Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"Providing an opportunity for students to connect with portraiture through the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593) is engaging stuff. This Italian painter is most famous for his imaginative faces made up entirely of fruit, vegetables, meat and other objects of significance, and they continue to be a source of wonder for children of all ages. Students can use the Pictoboldo app to create their own digital collages."

"My all time education hero, Sir Ken Robinson has been discussing the lack of creativity and that standardized does not fit all students. We were remiss back in 2012 when we did not mention him in our blog Apps to Foster More Creativity in the Classroom!  We made up for it by writing about him numerous times since, and in 2014 I had the honor of seeing, hearing and writing about him Live from ASCD 2014. He has been writing and speaking about the sad state of the fact that we are still running our schools under the Industrial Age, and our students have been educated on the standard of routine testing, using the multiple choice test model. With all the opting out going on in 2015 I would think that by know some of the administrators and government leaders would have come across his wonderful TED Talks and realized he has it all completely right. When I read this Commentary Q & A from Education Week - Sir Ken Robinson, I wanted to once again give him a shout out as he urges us all to start thinking of the future of our children's children."

"Any room in the school can be transformed into a legitimate spot for an innovative makerspace and the implications of student-made projects foster great power, complexity and creative play in each of them. Like all STEM-focused areas of education, the Maker Movement is an extremely useful method for advancing child education due to some of the skills it promotes and develops. The inclusive environment that makerspaces provide results in a sense of community for participating students and functions as a safe place for gathering feedback."

"You live in the age of robots. A robot built your car, opened your garage door, and made the espresso that went into your double mocha. In large and small ways, robots are everywhere in our lives. The robots in my classroom amplify learning for my students. Robots are another tool in my high-engagement toolbox. I use the term high-engagement as a description and a warning. In my experience, high-engagement tools need to be matched with high-challenge learning. If we are using robots to support learning goals, the learning goals have to be robust and demanding. Without a carefully crafted learning context to support a demanding learning goal, students end up engaging the learning medium and just playing with robots."

"The internet: Not just for first world countries anymore. While high speed, broadband access may be much more ubiquitous in more developed countries, internet infrastructure and broadband connectivity is much more widespread than you may be aware of. Over the last decade, huge strides have been made, meaning many more students across the globe are being connected to the vast network of students, teachers, and the world. The handy infographic below paints a pretty good picture of what internet connectivity looks like around the world. Take a look, and try to imagine how many more people you could be connecting with around the globe in just a few short years."

"Pic Collage is a simple and free app for both phone and tablet that can turn photos and images into real works of art. With pre-made collage templates and backgrounds, the app is unique in how easy it is for students to manipulate their photos into beautiful layouts and patterns. The app also features built-in effects and stickers that give students the ability to truly personalize their work, providing endless classroom uses, applications and fun."

"I'm one of four teacher facilitators for our Junior Coding Club. We meet once a week during second nutrition break to code. The group's made up of many beginner coders, but also a couple of advanced coders. At lunch today, one of the advanced coders came rushing into the classroom, so excited to share his news. He decided to put a hold on Code Academy, and start using Scratch. During the week, he used the computer version of Scratch to create a flight simulator. This simulator was truly incredible! This Grade 4 student was so thrilled about what he did, that it was hard not to also feel thrilled. While it was wonderful to see this student so passionate about learning, it was also amazing to hear all of the thinking behind his choices. I was honestly in awe! He thought of everything. He even researched to find out the details about planes at take-off, and used this information in his simulator. He could explain all of his choices and the thinking behind these choices. In this short video clip below you can hear just a tiny snippet of this explanation."

"This year, I've spent a good deal of time coaching students and teachers to make learning visible within and beyond their classrooms. This may sound easy, but it isn't. There's a difference between displaying student work and capturing the actual moves that deepened understanding or improved performance. Those who strive to make learning visible appreciate how messy and overwhelming this work can be."

