to imagine themselves to be "world experts in some branch of astrophysics. Just as in the real world, however, no single group can hope to know enough to solve this difficult problem alone. You will have to exchange information with many other groups to devise a complete picture, and win the undying glory of being first to figure out how stars and planets form....Take a few minutes to read your briefing sheets, and discuss what you have learned amongst yourselves. Once you've figured out your own areas of expertise, you will have to exchange information with the other groups. Anything goes; you are allowed to form consortia, lie, cheat, steal, bribe: anything to figure out a complete picture. But bear in mind that unless you share information with other people, they will not share information with you...Your goal is to put all the information you will learn from the other groups together, to make a coherent theory of star and planet formation."[iv]
Results showed that students internalized the necessary knowledge at the same rate as in a lecture format, and that active fostered an observably more friendly and interactive classroom.

The integration of creativity, intellectual challenge, emotional connection, and personal interaction allows trainees/students to practice skills that actualize new information and real-time use of social networks, making these methods fantastic innovations for 21st century training and education.

[1] Margo Hrennikoff, "Implementing An Imaginative Unit," Educational Perspectives 39.2 (2006): 25.

[2]Paul J. Francis and Aidan P. Byrne, "The Use of Role-Playing Exercises in Teaching Undergraduate Astronomy and Physics," Astronomical Society of Australia 16 (1999): 206.

Nicholas Wolff is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Board Certified Diplomate and Trainer, Educator and Practitioner of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy who designs experiential seminars and training groups for professionals in health care, education, forensics and corporate settings. His website is [http://www.lifestage.org]http://www.lifestage.org.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Who-Am-I-This-Time?-Role-Taking-For-21st-Century-Learning-and-Growth&id=2894505

Beware of Leaving Other Humans in the Dust - No One Will Know What to Make of You

2009-09-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow]Lance Winslow

Many futurists thinkers are so intelligent and so far off in the future in their thoughts that they tend to leave all of their followers, readers, and listeners in the dust. Predicting the future 5 to 10 years out is not all that hard to do. Accurate prediction of five years out is fairly easy, and predicting 10 years out can be done if you watch the macro or micro trends surrounding various industries, watching how they all come together and interact.

Predicting 20 years in the future is rather difficult as the author of the "Black Swan" has so eloquently stated. But this does not mean it's impossible, and if such futurist prediction is done correctly, and carefully explained to the reader then everything seems to work out right and the futurist can make a compelling argument. Even if that "potential future" will never come to be and most everyone knows it.

The Real Challenge is;

Invariably what ends up happening is a futurist will talking about things that are 30 to 50 years in the future. They might even start talking about Star Trek transporters, wormholes space travel, and even time travel. It's not that all this won't someday be figured out; it's that the viewer of such predictions cannot wrap their minds around it.

If you get that far out into the future people just won't know what to make of you. So, all futurists need to beware of leaving other human minds in the dust when making these types of predictions, otherwise they won't know what to think of you. Interestingly enough, most things do not change that fast, after all besides the Internet, and mobile technology life is pretty much the same as it was 20 years ago.

Do you see that point? However, in the last five years the changes in the Internet have been astounding, and most of the predictions were incorrect. Think about that for a second, and you will soon come to the realization of why this topic is so important.

Lance Winslow - [http://www.aircraftwashguys.com/historicals.shtml]Lance Winslow's Bio. Lance Winslow thinks you should talk over these issues with your family; [http://www.familycells.com]familycells.com

Note: All of Lance Winslow's articles are written by him, not by Automated Software, any Computer Program, or Artificially Intelligent Software. None of his articles are outsourced, PLR Content or written by ghost writers. Lance Winslow believes those who use these strategies lack integrity and mislead the reader. Indeed, those who use such cheating tools, crutches, and tricks of the trade may even be breaking the law by misleading the consumer and misrepresenting themselves in online marketing, which he finds completely unacceptable.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Beware-of-Leaving-Other-Humans-in-the-Dust---No-One-Will-Know-What-to-Make-of-You&id=2863315

Online Education - Revolutionizing Learning

2009-09-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jaspal_Kittu]Jaspal Kittu

Our world is changing perceptibly everyday. The technological boom has revolutionized the way humans function. Innovative methods are emerging to substitute the traditional ways of working. We can discern perceptible change in the education sectors, wherein both students and educators are turning to information and technology to improve the quality and speed of learning.

Education has entered a new phase where Internet is fast becoming an important supplement to the traditional means of education like textbooks and classrooms. In the past decade, the shortcomings of classroom learning have become more evident. As a result, the youth is turning towards online guidance to help them cope with the excessive workload, which has eventually made elearning, live virtual class, online tutor and discussion forums as popular study choices of today's generation.

Education is an investment for future. And online education is the most rapidly growing dimension of the education sector. Higher educational institutes have increasingly embraced online education and the number of students enrolled in distance programs is rapidly rising in colleges and universities throughout the world.

The many advantages of online education have made it an indispensible tool in today's age. It help provides an unmatched autonomy to the learners. With increasing competition, additional professional qualifications have become mandatory and online courses provide an easy option to pursue the desired additional course with ease. Even the online study materials are easily accessible from anywhere, anytime.

The best part about online education is that the classes are quite flexible which even give students the power to control their learning environment, as in moving through their syllabus at their own pace. This nullifies the need for private tutoring as students can easily access the educational sites to get immediate assistance from online tutors. Round the clock availability of online help makes for a thorough understanding of complex subjects, thus, helping the student in securing that crucial extra mark.

The convergence of Internet and education has made learning possible anytime, anywhere. Due to Internet technology, the learning process has become decentralized. Students can live in a remote village but even then can have easy access to the pioneers and experts in whatever field of knowledge they want. This gives them both cost effective and flexible learning support right from the comfort of their homes.

Not only this, online education also incorporates innovative learning tools which make studying out an out a fun process. The elements incorporated in virtual teaching help in transforming any moron subject material, subject and topic into an intriguing one.

It's true that online education offers good quality multimedia tools to make studying a better experience. Infact, the additional usage of colors, images, figures, videos and audio help make difficult concepts all the more interesting and easy to memorize. This approach to study definitely increases the attention span, thus, improving the recall speed and better retention. Afterall, making learning more fun -- or interesting -- is what makes it more effective.

Online education facilitates a more interactive learning environment as students can easily avail the Class on Demand service to interact with the online tutor and as well discuss their doubts and queries without hesitation. These online tutors provide both academic support and counseling to motivate the students who later on try giving their best shot by excelling in their academic pursuits.

