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recently led a Google Docs session at Whittier Christian High School and was asked to provide a quick demo video illustrating the way I used formulas (and in particular the IF formula) to grade a quiz made using a Google Form. Apparently my explanation plays well face-to-face but considerably less well from memory. ;) For this video I cut right to the chase and did my best to explain the IF formula for beginners… while keeping under a 5 minute time limit. I hope it's helpful for you and your colleagues and I hope you'll let me know what you think.

OK, this is a pretty cool game site that is all about teaching and learning. I played the multiplication game longer than I should have and even played with the pet hamster for a while. He runs on that whell a long time. From the website, "All games here were made by Exuberant Games. Each game goes through important information for a certain subject matter for grades Kindergarten through 6th grade. The math games are great if you need to review your math facts for addition, subtraction , or division. Be sure to check out our new games for other subjects.

What started as a desire to know what technology access my students had turned into a great opportunity to get to know them, and what they thought about grades, learning, and their interests. Here's a copy of the survey that I gave my students this year on the first day. Some of the responses to the questions were interesting enough to put in wordle form

Writing coach is a pilot program by Pearson, which is also getting a lot of use in Texas classrooms. With writing being a skill that many students need to hone, the timing couldn't be better for an educational tool like this to emerge. The PHWC is an online curriculum that guides teachers and students through a series of activities and projects designed to bolster writing skills in grades six through 12. It's flexible, personalizable, and will likely inspire many similar programs in the coming years.

The Common Core State Standards focus on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, thus enabling teachers to take the time needed to teach core concepts and procedures well-and to give students the opportunity to master them.

I don't mention Google Docs very often, but it's a great tool for creating all kinds of collaborative documents. Here's a wonderful example of how you could create a self grading quiz for your students using Google docs.

Drill and practice quizzes for grades 1-6 math.

Literacy in the digital age.

Census at School is an international classroom project that engages students in grades 4-12 in statistical problemsolving. Students complete a brief online survey, analyze their class census results, and compare their class with random samples of students in the United States and other countries.

Digital library for Earth system education with grade level and content resources. 

Another digital storytelling resource. This resource focus' on using the modality for content storytelling, so if you've been reluctant to explore digital storytelling in your classroom, then think again. It's a great set of ideas for developing rigorous stories for content of multiple grades and content areas.

Always looking for reading resources to share with the Striving Readers group. Here is a great online resource that has short readings that are applicable and topical. May not be user friendly for students 2 years or more behind grade level, but very applicable to the content area classrooms! Very interactive, combine pictures with text, updated constantly.

The title says it all. Great list of apps. 

iCue is a free collaborative learning environment which includes hundreds of current and historic videos from NBC News, fun games and activities, and discussion forums. Whether you are joining to improve your grades, connect with friends, or just learn new things, iCue gives you a safe, fun environment for discussion and learning.

A site produced by NBC to collect news stories, share them, and reflect and respond to the perspectives presented by the news media. (Horizon Report, 2009)

This problem comprehension or schema knowledge is facilitated when the schema underlying a given text is used as a vehicle to translate the information in the text into a semantic representation. this would involve restating the problem, identifying the problem type (i.e. change), discerning relevant and irrelevant information, determining information that is needed for solution, and representing the problem as a diagram (Mayer, 1999).  Problem solution requires representing the problem as a number sentence or list of operations or identifying subgoals for multistep problems (i.e. strategic knowledge) and carrying out single or chains of calculations (i.e. procedural knowledge; Mayer 1999). Because additive problem structures (i.e. change, group, compare) involve a "family" (e.g. 3, 5, 8), connecting the number family to the problem structures is critical to problem solution (Van de Walle, 2004). Although procedural knowledge is important, it (is extremely limited unless it is connected to a conceptual knowledge base" (Prawat, 1989, p. 10).  SBI- Schema-based instructionGSI- General strategy instruction SBI Components (some not necessarily all) a) SBI that used either number line diagrams to understand the semantic structure of compare word problems or schematic diagrams to solve a range of word problems. b) schema-induction instruction, c) SBI that explicitly taught for transfer by focusing on similar problem types, and d) SBI combined with metacognitive instruction.  different format, different question, unfamililiar vocabulary, irrelevent information, combining problem types, and mixing superficial features