Common Terms for this Website.
Gamification: A 21st century term which applies the goal and reward concepts introduced in Video Games to Business and Education. Used to entice customers to keep using a product or to keep learners interested in content. Famously utilized on Web 2.0 sites like codecademy.com and khanacademy.org
Student Centered Learning: A new-age teaching concept that directs education towards student directed projects, group projects, and tasks. Functions in much the same way as a workshop or seminar style session, and allows the student to stay passionate about their learning by directing the focus. The educator often plays a passive facilitator and helper role in this style of education, rather than an active lecturer.
Social Emotional Learning: A focus by educators and schools on instilling ‘Well-Roundedness’ in an individual student on all levels; Academically, Emotionally, Socially, and Socio-Economically (to an extent). Can take a variety of different approaches and forms, but focuses on building relationships with students and creating a sense of community. There are some who dislike this style of education as it tends to blur the realms of personal and professional when done successfully, especially in smaller towns or communities.
Curriculum: Government mandated content. Often is a legally binding document that requires specific themes, concepts, and other points to be covered by the teacher as part of the teacher’s role as a government or institution employee. Has been challenged in recent years by various concerns regarding the selection of material and the subjectivity of region and applicability, to the point where it has become incredibly vague and open to interpretation in many forms. Many have pointed to the Post-Secondary model of professors teaching content catered to their unique research and specialty fields.
Formative Assessment: The act of assessing students in a way that not only offers opportunities for learning, but that functions as a way of informing the teacher how much and at what level the student is learning. Is becoming more popular in education due to often being more fair to students than a majority of written testing practices, and allowing for ungraded learning with lower stakes for stress-reduction.
Summative Assessment: The traditional assessment model in which a student is assessed for how much they know about a subject, particularly after learning about a specific subject. Useful as a clear-cut way to get marks for students and calculate gained knowledge, but is being challenged because it’s increasingly unfair to different students who learn better in non-traditional ways, and is not as compatible with multi-modal assessment as other approaches. Not all students do well in testing environments for a variety of reasons, examples being students who are poor at written tests or have anxiety issues during timed test periods, and need oral testing or alternate environments.
Social Media: Any social networking website or tool that allows interaction between two or more users on a network scale. Is predominant in the modern world as of approx 2003-2006.
Smart Tech: Technology that acts in new interactive ways, such as Smart Boards, Tablets, and IR Compatible Devices. Smart Phones also fit into this category as they fulfill a niche close to a personal computer, but without the learning curve of traditional desktop OS (operating systems.)
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