Extramarks brings students, teachers and parents together on a single platform to ensure that a child excels academically. To know more about online education, [http://www.extramarks.com/products/?tab=mindmap]online education, e-tutorial, school education support, CBSE, ICSE, and Rajasthan Board, log on to http://www.extramarks.com

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Online-Education---Revolutionizing-Learning&id=2753455

What is Home Schooling About?

2009-08-27T23:31:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=George_Preston]George Preston

Home schooling is the act of educating one's children primarily at home and in a family setting, with a parent or guardian as teacher. The term can apply equally to children in the K-12 range who fall under his or her state's compulsory attendance laws.

Home school is kind of similar to building a house -- you need to determine your plan, gather your materials, and make sure that you have the right tools for the job. Take your time to read, look around, compare notes on different ways of teaching. It is legal in all 50 states, and 37 states actually have some statutes or regulations specifically geared for home schooling. There are also home school organizations running in every state, and children that are schooled at home tend to score higher, on average, than their publicly schooled peers.

Families will choose to school their children at home instead of sending them to public schools for a variety of different reasons. This kind of schooling can help parents and children form strong bonds with one another. And nowadays, families are spending their educational dollars as they see fit, and educational entrepreneurs are trailblazing the way by creating a wide-ranging marketplace of goods and services for this market. It's not just about mom and the kids around the kitchen table now -- it's becoming a new educational model.

Home school programs are a great choice for many different kinds of students and families. They are most generally used by families with children between the grades of 5th and 12th. These programs are ideal for those children who are prevented from attending a regular high school due to some personal problems, financial troubles or poor health, among other things.

To learn much more about a home school program visit http://HomeSchoolCurriculumHelp.com/home-school-program.php to find out more about home school help of all kinds, including programs and curriculums.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?What-is-Home-Schooling-About?&id=2808944

Artificial Intelligence - Available Now

2009-08-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=John_Dir]John Dir

Whenever a person wants to present themselves as an industry expert, one credible approach is to paint a shining picture of future technology and what people can expect from hopeful visions of things to come. One potential that has long bothered me is the current general perception of artificial intelligence technology.

There are a few key concepts that are not often included in the general discussion of creating machines that think and act like us. First, the problem with artificial intelligence is that it is artificial. Trying to create machines that work like the human brain and its special creative properties has always seemed useless to me. We already have people to do all that. If we succeed in generating a system that is every bit as able as the human brain to create and solve problems, such an achievement will also result in the same limitations. There is no benefit in creating an artificial life form that can surpass us to further degrade the value of humanity. Creating machines to enhance and compliment the wonders of human thinking does have many appealing benefits. One significant plus to building artificially intelligent systems is the benefit of the teaching process. Like people, machines have to be taught what we want them to learn, but unlike us, the methods used to imprint machine instructions can be accomplished in a single pass.

Our brains allow us to selectively flush out information we do not want to retain, and are geared for a learning process based on repetition to imprint a long term memory. Machines cannot “forget” what they are taught unless they are damaged, reach their memory capacity, or they are specifically instructed to erase the information they are tasked to retain. This makes machines great candidates for performing all the tediously repetitive tasks, and storing all the information we do not want to burden ourselves with absorbing. With a little creativity, computers can be adjusted to respond to people in ways that are more pleasing to the human experience, without the need to actually replicate the processes that comprise this experience. We can already teach machines to issue polite responses, offer helpful hints, and walk us through learning processes that mimic the niceties of human interaction, without requiring machines to actually understand the nuances of what they are doing. Machines can repeat these actions because a person has programmed them to execute the instructions that offer these results. If a person wants to take the time to impress aspects of presenting their own personality into a sequence of mechanical instructions, computers can faithfully repeat these processes when called upon to do so.

In today’s market place, most software developers do not add on the extra effort that is required to make their applications seem more polite and conservatively friendly to the end users. If the commercial appeal for doing this was more apparent, more software vendors would race to jump onto this bandwagon. Since the consuming public understands so little about how computers really work, many people seem to be nervous about machines that project a personality that is too human in the flavor of its interaction with people. A computer personality is only as good as the creativity of its originator, which can be quite entertaining. For this reason, if computers with personality are to gain ground in their appeal, friendlier system design should incorporate a partnering with end users themselves in building and understanding how this artificial personality is constructed. When a new direction is needed, a person can incorporate that information into the process, and the machine learns this new aspect as well.

People can teach a computer how to cover all contingencies that arise in accomplishing a given purpose for managing information. We do not have to take ourselves out of the loop in training computers how to work with people. The goal of achieving the highest form of artificial intelligence, self-teaching computers, also reflects the highest form of human laziness. My objective in design is to accomplish a system that will do the things I want it to do, without having to deal with negotiating over what the system wants to do instead. This approach is already easier to achieve than most people think, but requires consumer interest to become more prevalent.

John Dir
LittleTek Center
Check out our information channel and free softtware at http://home.earthlink.net/~jdir/

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LMS Means Quality Education

2009-08-25T22:53:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Robin_L._Green]Robin L. Green

Education feeds the mind and is the starting point of every human activity. If education is jeopardized especially in the school, then what is the purpose of getting one? If the students are not able to gain knowledge to nurture them for the future, then what achievement do they get from going to school?

In America, the quality of public school education has declined because of the recorded violence that happens during school days. School violence has been listed as one of the serious problems that make excellent curriculum, competent teachers, and great facilities futile because students' learning is disturbed. Among the recorded and "popular" school violence include bullying, fighting, gang activity, gun use, and locker thefts. Ostensibly, one cannot blame the student attackers who start these kinds of aggression, nor can one condemn the parents for not imposing discipline over their children. More so, the local government can only do as much to enforce regulations and ordinances to obviate school violence and to terminate it when it happens.

Clearly the school is laden with this vicious problem on violence. In the past, the U.S. Department of Education elaborated that there is no one anti-violence program that could solve the problem across all schools. The system of individual schools can only be suited for a specific academic institution because of demographics; hence, there is no ubiquitous anti-violence intervention, policy, and program.

As the key player to this problem, school administrators can design a program that will potentially dart the issue at core. A solution that can be declared universal is the Learning Management System or LMS. The LMS is software that tracks, delivers, serves, and manages education and training. Many popular LMS's are internet-based to assist learning monitoring online, used to cater to different administrative, deployment, and educational prerequisite. It provides a central point for training and learning development work. The LMS can provide quantifiable results - where a classroom set-up may not.

