The Best Habit Tracking Apps

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work”
(Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft).

What makes exceptional people exceptional? Are they different from ordinary people? Are ordinary people just lazy? Are exceptional people just lucky to be born with strong will power and self motivation?

Extraordinary people don’t wait for inspiration: they do things whether they feel like it or not. If you look at exceptional people, one thing they have in common is being consistent.

A successful writer will write X words every day. A successful athlete will exercise X amount every day. They have a schedule and they stick to it. They don’t wait to feel motivated. They act in spite of their feelings, not because of them.

Set Effective Goals

So you want to be successful and exceptional. Where do you begin? Phillippa Lally conducted a study to determine how long it takes to form a habit.

Over 12 weeks, they looked at 96 people who each chose a new habit and gave daily reports about whether or not they completed their task and how automatic it felt to do so. Everyone chose different tasks from drinking water to running. The researchers analysed the data, and found that it took anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a new habit. It depends on lots of different factors, but the average time it took to form a habit was 66 days.

It was also found that messing up didn’t really effect the formation of the habit. So don’t worry! It will take time to form a habit. And if you miss a couple of times, it won’t have a devastating impact on your habit. 

The best place to start is by working out what you want to achieve. Check out SMART Goals to find out how to set effective goals.

SMART Goals for Students

I recently tutored a grade 6 girl who needed help with maths and science before her exams. One thing her mom kept saying was that they shouldn’t have left things so late and that next year she wanted to be more proactive about getting on top of studying earlier.

Setting SMART goals is a great way for students of all ages and backgrounds to get out of the trap of leaving studying to the last minute and instead creating goals that will help you learn effectively from the beginning.

So, what are SMART goals? George Doran coined the phrase in an article he wrote about how to write management’s goals and objectives, but the nomenclature has taken off into many different spheres since then. The letters mean different things for different people in different contexts but it is a versatile tool for creating achievable goals with easy steps to follow.

Specific

If your goal is vague or too general, it is difficult to achieve anything. Make your goal concrete by breaking down your goal into smaller steps. Instead of saying “I want to do well in maths”, say “I want to improve my grade by 10% this term” or “I want to get an A for every test this semester”

Measurable

How will you know if you are achieving your goal? Create criteria to establish whether you are getting anywhere. If you want to do better in maths, plan to practice a set number of equations each day, work towards completing practice papers before assessments, and do online worksheets or quizzes once a week to practice.

Achievable

An achievable goal needs to be something that is within your ability to attain. If you are failing a subject, it is unrealistic to set the goal of getting a distinction. Rather, set the goal of improving by x percent.

Relevant

Do you have the resources to complete this goal? Does it fit in with your short-term and long-term goals? Why do you want to achieve this goal?

Timely

Slow and steady wins the race. A routine can help you accomplish your goals by avoiding procrastinating, and making sure you complete a little bit of your goal every day, rather than trying to cram everything in at the last second. Be flexible, but don’t let things slide!

SMART Goals Help You Monitor Your Progress

A major benefit of setting SMART goals is that you can monitor your progress effectively. How will you know if you’re improving if you don’t reflect on your work? Compare how many answers you get right on each worksheet or practice test to see if you are getting better, or where you need to make changes. Keeping note of how you are progressing in a structured manner will ensure that you achieve your goals.

Download your SMART Goals template here

Works Cited

Connell, G. (2016). “Setting (almost) SMART goals with my students”. Scholastic. https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/genia-connell/setting-almost-smart-goals-my-students/

Doran, G. T. (1981). “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives”. Management Review. AMA FORUM. 70 (11): 35–36.

Haughey, D. (2010). “SMART goals”. Project Smart. https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/smart-goals.php

 

 

Assessment, evaluation, and the learning process

Nitko and Brookhart (2011) examine how assessment can aid teachers and students to make decisions about the learning process. Assessment procedures can be used to give feedback to students and teachers, to motivate students to study, and to give guidance about what students should focus on learning. It is necessary to bear in mind the context of the decision making process when using assessment information.

Nitko and Brookhart provide clear definitions of four terms:
assessment, tests, measurement, evaluation.

