What is learning?

The Scottish Educator Euan Macintosh reports on the work of a school in the US where pupils are pushing the boundaries of learning - they're taking part in a project to create a new type of biodiesel which would be more efficient than existing methods. The class applied for two patents this year, and two communities in Guatemala are developing the product to provide fuel for real.

Planning is undertaken along these five structures:
Desired results: where do you want to go
Learning objectives
Understandings: the big ideas - why are we teaching or learning this?
Essential Questions: The throughline - what do we keep coming back to throughout the inquiry?
Skills and Content: What is the stuff that we have to know to get to those big ideas?
Assessment
If, after a period of learning, you assess by giving out a test, you are not doing project-based learning. Tests and quizzes are but a dipstick, a quick snapshot of where everyone is at. The projects themselves, the projects that are the creation of the students themselves, are the main assessment tool.

Read more here.

Better presentations

For anyone who has started to glaze over during a Powerpoint presentation, there is some extremely helpful advice here about how to make them more effective.
There are links to practical tips here.

Teacher Resource Exchange

This site may be old news to some but it's worth checking out as a place to share and borrow ideas and resources with teachers across the country.

New media and AFL

There is an interesting account here of how a Scottish teacher of MFL is using new media to successfuly support Peer Assessment.

Linited choice

The Teaching Expertise website produces a regular bulletin that focuses on Behaviour Management. A recent issue looked at how offering pupils a limited choice can help to improve behaviour in the classroom. Check out the article here.
Thanks to Claire Fleming for the link.

Blooms' resources

There are a lot of resources for using Blooms' Taxonomy in the classroom as a tool to develop pupils thinking skills at this website here.

Thanks to Zoe Newbery for the link.

Thinking skills online

Futurelab have produced an online resource that they describe below:

Exploratree is a free web resource where you can download, use and make your own interactive thinking guides. Thinking guides can support independent and group research projects with frameworks for thinking, planning and enquiry. We’ve provided a set of ready-made guides which you can print out or use online. All of the guides are completely customizable or you can start from scratch and make your own! You can share them and work on them in groups too.

You need to register first. Check it out here.