Students Take Charge of Learning in the New Classroom

Of the following two options, which would be your preferred way of learning how to change a tire? Â Option 1: You attend a lecture on how to change a tire and then have to change your first tire in a real-life scenario. Option 2: You take a hands-on class where you learn about changing the tire by actually changing a tire. Then, you’re confronted with a real-life scenario. Which option do you think would have better prepared you for the real-life scenario when you need to change your own tire? New research would say option 2.
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The Popular Misconceptions of Learning

What does it look like when students are learning? Are they sitting quietly at their desks, listening to the teacher lecture, and scribbling notes? According to aÂ recent article in the Washington Post, those are three of seven misconceptions people have about how students learn.
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Unemployed Youth Cost More Than Money: Turning the Trend Around

America’s unemployed youth each take $40,000 a year from the economy and cost the government $14,000 in taxes, according to the articleÂ “What Does One Jobless Youth Cost Taxpayers? $14,000 a Year.” The “lost generation” is projected to cost taxpayers $437 billion over the next five years, and possibly $1.15 trillion in their lifetime.
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Bridging the Achievement Gap with Summer Reading

In recent years, closing the achievement gap has been high on the priority list. Among many signs, the achievement gap is evident in things like poor test scores and grades, higher dropout rates, and limited class participation. As legislation, educators, and parents look for ways to close the gap, improving literacy has proven to be a popular choice to tackle these problems.
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Going Global In the Classroom

With technology, students don’t need to leave the classroom in order to take a trip around the world. In November 2011, Edmodo, a social networking site, teamed up with Polar Bears International to send five people to the Tundra to film polar bears and stream webcasts straight to 1,700 classrooms around the world. Websites like Khan Academy, YouTube, and Stanford’s free online classes,Â have become highly accessible databases of knowledge available to people around the world. Social networking is being used in and outside of the classroom to extend the learning community for students after they leave school and for educators to connect with other teachers around the nation and world.
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Economic Climate Requires Creativity, Ingenuity, Tenacity

The recession has changed the way many Americans live, causing some to file for unemployment, go back to school, relocate, or downsize. The economic downturn is also showing effects of changing how the next generation of young adults will adapt to the changed economy they are inheriting. According to the NPR articleÂ “US Jobs Between Young And Old Is Widest Ever,” a new study by the Pew Research Center shows, in record numbers, young adults are choosing to live with their parents longer and delaying marriage to raise kids out of wedlock, if they choose to have them at all.
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Using “Think-aloud” YouTube Videos to Teach Math

As more classrooms integrate technology into the curriculum, the flipped classroom model continues to become more popular among educators, students, and parents. In the flipped classroom, students watch lessons, traditionally taught in the classroom, on YouTube or their school website and then do work, traditionally done at home, in the classroom. This learning method allows for students to learn in a self-paced environment and bring their questions to their peers and instructors where there is more time for one-on-one instruction.
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Peer Mediation Helps Extinguish Behavior Issues

It is estimated that 160,000 children miss school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students.

1 in 7 students in grades K-12 is either a bully or a victim of bullying.

71% of students report incidents of bullying as a problem at their school.

www.makebeatsnotbeatdowns.org/

Bullying and cyberbullying have been high profile stories in recent years. There isn’t evidence that points to bullying being on the rise, but rather that awareness is on the rise due to a combination of variants like bullying getting more dangerous, new forms of digital bullying emerging, and too much/lack of parental vision, according to education.com.

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Concern Social Media Will Redefine Communication

What will the effects of social media be on communication skills when a new generation of students reach college? What will the effects be when they enter the workforce? What about when they start a family and join school, work, and social communities?
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Increase Your Creative Thinking Skills with a Re-Designed Morning Routine

What’s one word that describes your morning routine? Rushed? Stressful? Old? How about creative?

New studies show the repetitive morning routines most of us have are exactly what we shouldn’t be doing if we desire flexible and open-minded thinking, according to the Time article “Why Morning Routines Are Creativity Killers.” One study published in the journal Thinking and Reasoning showed “imaginative insights” will more often turn up in our groggy and unfocused moments. These insights come to us because the mental processes that restrict “distracting or irrelevant thoughts” during the day are at their weakest when we’re tired. Creative thoughts erupt when a tired person tries to problem-solve because they have to “widen their search through their knowledge network,” leading to more possible, and creative, answers.
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