Group items tagged

Kyle Dunbar is running a virtual book club. The first book is Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. This website includes a blog that talks about the takeaways and the recordings that they are discussing. Please feel free to join in and mark your calendars - they are meeting on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm. I hope you'll join in. It is vital that you and I both connect with other classrooms around the world. Students are the greatest textbook ever written for each other - they need to connect and learn from each other. You'll meet other educators and model the kind of learner you want your students to be. If you want your students to innovate YOU must be innovative. If you want your students to collaborate YOU must be collaborative. Here's the schedule: January 7th - Meet the Flat Classroom, Chapters 1 & 2 January 21st - Connection and Communication, Chapters 3 & 4 February 4th - Citizenship, Contribution and Collaboration, Chapters 5 & 6 February 18th - Choice and Creation, Chapters 7 & 8 March 4th - Celebrating, Designing, Managing a Global Project, Chapters 9 & 10 March 18th - Rock the World

Diane Ravitch calls it. Read her blog post on this major ethical issue. I think we need an independent testing company. Isn't there a conflict of interest here when a company creates textbooks and the test? "I am an 8th grade teacher in Xxxx, NY. On Day 1 of the NYS ELA 8 Exam, I discovered what I believe to be a huge ethical flaw in the State test. The state test included a passage on why leaves change color that is included in the Pearson-generated NYS ELA 8 text. I taught it in my class just last week. In a test with 6 passages and questions to complete in 90 minutes, it was a huge advantage to students fortunate enough to use a Pearson text and not that of a rival publisher. It may very well have an impact on student test scores. This has not yet received any attention in the press. Could you help me bring this to the attention of the public?"

1 Voice 2 Choice 3 Time for Reflection 4 Opportunity for Innovation 5 Critical thinkers 6 Problem solvers/finders 7 Self assessment 8 Connected Learning

Some rules have changed as I've been reading up on having Kindles at schools. (Back in February I read a spate of posts mentioning that Amazon said that having 6 kindles share one account was just for "personal use" and that libraries can't do it.) But Amazon does have information on Whispercast which lets you handle distributing books. It is a "free self-service online tool" and I'm thinking that it is something we need to be using. It looks like you can also distribute many of the free ebooks onto Kindles. 

Wind back 12 months, Year 6 SATs, in their old form, were over and we were beginning to plan for a whole new world….assessing without levels. Every discussion threw up problems and positivity about how we moved forward was severely lacking...

"Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) - often referred to as dyspraxia - suffer much higher levels of emotional distress than their classmates and are frequently anxious and downhearted, new research highlighted at the ESRC Festival of Social Science shows. In the UK between 5-6 per cent of children are affected by DCD."

A set of lesson plans for grades 6-8 from PBS to help students understand and reflect upon those who are deaf. This is integrated with writing as well.

terms for grades k-6

Evernote and Moleskin announce the new smartnotebook which is very cool. While you can already snap pictures of notes to Evernote - this notebook has small dots that adjust the page to make it square and remove distortion. It includes stickers that will tag the pages for you and add emphasis and included in the price of the notebook ($30) is a free subscription to Evernote premium for 3 months. I love evernote and while their tech support leaves a lot to be desired (it took me 6 months to figure out how to fix an installation glitch which was answered by another user on their forum after Evernote kept telling me just to use Revo uninstaller) -- it can't be beat for usefulness - that is why it is one of the few apps I am willing to pay for. I'll definitely be asking for this notebook for Christmas to try it out. Hope the price comes down a tad, though.

In the chinese lantern festival (coming up on February 6), children in China and in other areas across Asia, carry lanterns with riddles on them as they go into their temples. Here are some lesson plans and templates for making your own lanterns. You could have students put riddles on them relating to topics you have going in your classroom.

Corporatization of schooling through standardization via technology to replace teachers and cut costs

Engage NH has some examples of lessons that they consider exemplars for English Language arts grades 6-12 and math grades 1,2,7, and high school. IF you're looking to see what this looks like in practice, here are some that you'll want to review.