CALL_IS_VSL

This is a good article about how to use rubrics appropriately. It suggests that you not use the Bloom taxonomy in rubrics just as a checklist, but to ensure rigor and relevance. A good resource.

BAsed on Bloom's revised taxonomy. This page has several variations on ways to look at the taxonomy and action verbs for objectives, including a mouse-over set of colored blocks with example of objectives for various combinations of cognitive processes and knowledge dimensions. The rainbow table of cognitive processes is also very helpful to visual the dimensions, and each part is well explained. Includes resources and other pages with the taxonomy explained. From CELT.

ReadWorks.org has many lesson plans and reading passages and coordinates everything with Common Core standards. K-8.

This blog entry has some great, but simple, ideas for getting group work to, well, work. One is to award, for example 40 points for a 4-person group, and have students award each other points based on how much they thought they did in the group. Another is to use G-Docs histories to see who has actually been working on revisions. And a third is to make students more cognitively aware of themselves as part of a team -- identifying with their team and investing in its success. Great collaboration ideas. This log is focused on middle school learners, but the ideas will work well for any age.

This is a nice list of strategies, with links to explanations, of how you can find out what misperceptions they have. Useful for mutiple ages.

A place to share educational uses of wikis. Good examples: "The educational wikis on this page are listed in alphabetical order. They are awesome and we invite you to add your educational wiki to our list! You may also add the name of your country and a mini flag. Thank you! You may view visitor statistics here."

Top maps in the gallery. These should be an inspiration for your students for any social studies or environmental studies content projects. They are all fascinating.

Great idea for presentations, whether yours or your students. You need to have a verifiable account and website where links will go, e.g., a blog. You then enable your YouTube account for external links. You can add annotations as speech bubble, note title, spotlight, or label. You control where it is inserted in the video.

A study on reading of Norewegian 10th graders on paper and on PDFs on a computer screen. The paper group had better comprehension because the paper group could spread out documents, while the PDF group had to tab back and forth while taking the quiz. Low resolution moitors also may have influenced the study. A high resolution screen would allow the reader to see all the pages of the article at a glance. This study is an interesting adjunct to my article on Reading Electronically.

A 5th grade math class takes a new look at Common Core, formative assesment, creative/critical thinking, problem solving, classroom management techniques, group work. Some bil-lingual used. Individual students are addressed and encouraged in this exciting model classroom that is very hands-on.

Most of these are ways to create posters or murals for a school project, but also includes Word Draw, a site to create flyers, newsletters, etc., and Picovico, where you can turn photographs from Facebook, Flickr, or a computer, into cool videos using captions, text slides, and their templates.

The Academic Word List is divided into sublists based on frequency and each list has its own set of digital flashcards.

"What is it? Here's an article by BIE, updated from its original appearance in the September 2010 issue of Educational Leadership magazine from ASCD. Good for general audiences as well as educators, it explains the essential elements that make rigorous PBL different from "doing projects." Inquiry-based learning is rigorous and engaging for students. This downloadable PDF is a good read.

This is an excellent article on how to ensure that groupwork does not splinter into factions and antagonism.

R. Byrne shows how to add voice comments on G-Drive with a tool call Kaizena. This blog entry has a video showing how to use Kaizena, plus links to a few other handy how-tos. This might be another way for students to collaborate on their papers and projects.

This looks like a great project, with pages to help you design your own apps, step-by-step guides, a library for App Inventor (the tool), curriculum and resources for teachers, and a community forum to get answers. Now if only we had time . . .

"Edraw Mind Map is a free mind map software with rich examples and templates which make it easy to create mind maps, brain-storming diagrams, project timeline, life planner, SWOT analysis and sketch maps."

50 different examples of formative assessment, by a specialist in "new visions for public schools." These are inventive and will keep students guessing while enabling you to find out what they know -- or don't. This is a slideshow that can be played automatically, and is under CC so can be freely copied and used.

"Edutopia's curated compilation of online resources for understanding and beginning to implement project-based learning." A great list of resources to define and clarify what PBL is, examples of projects, and tips from teachers who use PBL.

This is a good article because it gives you the details of each engine and the good and the bad in a systematic way. Be sure to ignore the ads at the top and go to the content. Mind-mapping is a great way to visually brainstorm and encourage connections, whether for a written project, a presentation, or a video storyboard.