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edublog awards/nominations are up....great way to find new blogs to read/follow
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from the open source project that can play anything comes the tool that can convert anything.
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Free Technology for Teachers: 10+ Alternatives to Drop.io
Drop.io replacements
Monday, December 6, 2010
What I learned this week 12/07/2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
What I learned this week 12/06/2010
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easy post with text...perhaps use as student made vocab tool
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28 Tech Tools to Bring Out the Story in History - TheApple.com
online tools to make history more appealing (always my favorite subject)
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Free online web polls generator
worth a try for quick results
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Equation of Success: Top Ten Responsibilities that Students Must Own | Edutopia
Great advice for all students....although more applicable the older a student gets.
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Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: 6 Nifty Ideas For Using Google Apps In The Classroom
Good tricks for the classroom
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PBL DO-IT-YOURSELF : Guidance, Tools and Tips for Your Projects | Buck Institute for Education
PBL DO-IT-YOURSELF
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The 7 tacit lessons which schools teach children - Mind Dump
Food for thought
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Animating Your Lessons with Some Drama: 20+ Resources | Teacher Reboot Camp
Add drama to your lessons
Thursday, December 2, 2010
What I learned this week 12/03/2010
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ASCD Express 6.04 - 10 Essential Strategies for Teaching Boys Effectively
Seems to be in the news a lot recently....boys need to be taught differently. Good list of ideas...
Monday, November 29, 2010
A’s for Good Behavior - NYTimes.com
A’s for Good Behavior - NYTimes.com
Interesting yet brief article detailing how one school is making the transition to standards based grading.
Several quotes from the article really stood out for me and made me ask some interesting questions that all teachers in our school should reflect upon.
Do we suffer from "grade fog"? -- ie do our grades communicate student learning or mastery of content or more than that. If it is more than that can our students and parents really know how well they are doing?
Do we grade for compliance?
What percentage of our grades reflect a student doing, saying, or acting a way we have asked or told them to do. Do we grade for completion of work or mastery demonstrated by the execution of that work?
Are grades flexible enough for a student to improve upon them as they are able to do so? If a student fails a test or doesn't score well do we allow them to retake the test. Yes, making a new test is a pain, but isn't the goal of the test for teachers to also help determine what and how much a student has learned. If the test does reveal that a student isn't learning as much as expected do we give the student a chance to continue learning and show their mastery at a later date?
If we allow the students do retake a test which grade do we use? The first one, the most current one, or an average of the two. I'm guessing most teachers would say an average of the two. Mathematically it makes sense....using a second test to raise the first. However, if we are using grades to show what a student has learning/mastered/achieved shouldn't we just use the second measure since it is closer to real time.
When a sprinter runs a race we don't average the various heats together. What matters is what they do in the final run. Shouldn't we extend the same courtesy to our students?
Sunday, November 28, 2010
What I learned this week 11/29/2010
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Presentation for parents as partners
Great presentation about how we can harness Net tools to get parents involved in our classroom.....don't push them away
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Economists want to stop teachers' degree bonuses
Economists are weighing in on teacher pay and the lack of evidence that higher degrees = better learning. Is pay for performance much further behind?
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100 Incredible & Educational Virtual Tours You Don’t Want to Miss | Online Universities
Wonders of the Internet never cease to amaze
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Technology to Engage, not Distract | Connected Principals
Tech can be so much more than a filler or looking for better engagement...use tech!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Technology to Engage, not Distract | Connected Principals
Technology to Engage, not Distract | Connected Principals
There is plenty of discussion about student engagement these days or more accurately the lack of student engagement in the classroom.
Teachers are always commenting in the lunchroom or wherever they congregate that this year's kids don't listen as well as last year's students. I've even heard teachers say they fear for our nation's future as our students just aren't very good listeners.
Is it that they aren't good listeners or is it that they just aren't "buying what we're selling"?
I would urge all teachers (even those reporting good engagement in their classroom) to view their classroom from the perspective of their students.
Answer these questions:
Could you really handle being a student in your own classroom?
How engaging would the experience be?
Would you be tempted to tune out?
How much do you spend "lecturing" or reciting facts to your students?
What percentage of the time are you in charge of the information?
What percentage of the time are you the students in charge of the information?
Before you tell me it is easy for me to judge you, I need to tell you that I judge myself fairly harshly in answering those questions.
I don't think of my classroom as lecture, but I do spend plenty of time presenting what Marzano would call "procedural" knowledge. I want the students to know what buttons to press when in the software we use. In fact I spend so much time talking procedures that they don't nearly enough application time. How can they learn the "procedures" if we don't spent nearly enough time with the independent practice? It is a battle that I struggle with each week. At what point have I given the students enough knowledge/information that they can move to independent practice? Sadly, I don't know the answer to that question and mainly it is because the answer is different for different learners and I need a formative assessment to get a better sense of when they are ready to move forward.
So what say you, would you be able to survive your own class?
