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"Assessment is a necessary part of the teaching and learning process, helping us measure whether our students have really learned what we want them to learn. While exams and quizzes are certainly favorite and useful methods of assessment, out of class assignments (written or otherwise) can offer similar insights into our students' learning. And just as creating a reliable test takes thoughtfulness and skill, so does creating meaningful and effective assignments. Undoubtedly, many instructors have been on the receiving end of disappointing student work, left wondering what went wrong… and often, those problems can be remedied in the future by some simple fine-tuning of the original assignment. This paper will take a look at some important elements to consider when developing assignments, and offer some easy approaches to creating a valuable assessment experience for all involved."

"What is Inquiry Pedagogy? Pedagogy is defined as "any conscious activity by one person designed to enhance learning in another" (Watkins & Mortimer, 1999, p. 3). Inquiry pedagogy therefore, is based around a set of teaching and learning strategies that involve student-centred research and investigation that encourages metacognitive thought processes, discussion and collaboration. Carroll defines Inquiry Pedagogy as an understanding about society and its interactions that "requires us to seek out knowledge as well as apply historical skills to determine why events occurred and what motivated the people to take the action they took" (2012). "

"Introduction Joan Lucariello, PhD, City University of New York Students do not come to school as blank slates to be filled with instruction. Rather, they come to school with considerable knowledge, some correct and some not. Either way, that knowledge is based on intuition, every-day experience, as well as what they have been taught in other settings. Teachers and researchers generally refer to preinstructional knowledge as preconceptions. Since a considerable amount of our knowledge is organized by subject matter (mathematics, science, etc.), so too are our preconceptions. Before beginning instruction on any new topic, teachers need to know their students' preconceptions because learning, and therefore instruction itself, varies depending on whether students' preconceptions agree with the concepts being taught or contradict those concepts. When preconceptions are consistent with the concepts in the assigned curriculum, student preconceptions are called anchoring conceptions. Learning, in such cases, is much easier. It becomes a matter of conceptual growth, enrichment, or adding to student knowledge. More often, teachers find themselves teaching concepts that are difficult for their students to learn because students' preconceptions are inconsistent with the concepts being taught. In these cases, preconceptions are termed alternative conceptions or misconceptions."

"If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time scouring the Internet to find useful online teaching resources like web 2.0 tools. That's how you came across this list of 101 Web 2.0 Tools Every Teacher Should Know About, no doubt! Best Teacher ResourcesWhen I find something great (hint, hint!), I make sure to pin it on Pinterest, "like" it on Facebook and save it to my favorite social bookmarking site so that I can come back to it later. I was looking at my treasure trove of resources the other day it occurred to me: Why don't I share this list of awesome web 2.0 tools with my fellow educators?! So, I went through and picked out my 101 favorite tools for teachers and made this list."

"There is something that bothers us about conversations about replacing face-to-face teaching with online learning: they often fall into a trap of assuming that incorporating synchronous interaction is the optimal way to make learning more personable, that it approximates the face-to-face setting closest, and is therefore preferable and better. More often than not, synchronous interaction here implies some form of two-way audiovisual interaction, even though there are text-only forms of synchronous interaction (e.g., Twitter live chat). There are also asynchronous forms of audiovisual interaction (e.g., voicemail, recorded lectures). But we feel the enthusiasm for audiovisual synchronicity often comes without sufficient discernment, and without deliberative consideration of how asynchronous learning can be not only viable but productive."

"Engage and Assess With Nearpod it's easy, really easy. Bring the classroom to life with interactive mobile presentations that teachers create and customize themselves."

Interesting article about a concept called tpack cool interface also

"Infographics are everywhere but what made them so successful?"

"Technology and education are pretty intertwined these days and nearly every teacher has a few favorite tech tools that make doing his or her job and connecting with students a little bit easier and more fun for all involved. Yet as with anything related to technology, new tools are hitting the market constantly and older ones rising to prominence, broadening their scope, or just adding new features that make them better matches for education, which can make it hard to keep up with the newest and most useful tools even for the most tech-savvy teachers. Here, we've compiled a list of some of the tech tools, including some that are becoming increasingly popular and widely used, that should be part of any teacher's tech tool arsenal this year, whether for their own personal use or as educational aids in the classroom."

" Make science lessons so captivating that students tell their friends. Discover the best video clips, activity ideas, and lesson hooks to capture your students' attention and make your lesson unforgettable. Browse every topic taught in middle school & high school science"

I think I need to use the mother ship to see the tiles, the LEM (my iPad) doesn't want to transmit pictures, yet!

"This is our first year of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and boy, did the students bring it. They brought it all! We have iPads, Surface RT and Pro, iPhones, Droids, Chromebooks, Macs, and PC laptops. Here's my current thinking. Please share yours in the comments section below. "

"When collaboration goes wrong, it can be toxic for learning and classroom culture. We are all familiar with the scene: a group of students that is supposed to be completing a collaborative project has splintered off into dysfunctional factions. Maybe it's one student who has sullenly separated her- or himself from the rest of the group, or maybe the group has become two non-communicative teams with separate visions. Sometimes these conflicts lead to resentments that have the potential for long-term damage to the classroom community. "

"Creating timelines is another important digital skill to be added to the the 33 digital skills we have compiled before. Students should be able to easily create their own learning timelines and share them with each other.This can have a huge positive impact on their overall learning process. Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has sifted through some of the best free timeline making tools and come up with the list below. Just to refresh your mind, a timeline is " a way of displaying a list of events in chronological order, sometimes described as a project artifact. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates alongside itself and usually events labelled on points where they would have happened.' ( from Wikipedia )."

"10 Major Technology Trends in Education We have a first look at the results from the latest Speak Up survey, which polled hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, administrators, parents and community members about technology trends in education. By Chris Riedel 02/03/14 According to the latest data, video for homework is on the rise; mobile computing is "beyond the tipping point"; and most kids don't use traditional computers to connect to the Internet at home. Those are just three of the major trends revealed in the 2013 Speak Up Survey from Project Tomorrow, which CEO Julie Evans revealed at the FETC 2014 conference last week. The 2013 results represent more than 400,000 surveys from 9,000 schools and 2,700 districts across the country. Respondents included 325,279 students, 32,151 teachers and librarians, 39,986 parents, 4,530 district administrators and, new to this year's survey, 1,346 community members."

If you are a language teacher, this organization will keep you up to date on technology advancements.

"f we hope to construct enduring understanding in our students, it's critical that, now more than ever, we know their strengths and interests. By incorporating students' strengths and weakness into authentic learning experiences from the beginning of each unit, while at the same time including opportunities for feedback, metacognition and revision, we promote a variety of cognitive and emotional benefits that can lead to academic success. For example, students with interpersonal learning strengths find that cooperative group work increases perseverance. Students with artistic, computer, dramatic or organizational skills benefit from appropriate opportunities to engage in building knowledge through their strengths and interests. "

"Fun4thebrain Fun4theBrain is a game based math site for students who are learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are dozens of fun math games to play and you can also find printable math worksheets as well. While the focus of the website is math, they also offer a small sampling of games and activities based science, ELA, and a few that are just for fun."

"Purpose: Improving our chance for a common language in discussing existing and emerging learning trends, model, and technology in hopes of innovation in classrooms, and collectively, education at large."