"This recent example aside, the idea that games can be fun and educational is starting to take hold in the educational community.  That these fun learning games can come in the form of games like Minecraft, rather than "skill and drill" games is icing on the cake for students and teachers.  The number of recent popular press articles heralding a rising trend of digital game use in the classroom has made the team at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center wonder: just how common is this practice?  And further, which teachers are choosing to use digital games in their teaching, what particular goals do they have for that game use, and what kinds of outcomes are they observing among their students? With these questions in mind the Joan Ganz Cooney Center surveyed nearly 700 K-8 teachers about their use of digital games in their teaching (a follow-up to a similar survey we conducted in 2012 with BrainPop). I wanted to share a few of the highlights from our full set of findings."

"While the rest of the class was working in a writers workshop, she handed the student an iPad and told him to try and experiment with its speech-to-text feature. With minimal expectations, Redford figured that the newness and the boy's curiosity would at least keep him busy during writing time, which he usually found frustrating. While Redford described the boy as "very bright," he "couldn't even compose a sentence to save his life" because of his dyslexia. Any classroom assignment having to do with writing made him moody. So, as Redford guided the rest of the class through the workshop, the student stepped outside the classroom and spoke his ideas for his writing assignment into the iPad."

For educators, parents and learners Carol Dweck's research on the benefits of a Growth Mindset is naturally appealing. Those who have a growth mindset achieve better results than those who don't, are more resilient and accept challenge willingly. After two years of incorporating a growth mindset philosophy we are finding that the reality of shifting a student's disposition away from a fixed mindset and then maintaining a growth mindset is significantly more complex than at first imagined.

"For educators, parents and learners Carol Dweck's research on the benefits of a Growth Mindset is naturally appealing. Those who have a growth mindset achieve better results than those who don't, are more resilient and accept challenge willingly. In response schools have embraced the notion and classroom walls are adorned with posters identifying the characteristics of growth versus fixed mindsets. Teachers make efforts to shift their students towards a growth mindset and parents consider how they may assist in the process. After two years of incorporating a growth mindset philosophy we are finding that the reality of shifting a student's disposition away from a fixed mindset and then maintaining a growth mindset is significantly more complex than at first imagined. Numerous forces and influences play a role and progress is unlikely to match a linear curve. Where schools have made steps in the right direction, is in raising awareness of the two mindsets. In this regard the placement of posters and discussion around the role that our mindset has in our learning are steps in the right direction. Demonising the fixed mindset is perhaps an unnecessary step and our students may be better served by understanding that we all have times when we fall into a fixed mindset. Education of how we may recognise such times and apply strategies of mindfulness and metacognition would avoid shifting already vulnerable learners on to the circle of shame. Awareness is however far form the end of the journey towards reaping the benefits of a Growth Mindset."

"It might have been the banana piano. Or perhaps the bongos, made from lemons that students had plucked from the citrus tree at school. Elizabeth Little, who teaches middle school math and science, doesn't know exactly which of the hands-on projects she introduced to her remedial math class turned the class around. But by the end of the school year, all her math students, not just those needing extra support, were clamoring for more math. How did this happen?"

"Spreadsheets can be intimidating to a lot of teachers and students. I have to admit that at one time working with spreadsheets was a daunting task for me too. Fortunately, Google Sheets has made it much easier for the average computer user to work with spreadsheets. Once you get the hang of working with Google Sheets there are a lot of great ways to use spreadsheets as a teacher or as a student. Here's a run-down of some of my favorite things to do with Google Sheets in the classroom."

"Hey, friends! I am here to share with you all about how to create and use Audio QR Codes. Last year, Katie King taught me how to make and use traditional QR Codes (with text) attached. You can read that intro tutorial and an -AR freebie I made here. Times are a changing, and with the help from an awesome librarian, I am ALL about QR Codes with audio attached. I've starting attaching them to literacy centers (in case students forget the directions or refuse to read the directions I've included), attaching them to tests (allowing my students who receive readers to work at their own pace), and have this Molly-inspired ReadBox display in the words (ohmyword. Isn't it the best???). So, let's get started! You may scan the code below, and I'll walk you through the process or I've included a step-by-step picture tutorial below!"