• Assessment is the “process for obtaining information that is used for making decisions about students; curricula, programs, and schools; and educational policy” (3).
• Tests are narrower than assessment and can be defined as the instruments or procedures for “observing and describing one or more characteristics of a student using either a numerical scale or a classification scheme” (5).
• Measurement is the procedure in which numbers or scores are assigned to a “specified attribute or characteristic of a person in such a way that the numbers describe the degree to which the person possesses the attribute” (6).
• Evaluation is a more subjective term that involves “making a value judgment about the worth of a student’s product or performance” (6).

Although it is important to remember the distinction between these four terms, they are interrelated terms that can be used effectively to evaluate students, lesson material, policies, and educational institutions.

There are a number of ways assessment procedures can aid teachers and students. They are a primary way to gather information that can be used to make decisions before, during, and after teaching. Decisions need to be made regarding

• selection

• placement

• counselling and guidance

• credentialing and certification

Finally, assessment procedures can be used to

• give feedback to students and teachers

• motivate students to study

• give guidance about what students should focus on learning

 

Reference

Nitko, A.J. and Brookhart S.M. (2011). Educational assessment of students (Kindle version). Available from Amazon.com.

 

Techno-nursingeries.

I watched this:

blob:https://embed.ted.com/6da050f4-f9dd-4cc4-a1a1-c20104ee873b

and I read this: The Preschool Inside a Nursing Home

and I thought: We need to do this in South Africa right now!

Imagine the potential of combining kindergarten and old age homes in SA?

Saves on staffing if you have caregivers who can look after kids and grandparents.  The grandparents have so much wisdom and knowledge and love to offer the kids. Add technology to the mix and we have a real game changer!

Life-long learning centres

A place to start might be with life-long learning centres in areas that have the least developed facilities. A centre where people can come to get some food, get some medicine, but also just spend time together learning and playing with technology.

What needs to be done to get such a project started?

Who has the knowledge and resources to get a project like this going? Or perhaps update existing projects with technology instead of getting resources for a completely new one?

So much potential for new growth and development in SA, it really is interesting times.

Assessment Tools for Evaluating Instruction and Assessing Student Learning

Evaluation and assessment are crucial aspects of the teaching and learning process. I will begin by distinguishing between evaluation and assessment as defined by Newby, Stepich, Lehman, Russel and Ottenreit-Leftwich (2011) in Educational Technology for Teaching and Learning. Then I will discuss two techniques I have employed to evaluate my instruction, namely student tryouts and talking with students. Lastly, I will discuss a standard and an alternative assessment procedure. In this context, assessment of students is used as part of the process of evaluating materials, instruction, and curricula. I will demonstrate how evaluation aids in the process of ensuring that curricula, instruction, and decisions made in the lesson are sophisticated and well crafted.

Check out the reflection on this assignment.

Instructional Techniques, Media, and Technology

The appropriate use of instructional media can enhance the learning process.
I explore how a presentation and a webquest
can augment a lesson about cultural notions of beauty.

Check out the reflection (TLDR) based on this assignment.

Instructional Methods: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Limitations

In the last few years I have had the opportunity to develop my own lesson material and assessment procedures. I decided to adapt an existing lesson, and make it available as an e-class. The lesson I chose to adapt is about idioms, specifically writing a bucket list.

Check out the lesson outline and reflection related to this assignment.

Comparing Behaviourist and Experiential Learning Theories

An eclectic approach to learning and teaching can provide instructional experts with multiple approaches to enable efficient learning. Different learning theories can be employed depending on the objective of the lesson, the context of learning, and the nature of the learners. I compare behaviourist learning theories with experiential learning theories.

Quick and Easy ESL Halloween Lesson

This is a quick and easy Halloween lesson I did with my students aimed at kids aged between 4 and 10.
The lesson can be adapted for different speaking levels.

Ako

The Maori word for learning, ako, does not “differentiate between those who dispense knowledge and those who acquire it. Knowledge is always a collective entity”[1]. Why do we not have a word just like this? Education is a reciprocal process in which the teacher and student embark on a quest together to find out something new about themselves, each other, the subject matter, the journey itself…