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Grade 6 embraced Edmodo from the start and used it in many ways,

class blogs have started to surface ( still limited to class member only access) and this has started to blur the lines between Edmodo and the class blogs. Our ICT Leader recently attended a network meeting and other leaders there questioned the purpose of Edmodo if they were already blogging

how to make a convincing argument for both Edmodo and blogging being transformative teaching and learning tools

"We do not learn from experience . . . we learn from reflecting on experience."

Reflection not only makes learning stick at the end of a project but also helps students think about what's working well and what's not during PBL.

The same holds true for teachers.

Diigo provides a free, efficient, effective and reliable way to save and organize your favorite websites, online articles, blog posts, images and other media found online.

Diigo allows you to gain access to the ‘collective intelligence’ of the internet.

Adding bookmarks to lists is easy. When you save the bookmark, you are able to allocate it to any list you have already created, or create a new list as you go.

Imagine innovation as a three-legged stool. Many schools have changed the environment leg, but not the other two legs: the behaviors and beliefs of the teachers, administrators, and students.

Lately, I have heard teachers and school leaders express a common frustration: "We are _______ years into a _______ initiative, and nothing seems to have changed." Despite redesigning learning spaces, adding technology, or even flipping instruction, they still struggle to innovate or positively change the classroom experience. Imagine innovation as a three-legged stool. Many schools have changed the environment leg, but not the other two legs: the behaviors and beliefs of the teachers, administrators, and students.

If we look at the science of improvement, systematic change occurs between the contexts of justification (what we know) and discovery (the process of innovation).

ProfHacker has written quite a bit about the app and their post “GoogleDocs and Collaboration in the Classroom” is chock-full of links to various tips and useful ideas. Getting Smart’s “6 Powerful Google Docs Features to Support the Collaborative Writing Process” provides an excellent step-by-step guide to using Google Docs especially for collaborative writing. And for a basic overview of Google Docs’ features and potential uses, you can browse through this slideshow:

I have asked my Basic English Skills students to keep a daily journal (which can be on anything they wish to write about and functions to help them build their writing muscles) in Google Docs, which they’ve only shared with me. Besides alleviating any anxiety students might have felt about making their journals public, Google Docs allows me to easily monitor new entries (whenever a Doc is edited, the title turns bold) and to verify when students are completing their entries (by using the revision history feature).

I decided to have the students write in teams of three, with one team member serving as lead editor each week. The lead editor is in charge of each week’s blog post, which includes coming up with a focus question and locating 2-3 sources to help them answer their question, which they share with their team before the week’s first class meeting (I have had the teams indicate each week’s lead editor in a spreadsheet in Google Docs so that I am aware of which students are in charge each week). But it gets really interesting when the teams come together in the week’s first class meeting. The lead editor creates a Google Doc, which they share with their team and me, and type in their focus question and a brief summary of how they plan to answer it. What follows is a 30-40 minute session in which the team discusses the question, the lead editor’s sources, and their plan for answering the question completely in writing in the Google Doc, observing a strict rule of silence (I adapted this activity from Lawrence Weinstein’s “Silent Dialogue” activity in Writing Doesn’t Have to Be Lonely).

“What really helped me was the teachers and staff here who showed me that they cared about me. Students can feel that.” She described hating math for most of her life until a good teacher described what she could do with strong math skills in the future. “It got me motivated to learn more and I showed my potential as a student, which I never knew I had,” she said.

Every student on the panel had a story of big failure on an important class project. But because the culture of their schools encourage them to learn from mistakes, they can clearly articulate what they’d do differently next time and even laugh about it.

Stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it can mobilize us and allow us to function well.

our bodies and brains are designed to handle small amounts of stress.

“toxic stress” and it has a myriad of negative implications for the body, brain, emotions, and relationships. Examples include inattention, poor emotional control, decreased memory, difficulty learning, poor frustration tolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, and even a compromised immune system.

What I look for in projects:The project answers a driving question.The production is made by students or documents students’ learning.The production is made for an audience.The project is open-ended, so each end production is different.The product is hosted publicly online.Read more about project based learning.

In Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus (1), Katrina Schwartz refers to studies showing that the ability to focus on a task has been linked to future success. She quotes psychologist and author Daniel Goleman as saying, "This ability [to focus] is more important than IQ or the socio economic status of the family you grew up in for determining career success, financial success and health."

In a similar article, With Tech Tools, How Should Teachers Tackle Multitasking in Class? (2), author Holly Korbey explores research around student study habits and talks to veteran teachers about their experiences with students using technology in the classroom.

Instead, we should be deliberately teaching students how to manage their attention with their devices.