If school violence is attributed to the physical and personal interaction of students, then the LMS is the best solution to disconnect the hostile relationship. Virtual learning can allow a more effective exchange of information among students because it streamlines idle times that would have spent over settling gang fights, for instance. Discussions and learning become focused and intensive because of the absence of unnecessary distractions from the environment. Likewise, the students are trained to become more interactive with a positive sense through the use of multimedia, and other technology benefits; hence turning learning more interesting and effective. Teachers can automatically test the knowledge and competency of the students using the LMS.

A learning management system is flexible and versatile that could resolve the problem of school violence in the country. The LMS has so much to offer which could re-boost the quality of education in public schools. It is in the hands of the school administrators to make things happen and ignite change to uplift the status of education in America.

Public schools get free access to Coggno's [http://www.coggno.com/]Learning Management System and create educational content for eLearning. Visit http://www.coggno.com and create your free account.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?LMS-Means-Quality-Education&id=2512452

School Blogs Can Revolutionize Schools

2009-08-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Paul_LP_Taylor]Paul LP Taylor

School blogs can transform virtually every aspect of school life. I appreciate that's a bold claim but I'm going to back it up with some illustrations. I am also going to show you how easy it is to set up a complete school blogging platform with no technical knowledge whatsoever.

Before I go any further though, let me define what I mean by school blogs. Although blogs may have started out rather like online diaries, software such as WordPress (yes, it's a version of WordPress that I am going to recommend) is quite capable of creating complex websites incorporating multimedia elements. The WordPress platform makes the production of engaging content as simple as using a word processor, allowing users to focus on content. It also allows readers to interact through comments and this is one of the main reasons why school blogs can be so powerful.

So think of a blog as an interactive personal website.

What I am suggesting is not that the school has a blog but rather that everyone IN the school has a blog - teachers, students, administrators - even parents. Here are some examples:

# Lessons - let's imagine a teacher, Mr Geography. His next few lessons will cover the Amazon jungle. So he transfers an outline of his lesson plan to a blog post and adds in some images, a couple of videos from YouTube showing some Amazonian wildlife and links to the National Geographic website. For homework, the students will visit his post, possibly leave some comments, and then create their own posts answering the questions he set. (Don't worry, there are many ways to stop plagiarism.)

The students have thus had a much richer and creative experience than simply reading a text book. Their work will remain online for future revision. It can even be made public and form part of a showcase of what students are achieving. Not only can this inspire children, it is a wonderful way for parents and grandparents to share in a student's progress. This increased involvement can have many dividends in fundraising.

# Sports - the latest results and performances of the school teams can be shared online through reports, photographs and videos. Again, a much broader community can share in the school's activities.

# Special Interests - this is a broad catch-all category for all the other activities that students may engage in, from dance, drama and music (reviews of theater visits, progress on their own productions etc.) through to IT, photography and debating clubs, The blogs of participant students help their development and publicize what they are doing to a wider audience. The school becomes a much more vibrant place.

# Field Trips and Holidays - parents can be kept informed of what is happening and the whole experience enriched and captured for posterity through blog entries.

I have only hinted at some of the incredible possibilities for using school blogs. I would like to emphasise a few points. Firstly, most of what is produced is almost a by-product of current activities - this is a different way of working rather than extra work. Secondly, much of it is created by the students themselves. Finally, despite the stunning results that can be achieved, this is actually very easy to implement.

I mentioned the WordPress platform earlier. There is a mutli-user version of WordPress, WPMU, that provides the basis for my recommended approach to school blogging. If you are considering how to [http://www.school-blogs.com]set up school blogs with maximum effectiveness and ease-of-use, I would suggest an out-of-the box solution incorporating a number of plugins. This will allow you to focus on the benefits the system can bring rather than spending days tweaking settings to achieve an inferior solution.

Paul Taylor, MA(Oxon), MBA, member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and creator of the [http://www.school-blogs.com]School Blogs website - a resource outlining the benefits of school blogs and the technology available.

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Think Tank Topic; Digital Libraries and the Future of Books

2009-08-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow]Lance Winslow

We have all heard a lot on the news recently about books being made digital for all to read. Microsoft is doing a 20-million dollar project in Great Britain and Google is doing several libraries in the United States. There has been some controversy on this issue from authors who receive royalties and booksellers. It is for this reason our Think Tank brought up the topic.

A prominent member in our Think Tank “Swift” said; “I was looking into your idea of the digital library and Goggle's attempt at putting all existing books on the Internet. I really like this idea as only a small percentage of books remain in print. I have been looking for an out of print book for decades called the Rose and the Labyrinth and have had book searches done all over the world. I have found out that there were 5 books with this title. The one I am looking for dealt with the time Carl Jung spent with minors and his reactions to them. He didn't write it, but I no longer have the information on the book so don't remember who the writer is. There are some really wonderful out of print books and no way to access them. I am having problems with the publishing companies who are worried about the copyright infringement issues and the interpretation of "fair use."

They wouldn't start with the newest books, I would think; but the books that were no longer protected. What in the heck are they being protected from? No one is going to pretend they wrote them for crying out loud. After this length of time, I'll read any book names the Rose and the Labyrinth and pretend it was the book that was referred to me by Jung's last student before he died. I really like the idea of a mine being a labyrinth--so did my father.

Well I certainly see Swift’s point on this issue and we know that currently we are very busy digitizing humankind’s written knowledge from books to the digital so it can be made available to the world. This is a very wise move as books can decay over years and out of print books are not available to all. By digitizing the known human written knowledge to the world we can conquer the opportunity barriers of those hard chargers who may not have the resources to achieve the upward mobility they seek. As we conquer the digital divide we will be well on our way to giving back the knowledge of the world from the entire Library of Commerce to the human race in an easy to read, search and retrieve format available to all. That will be an excellent day for the human race indeed. Imagine a digital library of the Library of Commerce able to use Super Computer speeds to retrieve all the world’s written books online at a speed of Google or MSN.com. That is to say any book written in any language, anywhere in the world, at anytime, think on that for a second.

By using knowledge and experience this way we can leverage this to prevent failure through understanding results. Those who do not learn from their mistakes, tend to keep from making them. Those who remember the lessons learned from their mistakes successes tend to reason better thru analyzing of their mistakes and trying to figure a way around their problems.

