This free online course by the British Council focuses on the IELTS test (International English Language Testing System). IELTS is the world’s most popular English language test for higher education and global migration. IELTS is accepted by over 9,000 organisations worldwide including universities, employers, immigration authorities and professional bodies. Over 2.2 million IELTS tests were taken globally last year.
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Who needs an iPad when you've got a cardboard box?
"The ability to change is among the least-appreciated professional characteristics of a teacher.
This is especially true as education systems react to both external pressure, and internal instinct to change into something closer to truly progressive learning environments."
Grouping students is easy; creating effective student groups is less so.
The following infographic from Mia MacMeekin seeks to provide some ideas to help make group work easier in your classroom. The strength of this particular graphic is in the range of the ideas. The first tip refers teachers to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal development, which frames student ability in terms of a range: what they can do unassisted, what they can do with the support of a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO), and what they cannot do even with support. This is different for each student, and understanding these ranges for students can help inform grouping decisions, whether you’re using a peer instruction model, ability grouping, or another approach.
This free online course by the British Council is for English language teachers around the world. It will help you develop the skills and practices you need for your continuing professional development (CPD). The course will be useful for teachers of English at primary, secondary or higher levels.
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In this charming talk, author John Green shares the world of learning he found in online video.
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Tony Bates: "In my previous post, there were two sessions at the LINC 2013 conference that referred specifically to MIT’s own strategies for technology-enabled learning within MIT. These resulted in my asking the following question towards the end of the conference:
Why is MIT ignoring 25 years of research into online learning and 100 years research into how students learn in its design of online courses? "
Infographic on the 10 Trends to Personalize Learning
How do you personalize learning? First you need to know what personalized learning is. Here is a new site that provides resources, research, models, examples, and stories. This page provides a toolkit that can help your organization begin personalizing learning to meet the needs of all learners.
Check out the chart that compares Personalization, Differentiation, and Indivdiualization. You can download the chart and a report that explains the details of the chart. The Three Stages of Personalized Learning Environments can help you determine where you are in personalizing learning.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides the framework in personalizing learning for all learners. UDL also guides the design of the Personal Learner Profile[TM]. It provides the UDL lens to select the appropriate tools for the Personal Learning Backpack[TM]. UDL guides how Personalized Learning meets the Common Core.
Project-based learning may be the best vehicle for personalized learning as teachers move beyond "course-based" approaches and open the way for student-designed curriculum.
It's virtually impossible to imagine life without learning. We come into the world armed with little more than a bunch of primitive survival instincts, but it’s thanks to our ability to learn that we start adapting to the environment, going from helpless infants into semi-autonomous children before maturing into young adults. Still, when it comes to how we learn, most of us differ considerably at every stage in that process. Now scientists are learning more about that variation and what's behind it.
Psychologists have studied learning for over a century, but research in this area has really taken off in the last two decades. Most studies indicate that our personalities largely determine the ways we like to learn. In other words, who we are shapes how we learn. Here's what some of the latest research has uncovered about the most common learning styles and the ways we can learn to our fullest potential.