Group items tagged

This article is about the relevance of social media in today's classrooms. Facebook allows students to work collaboratively with teachers and peers, and encourages creativity and communication. Facebook can be used by teachers to post homework, create groups, communicate with parents, and to works with other teachers.

This is a great guide for schools and teachers thinking about using Facebook with students.

This article explores uses for the iPad in a bridge school focusing solely on English language learners. The use of iPad was hugely successful and allowed students to communicate more effectively and efficiently in their second language. Apps that were used were dictionaries, translators, kindle books, and pages.

It's amazing how quickly the iPad is changing the landscape of the classroom!

This article discusses how mistakes are a teachable opportunity that many educators are missing. The writer hopes to change the shame and hiding that comes with mistakes and instead discuss them openly so that teachers and students can share what they learned as a result of their mistake. The article goes on to give advice to teachers to create a personal learning community where mistakes can be viewed as opportunities and nine things to change in your classroom with your students and how you address mistakes. 1.Do you believe that students should have the opportunity to fix mistakes on graded papers (for credit) so that they are learning from them? 2. The article believes that many creative, talented kids are being left out of gifted programs because they only include the students with the least mistakes on standardized tests. What do you think would be the best way to identify these students? 3. Do you believe that students learn from their mistakes currently?

Shannon Walker posted the above article. I forgot to sign it, since my username is different!

Thanks, Shannon. Love this article.

This article is about the ten major trends in education--and a lot of them deal with technology. They are talking about the implementation of connected mobile devices, videos, the discussion of the digital footprint, and the closing of the gender gap with the rise of gaming. This is a good article to consult for multiple reasons. It not only addresses technology but the new trends that are becoming apparent as a result of it. Multiple questions arise as a result of reading this article. 1) Is the use of technology making the educational poverty gap even greater? 2) How can we adjust to technology and implementing it into a classroom in a district where the availability of tech is limited? 3) How can we encourage young students to be more aware of their digital footprint both in and outside of class? Cassandra Parks

Excellent questions! This is such a relevant topic in education. Good summary!

This article focuses on the importance of including literacy in all content areas. Literacy is described here as the ability to write, speak, and read. Literacy is an "every century" skill that should be being taught and practiced across all content areas. 1. What role does literacy play in your practicum classroom? 2. How could you add literacy into your content area, assuming that you are not going to teach language arts? 3. Do you agree that literacy is the responsibility of ALL teachers? Why or why not? -Shannon Walker

Thanks, Shannon for signing your article :) Great questions, good summary!

This article addresses the issue of teacher burnout and a solution to help treat and minimize it. The article suggests that relieving one's stress for a short period each day goes a long way in avoiding burnout. 1) Should all teachers be required to participate in a short training to teach them mindfulness and stress relieving techniques? 2) What techniques do you use to destress and how can incorporating mindfulness improve them? 3) How would taking time to destress through mindfulness effect your classroom performance?

It's that time of year. You'll always see LOTS of teacher burnout/teacher slump articles written in November :)

This instructor "literally" hung paint cans on her wall! She broke the common core into six "buckets" or categories and put paint sticks into each bucket with activities on them. Her goal is to make the "standards come alive and empower her students to become autonomous thinkers." Its worth the 10 minutes, it gives all instructors something to think about incorporating into their classroom!

A great visual for students! Thanks for sharing!

In today's times, the K-12 classroom is continually evolving in order to adapt to the fast paced world of technological advances. It's important that teachers keep up-to-date with the latest helpful technology for their students and that parents understand the ramifications of that technology. This blog gives a list of technology trends that are impacting education both with their pros and cons listed.

Good article. Please make sure to include three questions.

Five trends in CCSS: Instruction in How to Listen; Evolution of the Teacher-Student relationship; Increased Responsibility for Students; Move toward Project-based learning; and K-12 will get serious about Coding. These trends will have an impact on you as a teacher, be informed...be a learner first. Questions: 1) How will these trends affect or change the physical make-up of your classroom setting? 2) If you compare how your students use social media with the trend of teaching students how to listen, what challenges do you anticipate? 3) What are your thoughts regarding the trend "the evolving of the teacher-student relationship"?

