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The typical student at the Newcomer Center, an alternative school in Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, IL, is a recent immigrant with little or no English skills. The school is a temporary stopover for these students--they stay at the center for about a year, building up their English-language skills, and are then transferred to an ESL program at their home school in the district.

From the site, "Research and revise a wide variety of school subjects as Videojug presents tips and tutorials for a range of subjects across the school-board. Learn or re-learn English, Maths, Science , Modern and Traditional Foreign Languages, Sign Language, Politics, History and Geography. Between brain-teasers and fun experiments theres something for scholars old and new." Interesting take on organizing some of the many videos available on the internet. 

Palomar College has identified for its students College Success Skills and offers them different resources to help them understand how to be successful. Some schools go a step further and offer a College Success course that encompasses these skills, but again we don't explicitly support these skills in coursework. How is it that teachers continue to think it is not their role to support students in being successful in their courses with explicit support of these kinds of routines!  It is also valuable to look at this list of skills for other skills to actively and intentionally support in schools. A great example is Active Listening. It's not a complex skill, and with an intentional effort by an entire faculty a system like SLANT from Kansas University could become the expectation in a school. 

11 Techy Things for Teachers to Try This Year The new school year is here for many teachers. For those who haven't started school yet, the new school year will be here soon. If you've set the goal of trying something new in your classroom this year (shouldn't that always be one of our goals), here are eleven techy things teachers should try this year.

"This report is based on evidence from a small-scale survey carried out between April and July 2009 in 35 maintained schools in England. It evaluates the extent to which the schools taught pupils to adopt safe and responsible practices in using new technologies, and how they achieved this. It also assesses the extent and quality of the training the schools provided for their staff. It responds to the report of the Byron Review, Safer children in a digital world."

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) was developed to help guide the complex task of evaluating technology integration in the classroom. Basic technology skills and integration of technology into the curriculum go hand-in-hand to form teacher technology literacy. Encouraging the seamless use of technology in all curriculum areas and promoting technology literacy are both key NCLB:Title II-D/EETT program purposes. The Inventory for Teacher Technology Skills (ITTS) companion tool is designed to help districts evaluate teachers' current levels of proficiency with technology and is also used as a professional development planning and needs assessment resource. The TIM is envisioned as an EETT program resource which can help support the full integration of technology in Florida schools. What is in each cell? Each cell in the matrix will have a video (or several videos) which illustrate the integration of technology in classrooms where only a few computers are available and/or classrooms where every student has access to a laptop computer. Transformation The teacher creates a rich learning environment in which students regularly engage in activities that would have been impossible to achieve without technology. Active Indicator: Given ongoing access to online resources, students actively select and pursue topics beyond the limitations of even the best school library. Collaborative Indicator: Technology enables students to collaborate with peers and experts irrespective of time zone or physical distances. Constructive Indicator: Students use technology to construct, share, and publish knowledge to a worldwide audience. Authentic Indicator: By means of technology tools, students participate in outside-of-school projects and problem-solving activities that have meaning for the students and the community. Goal Directed Indicator: Students engage in ongoing metacognative activities at a level that would be unattainable without the support of technol

Great twitter like site designed for schools and classrooms. Great for sharing research and backchannel conversations that have research breaks built into them because students and teachers can embed images, videos, and links for sharing. If a school is concerned about twitter and access, this would be a great classroom alternative. 

Quantitative studies of school effects have generally supported the notion that the problems of U.S. education lie outside of the school. Yet such studies neglect the primary venue through which students learn, the classroom. The current study explores the link between classroom practices and student academic performance by applying multilevel modeling to the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress in mathematics. The study finds that the effects of classroom practices, when added to those of other teacher characteristics, are comparable in size to those of student background, suggesting that teachers can contribute as much to student learning as the students themselves.

"Initial thoughts on "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" The book study begins!" Book study post on the new NCTM Series "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making"

The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways project (MSP2) is a component of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) that supports middle school educators and youth by offering contextualized, high-quality resources and promotes interactivity, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing among its users.

More PhET simulations for high school science and some for math. The simulations are embeddable in BB but require a java download file to run. It is important to make sure students would be able to download that file. 

What makes TED such an appealing web series and organization is its desire to offer up a little something for everyone. This includes high school students and the teachers who love, hate, or tolerate them. Honestly, pretty much any video hosted there boasts its own educational value, but some hold more relevance than others. Whether they empower and inspire, shine a light on social injustices or simply show off some seriously cool innovations, the following 20 videos are bound to make class time just a little more interesting.

Jeb Bush, Melinda Gates, Sal Khan and the Coming Digital Learning Battle

Nice collection of iPad in school resources and knowledge base for someone beginning or wanting to implement/integrate iPads into the classroom. 

MIT Open Courseware. A great way for students to access material that may not be presented at their level anywhere else. For that matter a great place for teachers to brush up and expand their thinking. I spent about an hour on the combinatorics course developed by an MIT student for high school math students who are 'bored' by high school math classes. If you are interested, it pushed my understanding pretty quickly!

"What is mySchoolog? mySchoolog is an online web-based application to organize your school life easily. You can easily organize everything about your school life with mySchoolog."

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.

Plato Learning has released the Beyond High School Library, a suite of online courses designed to prepare students for college entrance and placement exams and career certification and work skills exams.

Shanghai American School's blogs. The school seems to have adopted the blogging platform and you can see how different teachers are using the platform to accomplish different goals/objectives. Interesting site to visit and create a conversation about how you might use the tool/extend what they are doing/adapt what you are doing/want to do.

HSSageMath.org is a website designed for High School and Middle School level students and educators. We hope to use this wiki and Sage notebook server to share helpful Sage tools and information with the world.