revised 11/29/23 For too long, executive function has been a term used primarily among special education professionals to discuss deficits, overlooked by mainstream educators as the path to achievement for all. Simply put, academic engagement that focuses on higher-order thinking and application is a door-opener for students! If students can thrive in academic rigor, they […]
revised 11/17/23 Since the original posting in 2016, the world experienced a pandemic that caused schools to acquire and place computing devices into the hands of every student. Suddenly, many schools became 1:1! But did instruction change? Read on . . . Change is hard! It requires some paradigm shifting; that is, a rethinking of […]
Note: If you click on a link to the IDEportal and are a subscriber, log in; otherwise, click demo mode. The goal of engagement should be “minds-on” passionate entanglement with the task at hand. In the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, we achieve engagement through the use of real-world, problem-based tasks to launch a unit. Given a […]
I hope it’s been a great week of taking time to stop and thank a teacher! As this “focus” week comes to a close, let’s continue to remember how important teachers are to creating the future. As schools struggle with working to improve student achievement, the reaction seems to be teacher-proofing instruction: providing highly scripted […]
revised 9/2/23 Think of a time when you were so engaged in performing an activity that you lost track of time, were totally energized and immersed in it, and you didn’t want to stop . . . Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined the idea of uber-engagement or “flow” in his 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal […]