What are some recent innovations in the field of teaching?

I agree with the other answer, in what realm are you looking for recent innovations. Obviously some of the biggest innovations are in the realm of technology and it’s use in the classroom. Compared to what I had in school, teachers have a variety of technological devices at their disposal. Allow me to share just some of what I have at my school.

All of the classrooms at my school have a television installed. Each Monday, my school has a character development class. The kids watch a video about a particular character trait and then they discuss it. With over 800 students, not all of them watch it at the same time, so the video is played over and over again at the master source, and teachers can simply turn on the TV at their appropriate time. One of my assistant principals began playing a PowerPoint presentation over the TV for morning announcements – he adds music and pictures to just the same old pledge, lunch menu, teacher birthdays. Plus (and I need to tell him this ASAP) it’s a great ESL strategy (I’m my school’s ESL teacher). Of course, VCR’s and DVD players can be plugged in to the TV to show those.

Each classroom has at least two computers. One of the computers is linked to the TV, which means that anything I can do over my computer, I can display via my TV. This means, PowerPoint presentations, CD ROMS, DVD’s, CD’s, etc. I like to have some music playing when my students enter the room, so I pop in a CD and play it through Windows Media Player with one of the visuals on. The kids get a real kick out of what’s going on onscreen. I introduce vocabulary and spelling words via PowerPoint presentations. I pair pictures with words as an ESL strategy. My district also buys into a service called United Streaming, which keeps educational videos on file, and I can access the website, look up a video by subject, grade, etc. and stream it over my TV. Wow! That’s fantastic!

My school uses several programs that are set up on servers so we can access information from any computer in the school. For example, we use a program called Accelerated Reader to help kids improve independent reading. They read a book, then they can go to any computer and take a short quiz about the story. They earn points which they can redeem for rewards. We assess them at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year to show growth. We also have these items called transponders. A teacher can display a short quiz on an overhead, and students grab one of these transponders and enters their answers into this. The devices automatically send the information to a computer, and the teacher knows exactly how many students got the answers correct/incorrect, which ones, etc. It’s amazing!! The possibilities for this are astounding.

Our computer lab uses lots of educational software. I also have Rosetta Stone which I have set up on the server so I can monitor my students’ progress.

I also wrote a grant to get video iPods for my students. I am able to download videos and audiobooks onto the iPods and the students can take them to their other classes – very portable and very cool.

Here is an article written by Lorrie Shepard that discusses recent trends and shifts in education and the role of assessment. It’s a wonderful article that I had to read for my Educational Evaluation course last semester. It does not talk about specific strategies or anything, but does talk about past and present paradigms in education.

Hi, it depends on what type of teaching innovation you are refering to.

You may want to check the George Lukas Educational Foundation website:

http://www.edutopia.org/

It provides a great amount of video material for the latest experimental methodology in the classroom.

USE DUOLINGO!!!! I have discovered SO MUCH on Duolingo. I am finding out Danish Very very speedily and Spanish & French are a little tougher however I am utterly in love with the web site!:)

the only thing new is the onslaught of technology in the classroom and the many uses…otherwise…math is math and reading is reading