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Students are more likely to succeed in a place where they feel known and cared about I realize there are people whose impulse is to sneer when talk turns to how kids feel, and who dismiss as "soft" or "faddish" anything other than old-fashioned instruction of academic skills. But even these hard-liners, when pressed, are unable to deny the relationship between feeling and thinking, between a child's comfort level and his or her capacity to learn. Here, too, there are loads of supporting data. As one group of researchers put it, "In order to promote students' academic performance in the classroom, educators should also promote their social and emotional adjustment." And yet, broadly speaking, we don't. Teachers and schools are evaluated almost exclusively on academic achievement measures (which, to make matters worse, mostly consist of standardized test scores). If we took seriously the need for kids to feel known and cared about, our discussions about the distinguishing features of a "good school" would sound very different. Likewise, our view of discipline and classroom management would be turned inside-out, seeing as how the primary goals of most such strategies are obedience and order, often with the result that kids feel less cared about -- or even bullied -- by adults.

I have found that providing students with progress reports via audio files is a very motivating alternative to providing written feedback on their progress. Generally, I do both. I am required to enter written feedback in the online records kept for my students. However, there are several things that don't overly excite me about this: I sometimes find them to be overly formal and (on occasion) stilted. They occur too infrequently - usually mid- and end-of-semester - to provide students with useful information. They can (on occasion) fall prey to ticking-the-boxes syndrome and thus can (on occasion) not be so overly heartfelt.

Unit One: "Creative What?"show This unit explores the general topics of intellectual property, creative content, and creative rights. Using the backdrop of a high school's Battle of the Bands, the unit will help students define intellectual property and creative content by relating it to a common scenario they might encounter. Students will begin to recognize and internalize the importance of respecting creative rights, conduct their own research to better understand the relevance of creative content to their lives, and help clear up confusion about the rights that apply to them and their peers. Unit Two: "By Rule of Law"show Intellectual property is a valuable commodity, and thus, those who develop creative content are protected by laws in the United States and around the world. In this unit, students explore creative content copyright and learn about the rights they have as creators and the laws that exist to protect the creative process. The unit's activities encourage students to form opinions about what's right, what's wrong, and how the laws affect them as creators, consumers, and good digital citizens. Unit Three: "Calling All Digital Citizens"show Copyright and other creative rights empower the artists, musicians, and writers who produce creative works. But how does the prevalence of online media - and its ease of access - change the conversation about those rights? With social media as the backdrop, this unit explores that very question, as the students learn more with the Digital Citizenship in Schools curriculum. Students analyze the use of creative content on social media Web sites, recognize the responsibilities involved with using these media, and form their own opinions about what makes a good digital citizen. Unit Four: "Protect Your Work, Respect Your Work"show This unit explores the theme of protecting creative content through a series of experiential activities. Students learn how to protect their own creative works and how to use o

1. Request an educator's upgrade for Diigo; this will allow you to create private student groups that cannot be found by public search engines 2. Use Diigo to invite students to join the group; follow up with emails as necessary 3. Refer students to online videos on social bookmarking, to make sure that students understand what social bookmarking involves. 4. Seed the group with some example texts, including comments and annotations, so that students understand your expectations. 5. Ask students to practice, to find out what issues they might have. 6. Give feedback on early attempts, to reassure students they are on the right tracks.

A couple of quick takeaways for me are that it's nice to see professional development called out as something we need, but we really have to get away form the paradigm of thinking it's something we do "to" teachers or is done "to" us.  The other takeaway I have after reading this is around a question I've asked before. If we're truly "blending" our teaching and environment, what does the space look like? How can we professionally develop as teachers to be better prepared to adapt and modify our existing learning spaces to better meet the needs of a flexible, student centric, tech infused learning environment? If shifting the ENTIRE teaching model paradigm upside down is NOT an option, what is? Is this something that needs to be built, modeled, and then iterated? I culled some nuggets from the reading.