"Many American teenagers try to put in a full day of school, homework, after-school activities, sports and college prep on too little sleep. As evidence grows that chronic sleep deprivation puts teens at risk for physical and mental health problems, there is increasing pressure on school districts around the country to consider a later start time. In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in. Researchers at the University of Washington studied the high school students both before and after the start-time change. Their findings appear in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. They found students got 34 minutes more sleep on average with the later school start time. This boosted their total nightly sleep from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes."

"It might have been the banana piano. Or perhaps the bongos, made from lemons that students had plucked from the citrus tree at school. Elizabeth Little, who teaches middle school math and science, doesn't know exactly which of the hands-on projects she introduced to her remedial math class turned the class around. But by the end of the school year, all her math students, not just those needing extra support, were clamoring for more math. How did this happen?"

"My students made beautiful patterned figure paintings to show movement. See their gallery on Artsonia. These paintings are also the backdrop for a stop-motion digital extension lesson where students animated a mannequin to show movement over their movement paintings. See this lesson and results here."

It seems that thanks to COVID19, educators, parents and students are in a rush. It seems the rush started moments after the decision was made to promote social distancing by offering remote learning. From quality learning in classrooms focused on deep learning we shifted into top gear. Packets of work were prepared, online tools rapidly expanded, new options for content delivery were examined and quickly deployed. We wanted to make sure that our students would be kept busy. Parents wanted their children to be busy. - Maybe slow looking is the solution?

"Helping children visualize math is critical to their success in the subject. I recently observed a 5th grade class starting a lesson on area and perimeter. I turned to a girl who was in my class four years earlier and reminded her that she knew the topic. "Yes I do!" she said excitedly. "The perimeter is where you sit along the outside of the rug in morning meeting, and area is the inside of the rug, where the squares are. That's from 1st grade," she said confidently, circling her fingers in the air to represent her thinking. Visual cues, like this one I use with my six- and seven-year-old students, stick and show that envisioning math helps children learn in lasting ways. We teachers can do more to give students internal ways to see the structure of mathematics-to understand types of units and what it means to move between them, and to pull apart and combine numbers. But math instruction is changing. At my school, in the early grades, we encourage children to use their fingers, something that feels so natural to them, to better understand numbers and the numbering system. We might talk about how a "high five" involves using a whole hand, which is really a unit made up of five fingers; while a thumbs-up involves just one segment of that five-part unit. We then go on to using things like beads on a string and, later, place-value disks, which are like poker chips, to help children see and work with numbers, units, and place value."

"The week after my dad passed, I decided to come back. Bereavement time was up and I felt that getting back into my classroom would help. I was wrong. By the third day I was still feeling lost, overwhelmed, and exhausted. I ended taking the last two days of the week off. I came back, what I felt as "refreshed", the following Monday. Only still feeling lost, overwhelmed, and exhausted. As soon as I walked into the school I immediately met with the principal and told him that I couldn't continue. I needed more time away to deal with my emotions and to understand the scope of what took place. I could hear words of my dad echoing in my ear - "take care of yourself… if you don't, you'll end up sick." While my dad's health wasn't that great, and he knew it; he always made sure that everyone else took better care of themselves. Exactly like me. I make sure that others are always put before me. I could not longer do that. I needed to take care of myself before I ended up lying on the floor unable to move, like Izzy in Grey's Anatomy. Those four extra days was what I needed. I processed his death, I cried, I slept (for nearly two whole days), and I remembered the good times. I sat on the couch catching up on missed shows, Netflix, and Days of our Lives. We stress the importance of good mental health to our students, but I wasn't heeding my own words. I knew that being in the classroom too soon after his death wasn't making me a good teacher for my students."