Now then, let me tell you why I believe a society needs digital libraries hooked to all civilizations for faster advancement of the human species as a whole or as one. If you had a problem that needed solving for the betterment of your civilization and you had all the world’s knowledge at your finger tips; that is to say a computer hooked to a system like a World Wide Digital Library, then you would have enhanced your personal knowledge and memory by a million fold. This could help your intelligent quotient at the speed of computer and that coupled with the speed of thought is a major component needed to take mankind to the singularity of an all-knowing, never ending being in this dimension. Think on this.

"Lance Winslow" - Online [http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/]Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; [http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/]http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is an online writer in retirement.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Think-Tank-Topic;-Digital-Libraries-and-the-Future-of-Books&id=95870

Promote E-Learning Student Originality and Track Progress With Learning Management System Solutions

2009-08-18T21:32:00.001-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Robin_L._Green]Robin L. Green

E-learning courses delivered via learning management systems within school districts are able to address all kinds of issues schools face, including too few course offerings, teacher shortages in certain areas, the rising number of home-schoolers, lack of AP courses, and lack of physical space and school funding.

The downside is that plagiarism and other forms of dishonesty are likelier to happen in online education. Cheating doesn't occur only in online assessments, but also in online discussion forums, assignments, projects and other collaborative, online, educational tools.

We in the e-learning community believe that online learning is an effective method of teaching, training, and testing student understanding, but it needs to be done well. And it often is not. In many popular e-learning systems, when a student receives a high score on an online assessment, it makes us wonder: is it an accurate indicator of the student's understanding?

According to studies, 70% of American high school seniors admit to cheating on at least one test, and 95% of the students who admitted to cheating were never caught. And furthermore, 75% of college students reported cheating during their college career. To sum it up, cheating is a huge temptation, and something that most people do at some point.

As educators, online course developers, and training instructors, our goal is to provide effective and engaging content so that students are both inspired to learn and held accountable if they are not doing their best. But how do we go about achieving this goal?

A robust learning management system will provide the best tools for ensuring that students are putting in their best effort and submitting creative and original work. Tools that prevent cheating and monitor student progress are part of this solution.

Using Web 2.0 tools like discussion forums for student assignments is a common practice in e-learning courses--especially at the university level. But it isn't enough just to tell students to answer questions and post them, and "get engaged." The assignment needs to be coordinated in a way that ensures maximum responses and originality. Without a strategy to make the tools work and avoid copying and repetition, educational tools like discussion forums and wikis become ineffective.

The best strategy to ensure that students are engaged is to create engaging material. Dynamic course features like videos, audio material like podcasts, and other tools are simple ways to obtain and maintain students' attention and interest.

However, even the most engaging course and the most interactive content needs to be kept in check by a way to track and monitor student progress.

Once a learning management system is in place and its features are understood, administrators can take advantage of its tools to easily create a system in which student progress is tracked. Once the system is in place, instructors and educators need not worry much about grading and other traditionally tedious activities.

A good LMS automates not only the administration of training, but the way in which administrators can find out students' progress.

Ultimately, creating and maintaining a great course, tracking and monitoring student progress needs to be both built in to an e-learning system but most importantly, the intent needs to exist. It's something that must be actively sought, rather than passively dismissed. A strong learning management system with automated tracking tools is great, but even more ideal is that combined with the energy and effort of the person behind the scenes, delivering the content.

Public schools can now use Coggno's [http://www.coggno.com]learning management systems for free. Create your free account now, visit Coggno at http://www.coggno.com/lms

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Create a Readable E-Learning Voice in Your Learning Management System Course

2009-08-17T23:39:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Robin_L._Green]Robin L. Green

When creating e-learning content, you have a lot of choices to make. You'll make decisions about everything from navigation to graphics, visual and audio media, to a writing style. In gathering your content and preparing it for uploading to a learning management system, pay special attention to that last aspect--the writing style. Many people forego this consideration and their courseware is ineffective because of it. A solid or weak writing voice can make or break an online course.

A powerful e-learning course is based on the author's own expertise and personal experience. And because of the infinite number of courseware subjects that exist, and the different kinds of learning and pedagogical styles, it makes sense that writing style should vary depending on the context.

Unfortunately, the trend in e-learning writing has traditionally leaned towards "voiceless writing." The idea is to provide students with formal, blank-faced content, and that an author's "voice" should be found nowhere in the text. A completely impersonalized tone has been typically preferred.

But more and more people in the education community are finding that a strong voice in content isn't necessarily a bad thing--especially in e-learning material. The simple fact is that learners respond better to a voice with a personality, rather than a bland impersonal tone.

Sometimes, a bland, impersonal tone is necessary, and cannot be avoided. That's fine. But too often, course creators fall into the trap of intentionally creating difficult-to-read learning content so that learners will have greater respect for the course. This is simply a bad practice.

In reassessing the tone and language of an online course, be sure to revise well. Put your online course through what writers call "deep revision." Courseware developers must look over the course and make sure nothing looks clunky, out of place, bland, or extraneous. Every extraneous part should be taken out. Don't be afraid to make big cuts and revisions, and throw out whole sections if they seem unnecessary. Especially in reference to training programs, e-learning courses should be to-the-point, engaging, and one hundred percent relevant to what trainees will need to know, such as new skills, new company policies, etc.

In addition, take advantage of all the format and style options available in a course creation toolkit. Choose a syndicator or LMS that allows you to choose your own colors and gives you power over the layout.

Additionally, your online course material should be compatible with the course type. In other words, if whiteboard work, slides, diagrams, and other visuals would be important in a classroom version of the course, LMS materials should include an equal number of graphic images. According to a study by the University of British Columbia, which rated 127 online courses according to 43 criteria, how an LMS course looks can be just as important as the quality of the lessons themselves.

Online courses should be as visually pleasurable as possible. Visual appeal coupled with a clear, brief, and personalized tone, following a formal and consistent structure, is the winning solution to successful e-learning content development.

Public schools can now use Coggno's [http://www.coggno.com]learning management system for free. Create your free account now, visit Coggno at http://www.coggno.com/lms Call or visit:

Coggno, Inc.
1290 Parkmoor Avenue
San Jose, Ca. 95125

Phone: (888) 585-9978

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Create-a-Readable-E-Learning-Voice-in-Your-Learning-Management-System-Course&id=2716552

Create E-Learning Harmony With Communication Tools on Your Learning Management System

2009-08-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Robin_L._Green]Robin L. Green

Say you've prepared your e-learning content and are ready to upload it to an LMS for in-house distribution or outside syndication. To ensure its success on the marketplace or within your organization, follow a few simple guidelines.

