New Educational Era

   Students’ progress depends on a wide range of social and developmental competencies, such as the ability to monitor one’s own learning, persist at challenging tasks, solve complex problems, set realistic goals, and communicate effectively in many kinds of settings.

   This is a new educational era, where learning may become disassociated from age groups. Education can now be individualized and self-directed; educators become supporters who are primarily facilitators and mentors rather than lecturers. Educators work on distributed sources of content (virtual) and take place in a variety of physical settings.

   Teachers now days are looking for a different assessment, a different teaching method, documented by a portfolio of digital badges and real-world projects, rather than traditional grades or certificates. Yet, most schools continue to use standardized achievement tests, focusing exclusively on reading and math, as their primary means of gauging student progress with the existing K-12 education system.

   The world of education is currently undergoing a massive transformation as a result of the digital revolution. New technologies create learning opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges which allow all ages to pursue learning on their own terms.

   Educators should be able to adapt and incorporate the new power of technology-driven learning for the next generation of students. To be effective in this changing environment requires that the builders of the new education system understand the customization, interaction, and control of the technologies driving the changes in education. Education must provide people the knowledge they want when they want it and to support and guide them as they learn. Develop the ability of computers to give learners immediate feedback and to engage learners through simulation in accomplishing realistic tasks. And put learners in charge of their learning, so they feel ownership and can direct their learning where their interests take them.

   The vision of an educational system that can integrate all the different elements we see developing, is the key for the new educational era. But computers can carry out all the algorithms taught through graduate school, and yet mathematical reasoning is more important than ever. Therefore we should spend time teaching students to solve sophisticated problems using computers rather than executing algorithms that computers do well. Memorizing information is becoming less important with the web available, but people do need to learn how to find information, recognize when they need more information, and evaluate what they find.

Source:

A New Educational Era: http://vibrantlearning.aam-us.org/resource/resource-2/

A New Era for Educational Assessment: http://www.jff.org/publications/new-era-educational-assessment

Rethinking education in the age of technology: the digital revolution and the schools: https://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Collins-Rethinking-Education.pdf

Successful student strengths

Students should have an open mind. They must develop their critical thinking, questioning what they read, and drawing conclusions, but such findings must be based on research. Teachers should use research based approaches with solid basis, and of course, if the student makes a mistake, he or she will be willing to change their ideas based on evidence. 

Here are some strengths we can identify in successful students:

CURIOSITY

Curious students explore and discover new things; they become knowledgeable and learn about many different things. Because of students’ interest in discovering and learning new things, they will always have questions to answer. This is one of the greatest strengths a student can have: the love of knowledge which expands their mind.

WISDOM   

The ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight, is a virtue teachers should reinforce in students. This involves an understanding of people, things, events, situations, and the willingness as well as the ability to apply perception, judgment, and action in keeping with the understanding of what is the optimal course of action. Students should be exposed to new strategies, so we should have them create as many things as possible.

COURAGE                                                

 

Students should have courage to compete, to win, to achieve, to learn, to master challenges, to be recognized, have passion to face a difficult situation and come with a creative solution. If students know they are capable of doing so, nothing will stop them from achieving whatever they want. It’s not only the courage to prove to others what we can do; it is also a commitment to ourselves. 

BRAVE BEHAVIOR

The courage to master their fears and overcome adversity is a brave act from successful students. They earn respect and trust from others and they get emotional strengths, and become more confident when they have to face a problem.

PERSEVERANCE

Every successful student should finish what they start. A successful student is persistent even if he or she confronts obstacles. This type of student quickly develop passion over something, a new hobby, project or interest, and fervently try to find out as much as he or she can about it. Pulling through every situation to feel satisfied with the acquired achievements, they will go on and on until they feel satisfied.

TEAMWORK

The successful student works well with the team, or within a group of people, being faithful to the group and feeling as part of it. They usually attend to the climate within their group and the process by which they accomplish their tasks. These students are able to communicate clearly on intellectual and emotional levels. They demonstrate a sense of cohesion where respect, trust, self-disclosure, support, and openness, are part of the healthy climate around them. These students know how to function so they are productive and accomplish their tasks effectively.

"YOUR ATTITUDE DETERMINES YOUR DIRECTION".

A walk through students with learning disabilities head...

There are several indicators of disabilities presented in early childhood. Starting with coordination problems, unaware of physical surroundings, difficulty in learning new skills, or memorizing class, remembering things that happened, confusing basic words, lack of concentration, troubles with phonetics, reading errors such as inversions, transpositions, substitutions and letter reversals, problem solving simple math problems, impulsive behavior, and so on.

Disabilities are qualified in different types:

Dyslexia: The student has difficulty learning to read.

Dysgraphia: Is a deficiency in the ability to write primarily in terms of handwriting, but also in terms of coherence.

Dyscalcula: Students have problems reasoning and solving math problems.

These disabilities affect students learning skills directly, through study skills, reading and writing skills, oral and social skills, and math skills. They are unable to finish assignments on time, and they have frequently grammatical errors. They might have impulsive behavior and disoriented in time. Teachers need to be patient. There is also ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which is the behavioral condition also associated with learning disabilities because kids with this condition present difficulties concentrating enough to learn and study. They are easily distracted and have problems focusing. They are very active and can’t control their impulses.

Lets put our selves in this student shoe. First of all they know that they are different than the others and they cannot control their situation. “Learning disabilities are problems that affect the brain’s ability to receive, process, analyze, or store information” according to The Nemours Foundation. These problems don’t let students with these disabilities learn at the same rhythm as a regular student. These students get frustrated because friends are playing while they have to read over and over again being unsuccessful in learning, understanding, or memorizing what they are reading. They think is unfair, and they get appointments with the psychologist, teachers, and parents, not understanding why they can’t be like the others. Once they know that they have a problem they will probably feel worried, and they are going to ask themselves if they are going to be that way forever, and if they will always be unsuccessful in life.

Now days, there are a LOT of students affected by many kinds of learning disabilities, some of the students have more than one kind. Researchers have some theories, but we’re not exactly sure of what causes it. The theories they developed are basically three: Genetic influences (it runs in the family), brain development (brain development before and after birth, with low birth weight problems, lack of oxygen, head injuries and so on), and environmental impacts (environmental toxins, poor nutrition).

Guess what? Learning disability can be controlled! 

Once we diagnostic a student with these kind of problems, we implement strategies and they get some medicine treatment to help them cope with the disability. While going through the process, students are going to restore their self-esteem and confidence.

Lets give it a try! 

Put yourself in those children shoes!

Classroom decoration!

Hello again!
Starting the new school year with a lot of enthusiasm and looking forward to take the students in a very special journey they will never forget. As I have been saying through the other posts, everything starts with classroom decoration! And as I promised, here are some pictures of different ideas from the very talented teachers that work with me at school.
Lets start with the bee classroom!

The second classroom has monkeys!

Monsters all around... I really like this one!

Ocean decoration!

And more!