Sunday, November 14, 2010
What I learned this week 11/15/2010
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Great site help you fill out your feed reader
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practice basic math skills against other students
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Free Online Whiteboard and Collaboration Tool - Scribblar.com
this one has some promise for at home support
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Connect Safely |A Parents' Guide to Facebook | Safety Advice Articles
parent's guide to facebook...hope it tells parents to keep their kids off facebook until old enough
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Teacher Training Videos created by Russell Stannard
tool training site for teacher
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Where to Stash and Share Your Stuff After Drop.io Shuts Down
Drop.io is going away...here are some alternatives
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
What I learned this week 11/08/2010
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The Answer Sheet - Willingham: How sugar really affects kids
Funny how certain "myths" seems to last quite a long time.
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Learning English - The Teacher
Idiom videos from the BBC
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Douglas Reeves' articles
I've long been a fan of Doug Reeves and his ideas for improving education.
The Leadership and Learning Center makes many of his articles available for us to read. Among the more recent (and always interesting) articles are:
The Write Way
http://www.makingstandardswork.com/sites/default/files/articles/article-1011-asbj-wrtie-way.pdf
Writing improves achievement....we need more!
Fixed or Multiplier
The qualities that make someone a great superintendent (leader)
Focus: The Forgotten 21st Century Skill
http://www.makingstandardswork.com/sites/default/files/articles/09-fall-the-trillium-focus-the-forgotten-21st-century-skill.pdf
Now what was I doing before I found this article?
The Leadership and Learning Center makes many of his articles available for us to read. Among the more recent (and always interesting) articles are:
The Write Way
http://www.makingstandardswork.com/sites/default/files/articles/article-1011-asbj-wrtie-way.pdf
Writing improves achievement....we need more!
Fixed or Multiplier
The qualities that make someone a great superintendent (leader)
Focus: The Forgotten 21st Century Skill
http://www.makingstandardswork.com/sites/default/files/articles/09-fall-the-trillium-focus-the-forgotten-21st-century-skill.pdf
Now what was I doing before I found this article?
Friday, November 5, 2010
The secret of self-control : The New Yorker
The secret of self-control : The New Yorker
Fascinating article about the research done at Stanford University related to "self control" and delaying gratification. The research finding is so relevant to teachers and especially parents.
As I read the article I wondered how my own kids at that age would have treated the marshmallow situation.
Now older but still children they are slowly learning to wait. Learning to work hard and save money for the things they want. I often have problems with the things they want (why are those American Dolls so expensive!) but I do try to instill in them the importance of only buying what they can afford.
Re: The American Girl Doll my wife disagree. For the cost of one Amer. Girl I can buy 1 really nice "generic" doll and have $80 left to put in savings or something else. My wife sides with the "specialness" of the American Girl doll. Perhaps my gender renders me unable to understand a $100 doll. And yes I would feel the same way about a $100 set of Legos.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
What I learned this week 11/01/2010
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AllThingsPLC » Blog Archive » Grading Formative and Summative Assessments
Grading formative assessments by DuFour
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Joliprint | Print friendly & PDF your blogs and websites
Neat little tool that makes a pdf of a your favorite web article...drops the rest of the junk.
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Data-Driven and Off Course : Education Next
Are we perhaps doing a tad of this? Data is great....it helps us focus on what kids need to learn....but let's not lose the forest thru the trees
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URL sharing service.
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The Answer Sheet - 7 Class size myths -- and the truth
Smaller classes are expensive....but it works. Some reformers looking to cut costs have actually been advocating larger classes to safe time.
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Free test creation tool....sends results as CSV too...need to compare to Blackboard which makes disaggregating data so difficult
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Best of the EdTech Web 2010 - With Links
Byrne's best of the web....too good not to share (even if I already did so)
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Open content for teachers to use
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Great site to help you find alterative software packages. Organized by commercial packages...helps you find cheap, free, better alternatives.
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Couldn't pass up this funny picture labeled as anti-cheating device
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An important update on the future of drop.io | Drop.io Blog
This one really makes me sad. Drop.io (one my favorite tools) has been bought by Facebook and will be shut down in a matter of months. Time to find another large file sharing service.
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Going to the hard places | Connected Principals
Moving forward as we all must requires us to sometimes to go to hard places....uncomfortable places. Change hurts sometimes.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Education Week: Character Education Found to Fall Short in Federal Study
Education Week: Character Education Found to Fall Short in Federal Study
Gulp....character education programs might not be all that!
Recent study from the US Dept. of Education titled Efficacy of Schoolwide Programs to Promote Social and Character Development and Reduce Problem Behavior in Elementary School Children. How is that for a mouthful?!
Gulp....character education programs might not be all that!
Recent study from the US Dept. of Education titled Efficacy of Schoolwide Programs to Promote Social and Character Development and Reduce Problem Behavior in Elementary School Children. How is that for a mouthful?!
Not sure I would print this (all 656 pages of it) instead I would read the summary linked above at EdWeek.
