Change Issues in Curriculum and Instruction/Final Assignment Links/Change Issues -- Master List

I will put the complete list here by Friday afternoon. -Pete

Argh... Who loves ya Pete?

1. Moving up the Food Chain: Become comfortable with questioning our own / the system’s assumptions and traditions about the way education should work.

2. Moving Beyond “Wrong” = “Bad”: Realize that mistakes are not purely bad.

3. Redefining “Cheating”: Last century’s definition is no longer necessarily the best one.

4. Knowing What You Don’t Know vs. Knowing What You Know: Understand that the former is probably more important.

5. Feedback and Isolation in Digital Environments: When isolation can be physical and/or psychological, what can be done to allow for meaningful feedback?

6. The Digital Divide: The various issues that surround access to technology play a major impact on the extent to which and ways in which technology can be effectively employed in today’s educational system in American and beyond.

7. Recursive Learning: Learning does not always happen in linear fashion.

8. How School Policy Should be Influenced by Social Software

9. What Teachers Need to Know about Social Software: How do we know what to use? How do we find it? How do we use it effectively?

10. Differentiation: Meeting the Educational Needs of All Learners

11. Multi-Tasking: Plusses and Minuses—Understanding the dynamics of multi-tasking

12. Sychronous vs. Asynchronous Learning: What are the advantages and disadvantages of both? Is there a "happy medium"?

13. Mobilizing Social Software: Effective Use of Technology to Help Promote Critical Thinking in the Teaching and Learning Process

14. Teaching "Collabulation": How can we teach students to develop their own systems of classification along with their peers and the community?

15. Online Games: Effective Use in an Educational Environment

16. Digital Divide: How long do we wait to implement these new technologies without waiting too long?

17. Age-Specific Social Software: How can social software be classified with respect to age-appropriateness? Can these software transcend age brackets?

18. Cellphones: Should students have their teachers' cell phone numbers?

19. Social Software as a Crutch: At what point does social software stop being productive and start functioning as an excuse for irresponsibility?

20. The Social and Cultural Implications of Social Software: How Technologies Can Amplify Every System's Strengths and Weaknesses

21. Social Software Adding Meaning to Student Work

22. Balanced Constructivism: Challenging Within Boundaries

23. Learning how to Learn (and Teach): Experimenting with One's Own Learning (and Teaching) Styles

24. Perspective

25. Reform in Reality: How can educators' good ideas actually be implemented in the real world?

26. Teachers as Content Authorities: How can teachers teach effectively without "knowing everything"? What is an appropriate level of student participation in the teaching process? Switching roles (teacher/learner) across a continuum at appropriate times.

27. Linking the Unknown to the Known

28. Educational By-Products: Learning One Thing After Being Taught Another

29. Maximizing the Effectiveness of Dialogue: Effectively Using Conversation in Education

30. Distraction:

31. Effective Consumption of Information: Navigating the Ocean of Information

32. The Right Tool for the Job: How can we find the appropriate tools (software, etc.) to achieve our various educational objectives?

33. Wiki and Rhetoric: Re-evaluating Rhetorical Principles Based on Web 2.0 Innovations

34. Involving Parents in the Learning Process Through Web 2.0 Innovations

35. Addressing Resistance: Converting the Web 2.0 Nay-Sayers

36. Making Connections Through Web 2.0: Between Parents and Teachers, Teachers and Teachers, Teachers and Students, etc.

37. Diverse Curricular Support Materials: YouTube and other Web 2.0 Innovators Providing Diverse Educational Resources

38. Tailoring Web 2.0: How can we make these technologies engaging for diverse groups of people?

39. Helping Collaboration Exist in a Standards-Based Educational Environment

40. Keeping Up and Knowing What to Keep Up With: How do we know what questions to ask?

41. Who's Responsible? Who should be held accountable for making change happen?

42. Believing That Change Can Happen: Becoming Comfortable with Risk

43. Professionalizing the Teaching Profession: Teacher and Administrator Accountability and Effective Motivation

44. Teaching Ourselves and Our Students to Learn Through Trial and Error: Self-Study, Fear of Risk, etc.

45. Individuality's Relationship to Isolation: Does the "American way" set us up for isolation?

46. Context rather than Content is of primary importance.

47. New Learning Theory

48. Searching is A PART of Learning—not the whole process.

49. Disconnect between theory and practice with reference to testing.

50. Tests may be expedient, but they might not be authentic.

51. Tests geared toward low-level learning.

52. Preparing for tests replaces instructional time.

53. SOLs as Ceiling Rather Than Floor

54. The Future of Accountability? -- Dumbing down the test? Incentives for Passing?

55. Accountability cannot work if it stops in the schools.

56. Disconnect between policy-makers and practitioners.

57. Taking advantage of opportunities for input—finding a common ground.