Tag: Learning Environment

Mar 25

What Am I Missing Here?

I need a fresh perspective on something I’ve been struggling with this school year. My reason for gamifying my courses was to motivate and engage more of my students whether they are gamers or not. Last week I reiterated something in blog post that I’ve learned in over 22 years of teaching, that no ONE …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2014/03/25/what-am-i-missing-here/

Aug 13

Results Only Learning Environment #RoleTalk

Monday night Mark Barnes held a Results Only Learning Environment or ROLE Twitter chat based on his book, ROLE Reversal. I read his book earlier this summer and I’m totally going to transform my classroom into a ROLE classroom. I’m actually quite close to having a ROLE classroom. For years I’ve been trying different things …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/08/13/results-only-learning-environment/

Jul 14

Almost Ready for Fall #3dgamelab

I’ve been obsessed with preparing a new method of gamifying my classes for the upcoming school year this Fall. I’ve written a bunch of posts sharing my journey to make a Results Only Learning Environment (ROLE) classroom that runs like a real life computer game using the 3D GameLab (3DGL) interface. I added more quests …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/07/14/almost-ready-for-fall/

Jul 07

Badges, Do We Need Them? #3dgamelab

Not sure, jury’s still out on that one for me. In my brief, 22 year career, I’ve tried incentives such as grades, stickers, beans in a jar, lotto tickets, class money, awards all the way to abolishing all of those, even the grades. The change to no rewards and punishments worked, but not as well …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/07/07/badges-do-we-need-them/

Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2013/07/03/characteristics-of-gbl/

Jul 15

My Two Cents on Standards

Okay, so this is a rant. There, I’ve said it. I’ve just been so put off by all this common core (next generation in Science) standards stuff (I didn’t write what I was actually thinking), so I thought I’d put my thoughts here on my place to think things through and learn. What I hate …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/07/15/my-two-cents-on-standards/

Mar 27

Grades and Feedback

Just a couple of years ago this is what my progress reports looked like. This is what I would give students every three to four weeks for the whole school year. This was what I thought would motivate my students. A majority of them were never motivated by this. And those who got “good” grades? …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/03/27/grades-and-feedback/

Jan 02

Learning About Cells

This year my Science PLC is focusing on using learning progressions. We’ve worked for years on eliciting evidence so we moved on to a new focus, namely sharing learning expectations. [Disclaimer: I’ve read some bloggers who raise some great points about sharing learning expectations and using rubrics with our students so I’d like to note …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2012/01/02/learning-about-cells/

Dec 30

Teacher’s Students, Parent’s Children

Something has been bugging me and the more it bugs the more I started to think, “why does that bug me so much?” I’ve been quiet about it but it drives me crazy when teachers are talking to parents and call their children their students. When that happens I think to myself the kids are …

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Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2010/12/30/teachers-students-parents-children/