Make sure your summary represents graduate level writing. I like the list, but impress me with the last two sentences. WONDERFUL questions!

Little attention has been given to absenteeism in schools. A new report finds that many students miss up to a month of school a year and it effects their test scores tremendously. It can set students back by 1 to 2 years, even more so for special education students. 1. How do we as teachers effect student absenteeism? 2. On a bus stop I drive by everyday, it says, "The solution to truancy is A(p)parent." How can we get parents to be involved with their kids in school? 3. What classroom practices can we have in place to help students to miss class? For example, my cooperative teacher has a blog students can pull information from if they miss class and she requires them to do so.

Student absenteeism is a reality we face in schools. Great questions!

This article reviews the shift in learning styles. It describes the development of culture labs that foster learning for the sake of growing and developing. The idea is being utilized in college classrooms and needs to filter into earlier learning environments in order to accelerate the learning process and develop a stronger culture of learners.

Interesting read, many institutions need to start thinking about the points brought up in this article.

Technology such as ipads open new channels for sharing art. Programs allow students to try different methods and see for themselves (at their own speed) step by step instructions. It also allows the art teacher to mix traditional and new methods of instructions.

I wrote down some of these apps to share with the art teacher in my building. This is a great example of a teacher finding ways to use technology and acquire it for her classroom.

This site talks about the steps to take to find useful and safe games for game-based learning (GBL) as a way to engage students in the curriculum.

Good advice for selecting games depending on your access to technology and as an option for differentiation.

This article makes the point that we as educators need to use technology as the teaching tool it is, and NOT let our students (or ourselves) get into the habit of taking information for granted. We need to work to teach accurate and evolving tech habits and learn together by doing--not by copying and pasting. This article also seeks to bring this collaboration of learning tech in the classroom as a human interaction network where we can promote interaction--not isolation.

Good article on the Net-Generation! I enjoyed reading about the distinct approaches that different people take towards technology depending on their comfort level and the purpose.

This article is talking about the benefits technology has for, not only general education classroom students, but also for special education students and students with disabilities. Technology has helped fill in the gap for students with special needs, whether it is a hearing or vision impairment, or low motor skills. Assistive technology, defined as "any technology, high tech or low tech, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of students with disabilities. Technology helps make learning possible to those who may not have the chance to learn otherwise.

Assistive technologies provide a wealth of opportunities for students with special needs.

New Technology teaching aids are great for the classroom. The problems is that when kids are using these technologies they are not always doing what is expected of them. They may be surfing the internet or texting a friend when they should be researching for a project.

I'm glad they pointed out some of the pitfalls to technology in education. We need to be aware of both positive and negative aspects of technology in order to make it useful to our own programs and students.

This article focuses on the affect that adventure learning (or distance learning) has on motivation and learning outcomes among middle school students. This technology forum provides them with opportunities to learn about world issues as they are happening while getting to experience them online through the use of Google maps, audio recordings, and daily emails directly from their teacher. The research from this article found positive correlations between adventure learning as a form of technology in the classroom and increased student motivation.

That is really exciting as more schools are using this technology.

The article discusses some barriers that teachers may face when integrating technology into their classroom. It then discusses some ways to overcome these barriers. Lastly, the article identifies several current knowledge gaps pertaining to the barriers and strategies of technology integration, and offers recommendations for future research.

I wish I could have read the article. I sounded interesting.

It is important to remember students with writing disabilities, have the hardest time with writing. This article is about assistive technology we can use to help those students. By giving these tools students who have trouble writing, can help them become better writers, or at least make their writing better. Either way it will help the student needing writing help.

Nice find. Always good to have this kind of research to support our learners.

This article is about using technology in the classroom to transform kids into risk-takers. It's about using games as a learning tool. Games that help them learn about American history. "Good teaching is not about playing it safe. It's about getting kids to ask questions, argue a point, confront failure and try again."