Strong e-learning material is based on your own subject matter expertise and personal experience. And since there are an endless variety of courseware subjects, learners and contexts, not every guideline will necessarily apply to your LMS course. That said, one crucial element of a successful e-learning course is early communication with students. This includes pre-course basic training on how to use the LMS and other online tools, as well as how to navigate the online course itself. If collaborative tools like wikis or discussion boards are involved, clearly indicate how you'd like students to participate.

Guide students in course navigation through the use of videos. Take advantage of the easy-to-use video creation tools that LMSs often offer. Video tours are a great way to walk your students through their new virtual learning environment and make them feel comfortable.

The three basic aspects of communication are speech, gesture, and visuals. The online combination of these three elements helps recreate the natural ways people work in groups when they are physically present together. Utilizing these three elements--particularly the emotional signals of voice and tone--allows you to create a sense of trust and comfort for your students.

Another key to successful communication with students--which will ensure their ease of use and comfort with the online course--is the creation of a course outline or syllabus. A syllabus provides a space for you to break down and explain the course expectations and objectives for learners, and should be presented before any actual learning begins.

Particularly for the comfort of first-time e-learners, it's critical for them to understand as early as possible what to expect from a course.

A syllabus should include a few pieces of information about the online course. It should provide the instructor's email, office and/or phone number; the course date, length, and expected involvement; textbooks and other learning materials required; an outline of the LMS and course format and explanation of navigational features; a description of the course content; an assessment and project schedule; an overall evaluation plan; expectations related to student participation; and an outline of how learners are intended to interact using wikis, discussion boards, and other Web 2.0 tools.

In the course outline, advise learners to familiarize themselves with the LMS and the different kinds of information that can be found in each section of the course. Remind them that they will have to check it regularly for course updates and assignments. Be as specific as possible, describing in full detail the solutions for and consequences of missed classes or homework assignments, how students will be graded, class meeting times (if there are any), and any suggestions you can offer them.

Another useful function of the course outline or syllabus is to outline to learners the plagiarism policy. Although most people vaguely understand that plagiarism is wrong or not allowed, some may still be unsure about what exactly counts as plagiarism. And even though intentional plagiarism is more common, instances of accidental or uninformed plagiarism also occur and with your help, are quite preventable. Many learners are simply may not aware of the correct way to cite the sources they'd like to reference.

Along with your syllabus, attach a citation guide that tells how to cite articles, web pages, books, and other published information. MLA/APA style citation guides are easy to find online.

With the help of videos and a well-developed syllabus, you can help students feel secure and confident navigating their e-learning course and the learning management system. Help them feel at home in their online learning environment by quickly and clearly to establishing the features, scope, and tone of your e-learning course. Doing so will also help prevent any potential confusion or miscommunication, and create a harmonious learning and instructing experience for everyone.

Public schools can now use Coggno's [http://www.coggno.com]learning management system for free. Create your free account now, visit Coggno at http://www.coggno.com/lms Call or visit:

Coggno, Inc.

1290 Parkmoor Avenue

San Jose, California 95125

Phone: (888) 585-9978

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Create-E-Learning-Harmony-With-Communication-Tools-on-Your-Learning-Management-System&id=2747757

School Blogs Can Revolutionize Schools

2009-08-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

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http://EzineArticles.com/?School-Blogs-Can-Revolutionize-Schools&id=2592294

Elementary Teachers - Make the First Week of School Stress Free

2009-08-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Honey_Krumholz]Honey Krumholz

Teachers, do you know how to get ready for the new school year and then what to concentrate on that first week? Many teachers get stressed out just thinking about it, because it's important to get started on the right foot.

Thinking about the beginning of each school year always gave me mixed emotions. I was excited to get going but had some butterflies and felt slightly stressed with the work to be done to get the year started off right. I always had trouble sleeping the night before starting school.

I usually went in to school towards the end of August, as many teachers do, to set up my classroom and get organized.

Each teacher has their own routine, some don't set up their classroom until school begins, but whatever you do, you must know what you're doing that first week of school because your students are evaluating you as you are evaluating them.

So here are some of my suggestions to get the year started off right.

1. Classroom Layout

A classroom that is comfortable, friendly and colorful creates a very positive learning and social environment for your students.

You can make your classroom a place where your students want to be with your classroom decorations, classroom displays and bulletin boards. Displaying a student's work for others to see, is also a great way for you to build up their motivation and self esteem.

You can set up your student seating arrangements in different ways, although personally I organized the students desks in groups of 4-6. Eventually you have to socialize and work with all types of people later on in life, why not start now!!

Once your students are settled, allow them to take part in some of the decisions on the classroom layout, displays and seating arrangements, although you should keep in mind and they should know, that you have the final word.

2. Classroom Supplies

Each teacher will order their classroom supplies based on what they determine to be essential. Students and teachers will have different requirements based on the grade but here's a list of the basics:

* Pencils and Pens (for the older grades)

* Ruler

* Eraser

* Notebooks (one for each subject, Math books should have graph type paper)

* Lined Paper

* Blank, 3 Hole Paper (different colours - used for science or social studies units)

* Labels

* Duotangs (many boxes of different colours)

* Markers (a large variety of different colours)

* Experienced Chart Paper (lined and graph)

* Metric/Yard Sticks

* Tissue Paper (a variety of colours)

* Blackboard Chalk (a large variety of different colours)

* Blackboard Erasers

* Construction Paper (all different colours)

* Powder Paint and Brushes (powder lasts longer than liquid)

* Paper Cutter

* Popsicle Sticks

* White Glue

* Scotch and Masking Tape

* Kleenex Tissues

3. Classroom Activities

At the start of each new school year, I set three goals for myself for that first week.

1. My main goal is for me to learn more about my students and for them to learn more about me and each other as well. I do this by using several different classroom games and activities. Here's an example of one of the games that I use.

I call this game "My Favourite". The objective was for teacher and students to learn everyone's first name and get to know some things about about one another. Now here's how it goes.

* To play the game you need a soccer or similar type of large ball.

* Everyone sat in a large circle.

* I would start with the ball and think of a favourite thing, for example "food".

* I would say "My name is Mrs Krumholz and my favourite food is ice cream".

* I would roll the ball to any student. The student getting the ball would say his/her name and his/her favourite food and roll the ball to another student.

