Occupational Therapists Renew Lost Art Of Handwriting

Occupational therapists from across Indiana gathered at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis on Saturday to teach young students how to better use their hands and fingers to write.

Educators said that handwriting has become overshadowed and somewhat outdated by the technology of laptops and smartphones.

Handwriting expert Kathleen Wright said learning to write by hand stimulates the brain.

"Studies show the importance of handwriting on early reading and writing, and how it affects the portion of the brain that the child needs to have activated for oral language development,” Wright said.

Wright said there's currently a ground-swell of renewed interest in the subject, especially among occupational therapists who assist teachers in Indiana classrooms.
Read more...

Source: WRTV Indianapolis

Occupational Therapists Renew Lost Art Of Handwriting

Occupational therapists from across Indiana gathered at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis on Saturday to teach young students how to better use their hands and fingers to write.

Educators said that handwriting has become overshadowed and somewhat outdated by the technology of laptops and smartphones.

Handwriting expert Kathleen Wright said learning to write by hand stimulates the brain.

"Studies show the importance of handwriting on early reading and writing, and how it affects the portion of the brain that the child needs to have activated for oral language development,” Wright said.

Wright said there's currently a ground-swell of renewed interest in the subject, especially among occupational therapists who assist teachers in Indiana classrooms.
Read more...

Source: WRTV Indianapolis

Internet start-up Bizmunky taking on big three by Scott Reid

FACEBOOK, LinkedIn and Twitter will be joined this week by a Scottish internet start-up with designs on taking on the big three by combining the worlds of social networking and e-learning.

Photo: Bizmunky.com

Bizmunky.com is the brainchild of Ross Hardie, a sales and training professional and Ed Cochrane, who works in the University of Edinburgh's business school.

The site, which is due to launch at Glasgow's Corinthian Club on Tuesday, is pitching itself at the "younger professional" with a mix of video and audio chat, social interaction and dedicated content.

The initial roll-out will also see the inclusion of an e-learning facility, which aims to tap into a library of "high quality, engaging and interactive" training materials across a range of topics. Based on a low-cost subscription model, Bizmunky Learning will be complemented by a download store dubbed the "i-tunes of e-learning.
Read more...

Source: Scotsman.com   

Internet start-up Bizmunky taking on big three by Scott Reid

FACEBOOK, LinkedIn and Twitter will be joined this week by a Scottish internet start-up with designs on taking on the big three by combining the worlds of social networking and e-learning.

Photo: Bizmunky.com

Bizmunky.com is the brainchild of Ross Hardie, a sales and training professional and Ed Cochrane, who works in the University of Edinburgh's business school.

The site, which is due to launch at Glasgow's Corinthian Club on Tuesday, is pitching itself at the "younger professional" with a mix of video and audio chat, social interaction and dedicated content.

The initial roll-out will also see the inclusion of an e-learning facility, which aims to tap into a library of "high quality, engaging and interactive" training materials across a range of topics. Based on a low-cost subscription model, Bizmunky Learning will be complemented by a download store dubbed the "i-tunes of e-learning.
Read more...

Source: Scotsman.com   

App Wrap: 'UNFoundation,' 'Google Wallet' by Adam Balkin

Learn more about an app which could change the way you make your purchases in this edition of "App Wrap."

Photo: YNN Austin

UNFoundation
The first step towards helping to solve a problem is learning as much as one can about the problem. At least, that's what the United Nations Foundation hopes as it launches its first mobile app called “UNFoundation.”

At its core, the app hopes to serve as a one-stop location to find out all the news and information happening through or related to the UN, from world health issues to climate change. There are straightforward articles, pictures and even some videos.

Google Wallet
Google sees all these cell phones in the world and has decided to let people pay for things with them in face-to-face transactions, much like how credit cards are used. To that end, the tech giant has just launched “Google Wallet.”

It uses “Near Field Communication,” which is a wireless technology that works over very short distances. Quite simply, once the cashier rings up a purchase, the buyer merely waves their phone in front of a sensor to pay.
Read more...

Source: YNN Austin

App Wrap: 'UNFoundation,' 'Google Wallet' by Adam Balkin

Learn more about an app which could change the way you make your purchases in this edition of "App Wrap."

