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Videos About Problem Based Learning

I asked a question asking if anyone had videos explaining problem based learning or demonstrating it in practice. Within a couple of minutes I had the following responses.

@clear_mason_jar:
The Avalon School in MN practices student-led PBL. Here are some resources: http://www.avalonschool.org/project-based-learning-pbl/ #edchat

@cybraryman1:
My Project Based Learning (PBL) page (includes rubrics, checklists): http://bit.ly/aNw4Z0 #edchat

@tomwhitby:
@davidwees Here you go a PBL Video http://bit.ly/ahWIoF #edchat

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The Language of Technology

I was helping out a teacher today who had been excited because he had learned how to do something new on his computer and he got stuck. He thought all of his work had been lost, so he came to me and asked for some help. It turned out it wasn't lost, he just didn't know that a small triangle like this one circled below meant that you could click on it and see more information. He was pretty pleased that his problem had a simple solution but a little embarrassed he didn't know the solution.

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Every educator should experience being a bad student

Last weekend my wife and I went and took the Seabus across the water in Vancouver to North Vancouver because she heard that someone was offering free Cha-cha-cha dance lessons. We were both excited on our trip over because both of us really like to dance. We brought our son because he likes to dance as well and we thought it would be a good experience for him to learn about a different type of dance.

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The Death of the Amateur Mathematician

Knowledge has always been advanced in human culture based on the ideas of others. Our entire knowledge structure today is based on what we, as a species, learned in the past. Each generation learns what the previous generation already knew, and then expands upon this base of knowledge for the next generation.

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Five recommendations for teachers

Here are some recommendations that I think, if you aren't doing, can really impact your teaching next year.  Please post any other recommendations in the comments below. I have been using all of these (aside from #1 which I only just implemented this year) for the past few years in my own teaching practice and I find they have really helped me improve my teaching.

1. Spend lunch time with your fellow teachers whenever you can, relationships are more important than 30 min of work.

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Eight Videos to Help Teachers Get Started Using Twitter

Here are eight videos to help teachers get started with using Twitter. The idea for these videos is to make them short and to the point and provide specific instructions on how teachers can use Twitter.

How to sign up for Twitter

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You might be a hardcore Twitter user if

You might be a hardcore Twitter user if:

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Most effective teacher in my friend's school

My friend, whom I met when I worked in an international school in Bangkok, worked in a bilingual school in Thailand before the school where I met him. He said it was an interesting job, but he was glad to be working at a school with a different emphasis.

The school he worked at had pretty good test results, some of the best in the country. Students would consistently score well on the state standardized tests held all over Thailand. So my friend went to observe the best teacher in the school, as measured by how well her kids did on the standardized tests.

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What the Math class can learn from the Arts class

I just read this article from 2007, originally posted in the Boston Globe, but available here online.  The point of the article is that participation in an Arts class helps students learn skills which may not be present elsewhere in their school as a result of a narrowing focus of schools on standardized testing.

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A 21st Century Learning Proposal

Here is a great video shared on the Edweek blog.

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