Group items tagged

Teach #cs4hs computational thinking with #scratch. Scroll down to see the sorting algorithm dancers.

Graphical representation of different sort algorithms. Very helpful for helping students visualize this.

"High-quality coaching lies somewhere near the crossroads of good teaching and educational therapy. Done well, coaching can help you sort through your pedagogical baggage, develop or hone new skills, and ultimately find your best teaching self. Done poorly, it might turn you off to the entire notion of support. But what if it's not done at all?"

some good tips on helping students learn how to make appropriate comments on blogs

New report from Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University, September 2012, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Tamara Jayasundera, Andrew R. Hanson - Daniela Fairchild of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute writes in The Education Gadfly Weekly: "At 31 percent, the United States currently ranks second among OECD nations-behind Norway-for the percentage of its workforce with a four-year college education. That's the good news. The bad news is that we rank sixteenth for the percentage of our workforce with a sub-baccalaureate education (think: postsecondary and industry-based certificates, associate's degrees). Yet a swath of jobs in America calls for just that sort of preparation, which often begins in high school. Dubbed "middle jobs" in this report by the Center on Education and the Workforce, these employment opportunities pay at least $35,000 a year and are divided among white- and blue-collar work. Yet they are largely ignored in our era of "college for all." In two parts, this report delineates five major categories of career and technical education (CTE), then lists specific occupations that require this type of education. It's full of facts and figures and an excellent resource for those looking to expand rigorous CTE in the U.S. Most importantly, it presents this imperative: Collect data on students who emerge from these programs. By tracking their job placements and wage earnings, we can begin to rate CTE programs, shutter those that are ineffective, and scale up those that are successful. If CTE is ever to gain traction in the U.S.-and shed the stigma of being low-level voc-tech education for kids who can't quite make it academically-this will be a necessary first step."

Great tool for all sorts of charts and diagrams built collaboratively. Free for K-12 educators. Integrates with google drive.

This year my school district in Vermont ventured into a sort-of BYOD/1:1 hybrid program. We realized the importance of allowing our students access to technology to enhance their learning, but the infrastructure wasn't in place to tackle a traditional BYOD. .. Instead, we chose to be creative with our technology and professional development.

This is a great site for creating all sorts of online cloze text of missing words and sentence ordering activities. It's great for sentence and grammar work, as well as using text about topics from across the curriculum. Register for free to create text activities to share and embed. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular

"Nobelprize.org's educational section consists of 46 productions. Of these, 29 are interactive learning games of various sorts and degrees of difficulties. Most of them also includes a "Read more" about the subject. Enjoy learning!"

This is a wonderfully designed site to learn Mandarin Chinese. It uses a huge collection of Chinese TV programmes and movie clips with interactive and dual-language subtitles. Click on a Chinese character is see the translation and hear the pronunciation. You can set your ability level and also what sort of media you are interested in. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture

Useful  aggregation site that provides news briefs for US educators sorted by different regions of the country.  

This is one of the most comprehensive image editing sites I've seen. There are lots of effects to select and you can even make photo collages. It's easy to use and great for all sorts of projects. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Photos+%26+Images

"IT'S been over a year now since I removed an interactive whiteboard (IWB) from a classroom wall for the first time. Yes, you read that right: removed. And not to put another one up. In fact, what went in its place was a good old-fashioned non-interactive whiteboard - the same sort we tore down just two years earlier."

This is a great site to find all sorts of useful resources and information for teaching geography. There are pages of lesson plans, downloads, ideas and advice. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/PSHE%2C+RE%2C+Citizenship%2C+Geography+%26+Environmental

Displays can take up vast areas of wall space and many hours of adults' time, therefore teachers and leaders must be sure of the impact that they are having on learning so that what is on display is justified and not simply a waste of time and space.  Put simply, before a display goes up, we must ask: What will this display do to improve outcomes for children?  For this to be answered with any sort of reliability, the question must be framed within a sound knowledge of how children learn and what learning is - a change in long-term memory...

This is a fabulous and fascinating YouTube channel where all sorts of science ideas are explored and explained in a friendly and engaging way. The topics range from near Earth Asteroid to dung beetles. The videos often cover science stories that are currently in the news. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

Engineering lesson plans.  Sort by grade level.  

the desire not to seem like a crank; misconceiving of the work of the university as "service" rather than governance; deciding to focus on your disciplinary colleagues elsewhere (or online) instead of your institution; a healthy human hatred of meetings-all of these add up to a sort of despair that the faculty can make a difference.