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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.

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

At first glance, I like this a lot. It combines existing social spaces and incorporates or provides the opportunity to fracture them into learning spaces as well. I've heard folks ask before if this is even where our students want us to be. good question. I think the tool, whatever it is, will need to allow for layers or (ahem) circles so that we can organize the input and output cleanly and easily. I still lik edmodo in this type of space as THE go-to tool because of the ability to work with kids and teachers P-12.

"If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write. Extreme? Maybe. Your thoughts?"

Welcome to the Google Certified Teachers Group. This is an exclusive space for GCTs to connect, collaborate, and share resources. Use the links to the right to explore discussions, members profiles, web pages, and shared files. In addition to these r

Over the last three weeks we've been looking at maps…and just for a second stop and think about the maps these kids are going to need to know how to navigate in their future. You're still going to need an atlas when trying to find your way across Thailand

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.

Welcome! This is a collection of short articles designed to provide an introduction to the areas of modern mathematics and pointers to further information, as well as answers to some common (or not!) questions. The material is arranged in a hierarchy of d

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.

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.

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

This wiki is a collaborative guide to K-12 school technology & leadership that anyone can edit. We encourage you to add your knowledge to this site, so that others may benefit. Please don't hesitate to try editing any page! (just click the "Edit" button a

When it comes to transitioning to Google Apps, we've found that it's important to communicate with your users early and often. Here is a suggested timetable that should help make the transition easy and enable your users to get the most out of the applications.

There is more than one way to get a school to start looking at online learning as a way to reach students. As an international educator, I have found no greater motivation to get the conversation started around online learning than planning for the worst…