Coetail

e within their cooperative groups or partnerships. For example, if the class is working on using descriptive adjectives in their compositions, one student could be assigned to review another's writing. He or she could provide positive feedback, noting several instances of using descriptive vocabulary, and provide constructive feedback, identifying several sentences that could be enhanced with additional adjectives. After this, the students could switch roles and repeat the process. Goals: Set specific goals for the writing assignments that students are to complete. The goals can be established by the teacher or created by the class themselves, with review from the teacher to ensure they are appropriate and attainable. Goals can include (but are not limited to) adding more ideas to a paper or including specific elements of a writing genre (e.g., in an opinion essay include at least three reasons supporting your belief). Setting specific product goals can foster motivation, and teachers can continue to motivate students by providing reinforcement when they reach their goals. Word processing: Allow students to use a computer for completing written tasks. With a computer, text can be added, deleted, and moved easily. Furthermore, students can access tools, such as spell check, to enhance their written compositions. As with any technology, teachers should provide guidance on proper use of the computer and any relevant software before students use the computer to compose independently. Sentence combining: Explicitly teach students to write more complex and sophisticated sentences. Sentence combining involves teacher modeling of how to combine two or more related sentences to create a more complex one. Students should be encouraged to apply the sentence construction skills as they write or revise. Process writing: Implement flexible, but practical classroom routines that provide students with extended opportunities for practicing the cycle of planning, writing, and revie

Lee Lefever does it again - simply and quickly describes copyright and Creative Commons.

Why College Is Not A Bubble (Except For The University Of Phoenix) | Fast Company http://bit.ly/lCfFqy

Okay, I admit that I rebelled against joining Twitter for the longest time.  I had friends and family members urging me to join.  I often said, "Why should I join another social networking site?  I have not used MySpace for a while  and am quite happy with Facebook."  Those who were part of the Twitter community kept insisting that I join because in their words it was better than Facebook.  I had no idea what I was missing on Twitter.  Months would pass and I was quite determined that I did not need Twitter.  I was fine without it.  I kept social networking for my personal life.  I did not see why I needed it otherwise.

The semi-flipped classroom http://bit.ly/ii6M0c #coetail #flippedclassroom

This is a collection of really interesting infographics and visualizations of data. His TED talk is really worthwhile to watch as well.

A great synopsis of the Digital Citizenship question.

"The list of recommendations presented below is based on scientific studies of students in grades 4-12. The strategies for teaching writing are listed according to the magnitude of their effects. Practices with the strongest effects are listed fi"

Crowdsourcing.org