CFT Resources for Teachers

really great blog post from Make on developing a curriculum for school of toys. 

Educators weigh in on the question of whether homework is a worthy exercise for students.

Really fascinating TED Video on a mission to rescue Penguins from a dangerous oil spill. 20,000 birds were adversely effected and the 1,000 of volunteers rescued nearly 19,000 of them. A 17 year old adolescent was the inventor of the degreaser that was used.

Marco Tempest demonstrates his artist, magic talents with technology. He worked with other through open-sourced software to build an augmented reality mapping system. Really fascinating.

See what you think about the idea of moving the lecture to an online platform and using class time for more student-centered work.

why the inertia to making needed changes in pedagogy?

Asking good questions is a big part of a strong inquiry-based lesson. Check out how history teachers do it.

This is a pretty comprehensive survey of teahers' attitudes and beliefs.

This site, created by the Department of Educational Technology in Palm Beach County is an amazing resource if you have any thoughts about integrating iPads.

Tip: Press ctrl and F (or Command and F on a Mac) to perform a keyword search of this page. To keyword search all Best of History Web Sites pages use the search engine located on each page.

For more history and social studies lesson plans, also check out http://thwt.org - Teaching History with Technology

You won't find Willyn Webb telling her high school students to put away their cell phones, even though they are technically banned in her Colorado district. She's been using cell phones to augment her lessons at Delta County Opportunity School for years.

Teachers talk about this problem from a 'restrictive" perspective, can it be a learning tool?

Greg Kulowiec has done some great work with cell phones in his classroom. You can learn more on his blog: http://kulowiectech.blogspot.com/ Specifically, he has used them for blogging and as a student response tool: http://kulowiectech.blogspot.com/search?q=cell+phones

Over the past five years — at the request of concerned independent school educators, and with funding from independent schools and a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health — we've conducted extensive research on the experiences of African-American students in independent schools.

Last year's report and conversation around the need for affinity group dialogue with the administrative team included statistics and plenty of personal and national stories pointing to the importance of addressing race/culture and learning, particularly as it relates to a discussion around whiteness and the culture of "niceness" within our schools. This article is 8 years old and not much has changed at many schools. Thanks for reading it! Please pass along to your team colleagues if you can?

Why is the change in this area so slow?

Kenneth Olden teaches ninth and twelfth grade English in White Swan, Washington. His interests include project-based learning and classical literature. He is participating in the pilot program for the Teaching 2.0 Master's program through the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Follow Ken on Twitter @kennetholden.

If we could clone you and send you everywhere at once, with a few follow-ups from others, would it matter? Yes. Because we definitely don't reach as many people with our message as "they" (the Reformers) do with theirs.

Generation Yes Blog creator (http://blog.genyes.org/) has put together this Wikispace on Games in Education. LOTS of resources to review for someone looking to incorporate "games" into a lesson.

LOS ALTOS, Calif. - The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. But the school's chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud.