The Zephyrhills Free Press in it’s November 10th edition describes how second grade students at Chester W. Taylor Jr. Elementary School in Zephyrhills, Florida created dozens of “unique, handmade brochures” to help encourage tourism to their city. The brochures are the end product of an authentic and relevant problem-based learning unit developed by teachers during […]
In navigation, “true north” is the direction to the Earth’s axis. It differs slightly from a compass’ magnetic north, and from a map’s grid north. So it takes some reflection, calculation, and adjustment to find. In life, the metaphor plays out to mean finding one’s authentic life and living it to one’s fullest potential. So […]
In a Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, the teacher is a “bridge builder,” creating structures that allow students to take charge of their own learning. It’s important to ensure that at any point in time, you can look at a student and know what is going on in that student’s mind. Is real learning taking place? Protocols can […]
When you first learn to design a Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, you are faced with the paradigm shift of launching each unit of study with an authentic, open-ended, real-world problem to solve. You start by thinking through the problems students could solve at the end of a five-week unit if they learned everything. Designing the problem-based task statement […]
What would most motivate you to learn how to calculate the perimeter of a space? Someone tells you to learn it. You want to fence in an area of your yard and need to know the distance around it. Someone tells you you’ll need it for your future. I don’t know about you, but I […]