Photo: YNN Austin

UNFoundation
The first step towards helping to solve a problem is learning as much as one can about the problem. At least, that's what the United Nations Foundation hopes as it launches its first mobile app called “UNFoundation.”

At its core, the app hopes to serve as a one-stop location to find out all the news and information happening through or related to the UN, from world health issues to climate change. There are straightforward articles, pictures and even some videos.

Google Wallet
Google sees all these cell phones in the world and has decided to let people pay for things with them in face-to-face transactions, much like how credit cards are used. To that end, the tech giant has just launched “Google Wallet.”

It uses “Near Field Communication,” which is a wireless technology that works over very short distances. Quite simply, once the cashier rings up a purchase, the buyer merely waves their phone in front of a sensor to pay.
Read more...

Source: YNN Austin

Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions

A new book titled "Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions" by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana proposes a six-step process for teaching students to formulate their own questions and take ownership of their learning.

The authors preview their book in a helpful article in the Harvard Education Letter Volume 27, Number 5, September/October 2011.

Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana's six steps:

Step 1: Teachers Design a Question Focus.
The Question Focus, or QFocus, is a prompt that can be presented in the form of a statement or a visual or aural aid to focus and attract student attention and quickly stimulate the formation of questions. The QFocus is different from many traditional prompts because it is not a teacher’s question. It serves, instead, as the focus for student questions so students can, on their own, identify and explore a wide range of themes and ideas. For example, after studying the causes of the 1804 Haitian revolution, one teacher presented this QFocus: “Once we were slaves. Now we are free.” The students began asking questions about what changed and what stayed the same after the revolution.

Step 2: Students Produce Questions.
Students use a set of rules that provide a clear protocol for producing questions without assistance from the teacher. The four rules are: ask as many questions as you can; do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer any of the questions; write down every question exactly as it was stated; and change any statements into questions. Before students start generating their questions, the teacher introduces the rules and asks the students to think about and discuss possible challenges in following them. Once the students get to work, the rules provide a firm structure for an open-ended thinking process. Students are able to generate questions and think more broadly than they would have if they had not been guided by the rules.

Step 3: Students Improve Their Questions.
Students then improve their questions by analyzing the differences between open- and closed-ended questions and by practicing changing one type to the other. The teacher begins this step by introducing definitions of closed- and open-ended questions. The students use the definitions to categorize the list of questions they have just produced into one of the two categories. Then, the teacher leads them through a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of questions. To conclude this step, the teacher asks the students to change at least one open-ended question into a closed-ended one, and vice versa, which leads students to think about how the phrasing of a question can affect the depth, quality, and value of the information they will obtain.

Step 4: Students Prioritize Their Questions.
The teacher, with the lesson plan in mind, offers criteria or guidelines for the selection of priority questions. In an introduction to a unit, the instruction may be, “Choose the three questions you most want to explore further.” When designing a science experiment, it may be, “Choose three testable questions.” An essay related to a work of fiction may require that students select “three questions related to the key themes we’ve identified in this piece.” During this phase, students move from thinking divergently to thinking convergently, zero in on the locus of their inquiry, and plan concrete action steps for getting information they need to complete the lesson or task.

Step 5: Students and Teachers Decide on Next Steps.
At this stage, students and teachers work together to decide how to use the questions. One teacher, for example, presented all the groups’ priority questions to the entire class the next day during a “Do Now” exercise and asked them to rank their top three questions. Eventually, the class and the teacher agreed on this question for their Socratic Seminar discussion: “How do poverty and injustice lead to violence in A Tale of Two Cities?”

Step 6: Students Reflect on What They Have Learned.
The teacher reviews the steps and provides students with an opportunity to review what they have learned by producing, improving, and prioritizing their questions. Making the QFT completely transparent helps students see what they have done and how it contributed to their thinking and learning. They can internalize the process and then apply it in many other settings.
Publisher: Harvard Education Press (September 20, 2011).
Read more...

Related link
Look Inside the book

Source: Education Week

Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions

A new book titled "Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions" by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana proposes a six-step process for teaching students to formulate their own questions and take ownership of their learning.