* Get the idea? Any student getting the ball would have to roll it on to someone who hadn't received the ball yet. Eventually everyone had a turn. The last person having a turn in a round, would start a new round and could choose a new "my favourite" topic.

2. Th next goal of mine was to get my students focused back on school work after a full summer of vacation. I started with a review of their previous year's work. For example, I would have made up 15 math questions or give the students a spelling review of previous year's words, grammar sheets, etc.

3. My last objective for the first week was to set the classroom rules, explain the student agenda, and make sure the students understood what was be expected of them for the year.

So a few final words - Be prepared, be organized, be yourself. But most of all be thankful that you have a job you love or really like and ENJOY!!

Honey Krumholz is a highly experienced school teacher. She is currently a college supervisor and mentor to student teachers. She provides seminars on her teaching strategies at York University in Toronto. Visit her website and get her teaching strategies on topics such as [http://www.priceless-teaching-strategies.com/classroom_management.html]classroom management plans or more details on her 7 [http://www.priceless-teaching-strategies.com]core teaching strategies

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New Teacher Tips on Back to School Preparations

2009-08-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dorit_Sasson]Dorit Sasson

The real trick in lesson planning for the first day of school is not to overplan and to keep the tone serious for learning. This means sticking to a routine, reinforcing rules and procedures and even spending the first five or ten minutes reintroducing them in class. Stick to the basics, avoid too much creativity. What students need right now is a consistent routine that will easily settle them into the school year.

I know this is easier said than done. You, as the new teacher, will spend more tme 'feeling' your way in the classroom during the first few weeks and especially during the first few days reading the students' responses, gathering information about their cooperation, and intelligence as a class. You will soon grow to know what makes them 'tick' as a class, who the troublemakers are and what you need to do to keep them when the lesson doesn't go right.

You will be imitating and experimenting with different classroom management styles and picking the one who feel most comfortable with. You will constantly have classroom management issues to deal with and this is where New Teacher Support can help you with tools and ideas for handling that particular classroom management problem.

It is probably an excellent idea to write out classroom seating charts and learn the names of your students. This quickly helps establish a connection with the students and helps personalize your teaching. It will only help you get a grip on classroom management problems before they become too unsettling.

This is where you also come in with your lessons. You should have a variety of worksheets and fillers but keep it to a few for those ten or fifteen minutes when you feel the students have absorbed enough and are passive enough to do some short writing assignment quietly.

Take into consideration also the time of day. Last periods call for more passive rather than active activities.

Good luck to all the new teachers starting the first day of school. Please feel free to email me with any concerns or questions you may have.

To receive your free ebook, "Taking Charge in the Classroom" and your free weekly ezine containing tips, news and other information for new teachers, visit the New Teacher Resource Center at http://www.newteachersignup.com

Dorit Sasson is a freelance writer, educator and founder and director of the New Teacher Resource Center.

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Homeschool - Why Do it at All?

2009-08-14T01:16:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=A_J_Adams]A J Adams

Aren't we busy enough in our lives with all that we think we must do or get accomplished to even consider homeschool for our children? By all accounts, homeschool done right is hard work and takes dedication to do it right. It's better done on a full-time basis, which means curtailing a regular nine-to-five job in order to get it done. Our income is going to take a real hit because of it. We might find ourselves having to work nights or weekends just to make ends meet unless we can find something decent that can be done from home.

It's also going to cost us more in out-of-pocket dollars for the course materials and supplies that must be purchased to homeschool our kids. We pay for public school education with our tax dollars, but there will be no refund of this money if we choose to teach our kids at home, only more money to spend instead of less.

Would it be so bad to just let the School District continue to take care of educating our children? After all, they have trained professionals teaching and they've been doing it a very long time. Why would we think we could do it any better than them? We didn't even graduate college. We didn't even take any classes on teaching, yet we're thinking about a homeschool for our kids. What could we possible be thinking?

The answer to all of these questions is a very simple one. It's all about the kids.

It's about what every good parent should be considering, the welfare of their children. Not only for the best education they can possibly attain, but also for their safety and personal growth along the way. Removing them from institutions that have become so controlled by the government that they just run the kids through the best they can while dumbing-down the curriculum so they can graduate as many students as possible and still receive their funding. Schools these days are all about conformity and abiding by the inane rules of mass education. Spending hours cooped up in a room of 30 or 35 kids of the same age all learning the same old tired information instead of learning in new and fresh ways that are actually a more natural way of learning for the human mind.

Starting a homeschool for your children would allow them to learn about things they would likely never get to learn at a public school. They would be out of the rat race days of buses, classes, cafeterias and getting bussed once more, No more staying away from home every day for six or seven hours. They could learn in the quiet of your home or on a meaningful field trip to a museum or historical site. They could read outside on the back porch on nice days. They could also avoid the inevitable emphasis on popularity rather than academics. Extracurricular activities also would be taken out of the picture and stressed as being so important like they are in public schools. They could be learning at their own pace, in safe and controlled surroundings and learning about some of the things they want to know about. They could be learning what you want them to. They could become well-educated and confident young people by staying out of the public school system. They could become young adults who would have a solid foundation in both education and life to tackle any situation head-on. They would have the tools and self-esteem to be happy well-adjusted human beings.

Nobody said a homeschool would be easy, but when you break it down, the why suddenly becomes why not? It's a no brainer.

A J Adams has had a keen interest in home schooling for a number of years. With several public school teachers in his family, he has had many discussions regarding current school problems. He's heard many suggestions, one of which was the growing number of children being home schooled. After a thorough period of research, he decided to write a series of articles about what it is like to homeschool. He also owns and maintains http://www.elementary-home-schools.com with his wife and family.

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Discover the Importance of Reading to Children

2009-08-12T19:13:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Debra_Proctor]Debra Proctor

I can't emphasize enough the importance of reading to children. By reading aloud to your children, not only will you form lasting bonds and great memories, you will be giving your child the gift of reading and helping them to excel in school and in life. Reading to your children has many benefits. What are they?

Well...a lot of things.

Reading to Your Children:

Gives them a head start and improves their language skills - Children that have been read to regularly are ahead of the same age children in their classes. They have better language and reasoning skills that help them to excel academically.

Increases their vocabulary - By reading books that are above your child's grade or reading level, you are exposing them to much more difficult words. While they wouldn't be able to read these words on their own, with you reading the words to them, they can learn new words and greatly expand their vocabulary.

Improves their imagination and creativity - Reading books to your child that include all kinds of different settings will increase your child's imagination and creativity.