In a nutshell it appears that researchers have the impact of various "character education" programs and found that basically after several years of implementation with many factors considered the programs don't appear to have conclusive impact on the students they are meant to "mold and shape" despite other conflicting reports that have shown various programs to have a positive impact on students behaviors and value systems.
As a teacher I am a bit disappointed as our school has pushed its own hybrid of programs for several years now. It has been a substantial commitment in materials and time with regards to teacher training and classroom implementation efforts.
However as a parent I am not surprised. I would like to think that the values I raise my children with are the values that they take with them to school. Unfortunately for teachers, there is no one set of universal parent values although I think the vast majority of parents could agree on a pretty good core set....religious or not.
Our school doesn't really collect meaningful data that can be contributed to the success or failure of our own unique program called SEEDS. However, as someone who has observed the program since its inception in our school I will say one positive aspect of the program is the common set of vocabulary and expectations related to student behavior.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
What I learned this week 10/20/2010
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Hamster Is A Free, Highly User-Friendly Video Converter [Windows]
video converter...might be handy
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iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » Create your own virtual classroom: Edu 2.0 and Vyew
Virtual classroom
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, October 18, 2010
What I learned this week 10/19/2010
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overlay historical area with your own area for size comparison
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If you make yourself available to your students online (and you know who you are) this might be a good way to schedule people during your virtual office hours....if there is an especially busy time.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Five Alternatives to Traditional Book Reports
no more book reports
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Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Resources for Learning SAT Vocabulary
build that vocab
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iLearn Technology » Blog Archive » Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Tree
More great graphics that demonstrate Blooms....would make a great poster
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Perfect Practice | Connected Principals
“If I’m only succeeding, I’m not learning”
Love this little post.... -
BYO Tech – Future or fallacy - Teach42
Maybe the time is now?
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Guskey and Grading: Lots to Think About | Connected Principals
When are we going to look and talk about what grades really mean?
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
What I learned this week 10/15/2010
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ASCD Express 6.01 - Practices, Not Programs
Yes....yes....yes....time to Weed the Garden!
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Looks like an interesting read....Cinci Public does not have it yet but does have other Cushman books
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
What I learned this week 10/14/2010
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Education Week Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook: Change Agent
I think we’ve become enablers for our teachers. We’ve kind of built this whole professional development thing around the idea that “We’ll provide you with the workshops, and the curriculum, you just show up. We’ll give you the computer, and teach you all the stuff you need to know, etc.”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Friday, October 8, 2010
What I learned this week 10/09/2010
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The Answer Sheet - Report: Schools, teacher ed programs ignore how kids really learn
Despite big advances in our understanding of how children and adolescents grow and learn, little of that knowledge has found its way into schools or educator preparation programs.
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Learn about new apps from the teacher perspective
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
What I learned this week 10/08/2010
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N. Oldham Middle students choose projects on studio days | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal
Really like this idea....but can younger students handle it and with OAA will we have time to not do work that drills right back to standards, benchmarks, indicators?
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ProCon.org - Pros and Cons of Controversial Issues
5th grade is working on persuasive writing. To persuade we sometimes need passion and what goes better with passion than actual facts. Facts related to current issues is what this site provides....love how it provides both sides of the argument.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, October 4, 2010
What I learned this week 10/05/2010
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Class Struggle - Ed school professors resist teaching practical skills
Interesting study that has been making its way through the blogosphere....basically the question is "are schools of ed preparing teachers for what they will face in the classroom"?
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Type in some text and then just listen it sung back to you from various songs
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WordStash :: Vocabulary Learning, Dictionary Exploring, Mind Expanding
Great place for students to build an online wordwall of sorts
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
What I learned this week 10/04/2010
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More on Google forms quizzes
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Create Self-Graded Quizzes in Google Docs
More on self graded quizzes with Google Forms
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Ken O'Connor - Ask The Grade Doctor
Ken O'Connor answers questions about grading
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PinDax | Create and discover message boards for your interests and passions
Think wallwisher but with more options
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Download Online Videos direct to PC, iPod, PSP, iPhone, Mobile etc.
Youtube converter
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Easy free online Jeopardy template
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America: A Narrative History, 8e: W. W. Norton StudySpace
Google tours of US HIstory
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Make a homepage in minutes : Flavors.me
An instant personal webpage for you!
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kitchen table math, the sequel: Audacious Idea #2: Placement by mastery, not age
place students by mastery rather than "date of manufacture"
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Singapore Math Adopted in More U.S. Schools - NYTimes.com
NY Times takes a look at Singapore Math
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Friday, October 1, 2010
What I learned this week 10/02/2010
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WSJ/NBC Survey: A C- Grade for Schools - Washington Wire - WSJ
Schools receive a C- on national survey. One interesting improvement idea is to not advance students until a level of competency is attained. Makes sense....students getting the level of instruction they need rather than having to be taught with the identical peer group.
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The Associated Press: Calls for longer school years face budget reality
Obama calls for longer school year. I have to agree that 3 months off is probably too much. I also know that there are ample opportunities to increase time on task in our current schools.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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