The authors preview their book in a helpful article in the Harvard Education Letter Volume 27, Number 5, September/October 2011.

Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana's six steps:

Step 1: Teachers Design a Question Focus.
The Question Focus, or QFocus, is a prompt that can be presented in the form of a statement or a visual or aural aid to focus and attract student attention and quickly stimulate the formation of questions. The QFocus is different from many traditional prompts because it is not a teacher’s question. It serves, instead, as the focus for student questions so students can, on their own, identify and explore a wide range of themes and ideas. For example, after studying the causes of the 1804 Haitian revolution, one teacher presented this QFocus: “Once we were slaves. Now we are free.” The students began asking questions about what changed and what stayed the same after the revolution.

Step 2: Students Produce Questions.
Students use a set of rules that provide a clear protocol for producing questions without assistance from the teacher. The four rules are: ask as many questions as you can; do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer any of the questions; write down every question exactly as it was stated; and change any statements into questions. Before students start generating their questions, the teacher introduces the rules and asks the students to think about and discuss possible challenges in following them. Once the students get to work, the rules provide a firm structure for an open-ended thinking process. Students are able to generate questions and think more broadly than they would have if they had not been guided by the rules.

Step 3: Students Improve Their Questions.
Students then improve their questions by analyzing the differences between open- and closed-ended questions and by practicing changing one type to the other. The teacher begins this step by introducing definitions of closed- and open-ended questions. The students use the definitions to categorize the list of questions they have just produced into one of the two categories. Then, the teacher leads them through a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of questions. To conclude this step, the teacher asks the students to change at least one open-ended question into a closed-ended one, and vice versa, which leads students to think about how the phrasing of a question can affect the depth, quality, and value of the information they will obtain.

Step 4: Students Prioritize Their Questions.
The teacher, with the lesson plan in mind, offers criteria or guidelines for the selection of priority questions. In an introduction to a unit, the instruction may be, “Choose the three questions you most want to explore further.” When designing a science experiment, it may be, “Choose three testable questions.” An essay related to a work of fiction may require that students select “three questions related to the key themes we’ve identified in this piece.” During this phase, students move from thinking divergently to thinking convergently, zero in on the locus of their inquiry, and plan concrete action steps for getting information they need to complete the lesson or task.

Step 5: Students and Teachers Decide on Next Steps.
At this stage, students and teachers work together to decide how to use the questions. One teacher, for example, presented all the groups’ priority questions to the entire class the next day during a “Do Now” exercise and asked them to rank their top three questions. Eventually, the class and the teacher agreed on this question for their Socratic Seminar discussion: “How do poverty and injustice lead to violence in A Tale of Two Cities?”

Step 6: Students Reflect on What They Have Learned.
The teacher reviews the steps and provides students with an opportunity to review what they have learned by producing, improving, and prioritizing their questions. Making the QFT completely transparent helps students see what they have done and how it contributed to their thinking and learning. They can internalize the process and then apply it in many other settings.
Publisher: Harvard Education Press (September 20, 2011).
Read more...

Related link
Look Inside the book

Source: Education Week

Elements of Connectivism by Stephen Downes

Don't miss this Keynote presentation delivered to Empire State College Centre for Distance Learning, Online to Saratoga Springs, NY via Elluminate, September 22, 2011 by Stephen Downes. 

Stephen Downes summarizes, "Presentation to the ESC Creativity and Multicultural Communication course on the topic of connectivist pedagogy. The argument made is that this pedagogy is based on principles related to what makes networks successful."

Elements of Connectivism

View more presentations from Stephen Downes

Elements of Connectivism by Stephen Downes

Don't miss this Keynote presentation delivered to Empire State College Centre for Distance Learning, Online to Saratoga Springs, NY via Elluminate, September 22, 2011 by Stephen Downes. 

Stephen Downes summarizes, "Presentation to the ESC Creativity and Multicultural Communication course on the topic of connectivist pedagogy. The argument made is that this pedagogy is based on principles related to what makes networks successful."

Elements of Connectivism

View more presentations from Stephen Downes