This Google Site has been set up by Dr. Helen Barrett to focus on the use of Google Apps to create ePortfolios. On this site, there are instructions on how to use the different elements of Google Apps to maintain e-portfolios. There is also a Google Grou

Just Click on any of the topics in the left hand menu Russell Stannard Click on this simple intro to find out how to use the videos. These videos were created for teachers to help them to incorporate technology into their teaching. Just click and a video

Came across this nugget of awesome today: "To link your Google Docs to your Edmodo Library : 1. Log in to your Edmodo account. 2. Select the Library option from the top navigation panel. 3. Select the Google Docs link on the left panel. 4. Select the "Connect with Google Docs" button and you will be prompted to sign in to your Google Docs account. 5. Select the "allow access" button when prompted about Edmodo permission to access your Google Docs. All your Google Docs will then sync with your Edmodo Library. This will allow you to share documents with your Edmodo groups and students can easily turn-in assignments completed via Google Docs."

Tip #1: Your assignment should match your course goals/objectives. Don't "do" writing just to say you've done it. Make sure it's going to help you with your bigger objectives in the course. Tip #2: You don't need to be an expert yourself. No one expects you to be a grammarian. (In fact, plenty of English teachers are stumped by our language at times.) If you need an expert, see tip #6, but really, just concentrate on what you need from the paper. Give kids guidelines for the format, but don't make it your primary focus.

I came across a nice "Top 15" list that I thought was worth passing on. I'd love to hear what you all think. Are these enough? Is there something missing that you would add? They don't call out "directly" any of the Adult ID experts, so is that a place where they may be missing a key strategy? Feel free to pass on to any groups.

I like that this article address the obvious gaps of research and lack of control of multiple variables that could eschew results. Nevertheless there are some great data points on why keeping and retaining the best in our profession needs to be a continued focus and conversation. Is it enough to use test scores, of course not. But a balanced system that helps us speed up the process for removing ineffective folks in our profession can't hurt.

NBC News Archives on Demand K-12 Edition Bring the World into Your Classroom! NBC News Archives on Demand (K-12) is a collection of NBC News videos, primary source documents, images, and resources specifically designed for use in the K-12 classroom. * Thousands of searchable and downloadable videos (1930s to Today) * Video content aligned to State Standards * Current Events updated regularly * Sciences, Social Studies, Language Arts, Health and Business * Personalized playlists for teachers and students * Revolutionary flippable media player

Previously I talked about how to cite Twitter and Facebook posts or feeds in general, which you can do quite easily by mentioning the URLs in text (with no reference list entries required). Today I address some of the issues pertaining to citing particular posts, which require both reference list entries and in-text citations. As you may have noticed, the Publication Manual does not give specific guidance on how to do this. This is an evolving area, and blog discussions will be considered as we create guidelines related to these new references sources for future APA Style products.

"What's a cookie? How do I protect myself on the web? And most importantly: What happens if a truck runs over my laptop? For things you've always wanted to know about the web but were afraid to ask, read on"

Need online homework help or need to prepare for your tests? Get the answers you need at Studio4Learning.tv. Browse or search to find what you are looking for. Click one of the 10 categories at the top of the page and select one subject listed in the dro

Welcome to the 21 Things for the 21st Century Project Based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers The purpose of this course is to provide "Just in Time" training through an online interface for K-12 educators based on the Nationa

Google Wave arrives on September 30th. On that day, GoogleGoogleGoogle will start sending out 100,000 invites to non-developers to its much-anticipated real-time communication platform.

All those interested in education-we've got you covered. From humor blogs on college life to one stop shops for school athletics to blogs all about education policy and new technologies, if there's a good education blog out there, you can bet it made our list. We've also mixed in a handful of exceptional web tools and sites that we thought deserved a spot in the top 200.

If Chrome continues to be the fastest growing browser, this resource may be helpful for soem folks helping to "sell" IT on the idea of supporting it. If you're a chromebooks school or program, then this is a super useful tool to put in the hands of your teachers.

Would love to look into the possible purchase of some or all of these resources to share them with our teachers. Wondering about cost and work load that would be taken on. This could be a great resource for the developers and curriculum specialists designing ELA certification trainings and courses.  Look forward to see what if anything is possible to work out.