This is a good thing. A good imagination and creativity will help your child develop the skill of problem solving and being able to think "outside the box."

Teaches them proper grammar and sentence structure - Listening to you read good quality books teaches your child proper grammar and sentence structure naturally.This will give your child a boost academically and they will have an easier time when it comes to learning grammar and writing.

Teaches your child to better express himself - Listening to the characters in a book solve their problems and communicate with others teaches your child to be able to do the same thing.

Improves listening skills - Because the books that you read to your child will be interesting, they will learn to sit, listen, and pay attention - they won't want to miss anything. This skill will carry over to other parts of their life.

Prepares your children to read - Nothing prepares your child to become a good reader more than reading aloud to them. It whets their appetite for reading good books, learning new things, going on adventures through books, and teaches them all of the skills mentioned above.

Instills a love of reading and good books - Reading aloud to your child opens up an entire world for her. She will love you reading to her and will learn that books and reading are good things.

Encourages your children to become readers - As your children get older, they will want to continue what you started by reading to them. They will naturally want to read because it was such an enjoyable activity that they shared with you.

It expands your child's horizon and introduces them to new experiences and places - When you read, the sky is the limit. You can be transported to any place and any time - experience any time period and a wide range of emotions. This exposes your child to many different situations that they can learn from.

Forms lasting bonds with your children - Read to your child daily. This time will quickly become his favorite time - time for just you and him. By doing this, you will form bonds that will last a lifetime.

As you can see, these are all good reasons to read aloud to your children.

Begin reading to your children every day when they are babies. Start out with "board" books. You know, the thick cardboad books that babies can't destroy (or at least not that easily). These books are great ways to introduce colors, shapes, animals, rhyme and rhythm to your babies.

As they get older, read a lot of nursery rhymes and Bible stories to them. Choose a Mother Goose nursery rhyme book that has pretty pictures. By doing this, you'll be exposing them to great art work too.

Continue reading to your kids until they don't want you to read to them any more.

Be prepared - they may be quite old before this happens.

Now that you know the importance of reading to children, there's only one thing left to do. Start reading!

For [http://home-schooling-haven.com/importance-of-reading-to-children.html]free lists of great books to read to your children, visit [http://home-schooling-haven.com/importance-of-reading-to-children.html]http://home-schooling-haven.com/importance-of-reading-to-children.html.

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Teach Your Child the List of Prepositions the Fun and Easy Way!

2009-08-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Debra_Proctor]Debra Proctor

Teaching your child the complete list of prepositions is one of the best ways to help your child excel in grammar. Learning these prepositions is important. Once your child has learned to identify prepositions and prepositional phrases, it's much easier for them to identify the rest of the parts of the sentence structure. Have your child learn the complete list of prepositions and the rest of grammar will begin to fall neatly in place.

Because there are 49 prepositions, many home school moms don't even attempt teaching them to their children. When you first see the list it seems even more impossible, but don't worry. It is easy for your children to learn them if you go about it the right way.

One of the best ways to teach the prepositions is with games. Games are always fun, they give everybody a break from regular homeschool work, and the kids have such a good time they soon forget they are even doing schoolwork. This is the way learning should be. By fitting in fun educational games, you can sneak in all sorts of learning.

So what games can you play? How about Memory Match, Hangman, Charades, writing silly prepositions stories, and drawing? All of these games and activities are adaptable from one to several children - however many you want.

These games also cover all the different learning styles, so if your child doesn't learn the prepositions right away or doesn't think the game is fun, just try another one. If you have a child who balks at doing traditional school and worksheets, play memory match or hangman with him.

For the creative child, have her write or tell silly preposition stories using as many prepositions as possible -- the more the sillier. Your creative child may also enjoy drawing pictures illustrating different prepositions.

For a free [http://www.home-schooling-haven.com/list-of-prepositions.html]list of prepositions and complete instructions to play these and more free educational games, visit http://www.Home-Schooling-Haven.com/list-of-prepositions.html

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Teach-Your-Child-the-List-of-Prepositions-the-Fun-and-Easy-Way!&id=2401345

Pros of Homeschooling

2009-08-11T23:37:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=A_J_Adams]A J Adams

Some people will tell you about the cons of teaching children at home, but I'm here to represent the pros of homeschooling. Many parents don't understand what goes on at their kids' schools these days. It's not the 1950's anymore. Classrooms are being dumbed-down to allow the under achievers to move on to higher grade levels to keep the schools' achievement rate high for funding purposes or conversely, to avoid being put on a watch list by their state education board. Smart students are being penalized in certain cases because they are being held back from their full educational potential and in certain instances being used to tutor the slower students. This can cause boredom and early educational burnout for the gifted student.

Homeschooling can be tailored to fit your child's abilities and learning styles. Some kids learn better with quiet study, for example. Not many public schools afford that kind of quiet. Others learn better with one-on-one coaching and encouragement. That's exactly what homeschooling is about. Some students get anxious about riding a school bus for sometimes hours a day. With homeschooling, there is no commute. You're already there when you wake up.

Another example of the pros of homeschooling is the fact that you can advance the education of your child as fast or slow as you need or want. If someone has a learning disability for example, you can go more slowly and use techniques to teach that may not be available in public school. It also removes the embarrassment that other school kids might inflict on a slow learner. On the opposite side of the argument, if your child shows gifted qualities in learning, you can feed them information as fast as they can absorb it. You can offer a broader and deeper base of knowledge on certain subjects if your child wants it. They can begin to become experts in fields of their choice or yours.

Peer pressure in public schools can be quite overwhelming for certain students, especially in their teen years. Fitting in and being popular is somehow more important than learning at most schools. And if you happen to be a student with some sort of physical trait looked upon as being different or uncool, you're going to suffer the wrath of the student body. Don't we all remember someone like that in our public school experience? Even if you didn't participate in the razzing, it was difficult to watch wasn't it? You probably wonder like I do at times whatever happened to some of those poor kids. All they did to receive such admonishment was not be able to afford the latest clothes fashions or had ears that were perceived to stick out too much or maybe they had a little weight problem. Even the slightest variance from what the popular crowd thought was cool would bring this kind of treatment. This is another of the possible pros of homeschooling. It all goes away before it can even start. Your child won't have to loathe going to school every day to face this sort of ill treatment. They can concentrate of the joys of learning and feel good about themselves.

