Online Learning

5 Innovative Teaching Ideas

What are the latest emerging and popular trends and teaching ideas in education? As trends tend to do, they change by the year. Consider how quiet iPads in the classroom have been recently, especially considering three years ago they were going to replace teachers and were compared to magic. While mobile devices like the iPad can indeed parallel a kind of magic in the learning process, it obviously has to fit into a progressive and…

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5 Biggest Educational Trends of 2023

Deciding what’s “trending” is an important part of digital publishing and social media interaction. Facebook articles, Google News, Apple News, trending hashtags on twitter, and even our own websites all depend heavily on statistics. It’s easy to have a problem with this concept philosophically–namely, the most popular isn’t always the most effective or the best. So what are the most popular educational trends? Here are 5 of the most common educational trends from the past…

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COVID School Year Roundup: 2022-2023

From teachers to students, anyone who’s been to class since March 2020 has had to deal with COVID-19. But for the class of 2023, that connection is a little deeper, as the pandemic hit during their freshman year and turned their time at school upside-down. “Kids were talking about ‘What are we gonna do after spring break?’ And I remember saying that we might miss a couple days, maybe a week after spring break at…

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How Do Students Transfer Learning?

Learning transfer is the practice of applying knowledge or meaning from a familiar context to an unfamiliar context. This movement requires re-contextualizing what students know, which first requires that they strip ‘what they know’ of all context, consider it in isolation, then adapt it to work elsewhere. This is a cognitively demanding practice. Of course, this doesn’t happen by admonishing students to transfer their knowledge, but rather is the result of transfer-by-design. This entails continuously…

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How Did the Pandemic Disrupt Student Learning?

How did the pandemic disrupt learning for America’s more than 50 million K-12 students? For two years, that question has felt immeasurable, like a phantom, though few educators doubted the shadow it cast over children who spent months struggling to learn online. Now, as a third pandemic school year draws to a close, new research offers the clearest accounting yet of the crisis’s academic toll — as well as reason to hope that schools can…

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The Art of Hospitality in Online Classrooms

As instructors, we learn a lot about our students by their physical presence in a face-to-face course, from their dress to their demeanor. Students also learn a lot about us this way, but that information is lost in an online class. The art of hospitality can fill the gap. Thus, it is important to invite students in to online classes right at the beginning to foster a learning environment. Here are some strategies for making…

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10 Free and Educational Online Gaming Websites

Online gaming websites can prove to be a treasure trove of learning opportunities, and there are a variety of content-areas, age ranges, and skill levels to choose from. The true pay dirt for browser-based learning games can be found on large online digital game hubs. Here are 10 educational online gaming websites that teachers and parents can use as one tool in their arsenal. 1. Primary Games. With games and activities that meet curriculum needs…

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Take Virtual Field Trips with These 35 Websites

Don’t have the budget for a field trip to The White House or Mount Everest? Take virtual field trips instead with these websites. Tour the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History or journey through The Grapes of Wrath using Google Earth. Keep a travel journal as you visit city after city and read about their cultures and histories. 360 Cities Access the internet’s most expansive collection of high quality 360 degree images and videos. Access…

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Academic Search Engines for Professional Student Research

Writing papers is par for the course for every student, which means that research is, too. Research helps restore and protect memory and enhances mathematic and problem-solving skills, as well as preparing the mind for a better understanding of concepts and theories. With the vast amount of questionably sourced information on the Internet, it’s hard to know where to turn for quality online research. That’s where these academic search engines come in. Check out our…

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The World is Changing; Here’s Why Schools Should Change, Too

Schools, as we know them, are changing. Shopping, as we know it, is changing. While both are obvious, one loss seems to breed opportunity while the other makes us hold on for dear life. Why? First, some context. Nestled between the perceived ‘old way’ (learning in person) and ‘new way’ (learning through computer) is Blended Learning. Blended Learning can be thought of as the bridge between eLearning and brick-and-mortar learning. It is a kind of…

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