Dr Mitchell Resnick, MIT professor of learning research, heads up the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten research group. He believes the greatest invention of the last 1000 years was kindergarten. Let’s explore some of the resources the lab has created, available to teachers across grades.
Empathy makes the world go round, or at least helps schools become the loving and caring environment that students need to succeed, no matter their background. Implementing a more empathic approach in schools helps support wellbeing for everyone involved, having a ripple effect on entire communities.
When it comes to effective self-care for real teachers, the general trend of recommendations centres around finding a community of teachers with whom you share the unique dynamic of stress. The best place to do that is within the ambit of Professional Development courses.
All students bring colour and individuality to their classrooms, no matter if they’re introverted or extroverted. Great teachers know that when students’ learning needs are met they can thrive academically. All students can benefit from having e-learning included in their instruction, but introverts will rejoice.
Students learn better in a warm and welcoming environment. They also reap the full benefits of social learning by having better relationships with their peers. Empathy can improve academic performance, but also in the long run help students be better listeners, colleagues, and even digital citizens.
Digital Humanities is delivering incredible tools and techniques to help students understand their world a bit better. The tools are typically easy to use, and can be adapted across grades and subjects — a true blend of technology and pedagogy delivering platforms for real insight as well as demystifying how data can reveal true knowledge.
Adopting an empathic mindset approach to classroom management comes with many benefits. Teachers who empathize with students will take less drastic disciplinary approaches and therefore the student-teacher relationships are improved. In turn, teachers find it easier to manage their class.
The field of digital humanities places strong emphasis on openness, self-criticism and reflection. Advanced cross-sections between the written word and digital technology are creating new areas of study in the humanities, especially in Higher Education, from digital archiving to topic modeling and many more.
The adoption and increased use of technology and other devices in classrooms are more than just fancy computers, tablets, digital boards, or the internet. Using technology is about engaging students in ways that will increase their learning and ultimately groom them for the digital workforce of tomorrow.
The educational possibilities within the world of physical books, library artifacts, fiction and classic literature have only just begun to be explored by pioneering pedagogs (primarily in higher education). Using technology that assists students to delve into fictional texts in both vertical, and horizontal ways, educators are reviving both the context and the content of classic literature for contemporary students.