There's another point to make. If your child is experiencing this sort of treatment in public school now, take them away from it and homeschool. There's really no reason not to. Whatever their age, get them out of that situation before it does permanent damage in the form of hating school, low self-esteem or worse. Allow them to enjoy learning again and relieve the harassment. You'll both be happier as a result.

To me, the pros of homeschooling far outweigh the cons by a large margin. It's more natural, it relieves the student of enormous peer pressure, it allows for a more personal teaching style and it presents an opportunity for a gifted student to excel. What could be better than that?

A J Adams has had a keen interest in home schooling for a number of years. With several public school teachers in his family, he has had many discussions regarding current school problems. He's heard many suggestions, one of which was the growing number of children being home schooled. After a thorough period of research, he decided to write an article about [http://www.elementary-home-schools.com/homeschooling-pros-and-cons.html]Pros of Homeschooling. He will be submitting more in future articles. Mr. Adams also owns and maintains a website with his wife at http://www.elementary-home-schools.com where you can get a free 10-part mini-course on homeschooling and watch a touching video made by a young man to thank his mother for her many years of homeschooling him.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Pros-of-Homeschooling&id=2679638

Special Needs Children's Education

2009-08-10T02:18:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=A_J_Adams]A J Adams

It's almost as though homeschooling was invented for a special needs children's education. Kids afflicted with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or Asperger's among other learning difficulties can all benefit from being taught at home by their parents. Some public school systems can afford to hire trained therapists for these fields, but the extra attention and time afforded a student at home by a loved one can make a big difference in a child's ability to learn. It's just natural for a parent to be able to teach their own child more effectively. They've been doing it for the student's whole life and know how to best approach new things with them. They will likely be more patient than a public school teacher and offer the extra time it might take to learn. A classroom would likely not be as able to offer the one-on-one time it might take until a student "gets it".

It's likely a parent would also know better than a public school instructor what manner of teaching would best suit their child. Some learn better with visual aids, some by repetition and some by seeing it done for them and copying what they're taught. It's very likely a parent would already know this from their own experience. They'll also know what to look for when a special needs child is getting frustrated and ready to act up or quit, thereby avoiding a bad learning experience for the child.

If you're wondering what sort of curriculum would best suit your special needs children's education, there are several avenues to get started.

We would first look on the Internet. Non-profit groups who support your child's disorder will likely have a presence there and should have good information about learning difficulties and how to overcome them. They will likely make suggestions or direct you to other good sources. They may even list case studies of various methods of learning and their success rates.

We would also try to find support groups on the Internet for your particular disease. There will likely be several forums on the Web where you can read others' posts and ask questions directly. Parents on these websites are often very willing to share their experiences and will offer help when they can. Although your child is an individual, often there can be common practices that will help almost all children suffering from a common ailment.

There are also many books available about homeschooling your special needs children. Some are written specifically for particular disorders and offer teaching suggestions as well as curriculum selection guides. Most are written by people who have been homeschooling their own special needs children, so they speak with experience and write in every day language, rather than from theory with medical-babble-speak.

If you start with these suggestions, you should quickly be on the road to solving how to best get your special needs children educated. It can be as rewarding for you as it will be for your child since you will have contributed directly to his education and well-being.

A J Adams has had a keen interest in home schooling for a number of years. With several public school teachers in his family, he has had many discussions regarding current school problems. He's heard many suggestions, one of which was the growing number of children being home schooled. After a thorough period of research, he decided to write an article about [http://www.elementary-home-schools.com/special-needs-homeschooling.html]special needs children education. He will be submitting more in future articles. Mr. Adams also owns and maintains a website with his wife at http://www.elementary-home-schools.com where you can get a free 10-part mini-course on homeschooling and watch a touching video made by a young man to thank his mother for her many years of homeschooling him.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=A_J_Adams
http://EzineArticles.com/?Special-Needs-Childrens-Education&id=2679703

Educating Children With A Learning Disability

2009-08-10T02:15:00.000-07:00

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=A_J_Adams]A J Adams

Homeschooling is an excellent way of educating children with a learning disability. The personal one-on-one attention is very stimulating and goes a long way towards a more focused learning experience. It also helps that the parent and child have a long history of knowing each other. There are no trust issues to get out of the way and the learning takes place in the home, so the child doesn't have to be afraid of leaving it to go to a strange school with potentially mean students.

A lot of kids are fearful of going to public school if they have learning issues. Other kids can be cruel sometimes and if they sense someone might be a little slow or otherwise different, they can be really cruel. This can be devastating to some children. They run from it, become self-conscious or learn to hate school very quickly. And who could blame them? Teachers try to reel in this sort of behavior, but they can't be there all the time. There's recess, the cafeteria, the bus and a thousand other places to verbally abuse the young student.

Whether the child is a slow learner, dyslexic or has some other disorder, homeschooling can help. There are many different programs and methods to choose from. Knowing how the child learns is important in picking the method and curriculum for a child of this type. Of course the parent does have this knowledge already and can find something appropriate for their student. A public school may have only one method they favor for teaching, but it may not be the best fit for your child. With homeschooling you can choose what you think will work the best and teach it as fast or as slow as you wish.

To help you out in the beginning or on an on-going basis, there are some great online and correspondence schools out there for kids with disabilities. You can check them out online before you buy or better yet find someone who's used them before. Checking in with forums or local support groups is a great way to do your due diligence on a curriculum. There's nothing like hearing from someone who's already been there. You may pick up some other teaching tips at the same time. It might also ease any fears you may be having about teaching yourself.

Don't forget about non-profit groups that may represent your child's affliction. They probably have websites where you can go and search for any suggestions they may have for teaching kids with this disorder. Chances are they will and they might even cite some success rates by using one method or another. This could give you some great insight into knowing which learning method path to take.

Educating children with a learning disability by homeschooling is an excellent choice. It will be much more effective for your child and can be a very rewarding experience for you.

A J Adams has had a keen interest in home schooling for a number of years. With several public school teachers in his family, he has had many discussions regarding current school problems. He's heard many suggestions, one of which was the growing number of children being home schooled. After a thorough period of research, he decided to write an article about [http://www.elementary-home-schools.com/special-needs-homeschooling.html]educating learning disability children. He will be submitting more in future articles. Mr. Adams also owns and maintains a website with his wife at http://www.elementary-home-schools.com where you can get a free 10-part mini-course on homeschooling and watch a touching video made by a young man to thank his mother for her many years of homeschooling him.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=A_J_Adams
http://EzineArticles.com/?Educating-Children-With-A-Learning-Disability&id=2679742