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Another one of my students has been writing and sharing on the Kindle Kids Corner. Here's an interview she did about trends in Young Adult fiction and I agree with so much of what she's written. This is another example of how authentic projects can transform a student. This happened to come out of one of my favorite kindle book sites - Kindle Nation Daily and an email conversation I had with the author Steven Windwalker (penname.) 

I leverage the multi-windowed nature of my laptop to be working with spreadsheets, documents, presentations, email, calendar, Twitter, web content, pictures, videos, blog writer, etc. at the same time.  My productivity would be severely reduced if I did not have my laptop.

I am a 2nd grade teacher from OHIO who is WILD about technology! This fall will be my 17th year of teaching! I have enjoyed sharing my ideas and supporting teachers who have attended my technology sessions. We have traded many ideas and given support to each other over the years through email and Facebook. This blog is a new adventure to share ideas and to learn from a new community! I hope to inspire teachers to use technology in their classrooms. I hope to motivate parents/community members to use technology in their homes and in their daily lives!

Nice article at edweek about the informational texts versus great works of literature debate and what Common Core will do to lit. The one important, practical issue that all parties to this discussion MUST recognize - the classroom time is FINITE. Teachers would love to cover EVERYTHING but it just isn't practical. So, if one thing is emphasized over another, it may push something out. Unintended consequences are happening as people "align" their curriculum to common core standards. As all of the pundits and advocates argue this, it would be telling to sit down with an actual aligned curriculum to SEE what happens where the standards meet the lesson plans and what is actually pushed out - until then - it is all, rhetoric. Give us practical application, we're teachers, after all. From the edweek article: "Until recently, the closest we'd come to a major speech on the nonfiction-versus-fiction question was a piece in the Huffington Post by the English/language arts standards' co-authors, David Coleman and Sue Pimentel, insisting that literature "is not being left by the wayside." The message to rally the troops must have gone out, however. Because since the Coleman/Pimentel piece appeared, the common core's defenders have stepped up to counterbalance the literature-pushout crowd. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's Kathleen Porter-Magee, for instance, posted a piece arguing that it's a misinterpretation of the standards to say that teachers will have to teach less literature. In a recent email blast, the Foundation for Excellence in Education-led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the common core's biggest backers-declaimed the "misinformation flying around" about what will happen to literature under the common standards. "Contrary to reports," it said, "classic literature will not be lost with the implementation of the new standards." A glance at the standards' own suggested text lists, it noted, "reveals that the common core recognizes the importance of b

IF you tweet or share a to a lot of apps, this app, Drafts will connect to just about anything. Type it, then decide where to send it, or you can save your most inspirational items to tweet, Facebook, or wherever later. It links with evernote, twitter, facebook, app.net, email, messages, calendars, dropbox, evernote, bufferapp, toodledoo and more (as well as ifttt.com integration.) I'm still learning about all the ways to use this handy tool. The only thing I wish it did is that I could add to it from the web and then see it on my ipad.

Another Mooc, I got an email from Jeremy Short, the professor leading this course. I was a management major at Georgia tech, I love the incorporation of graphic novels into this course. Here's what Dr. Short sent me: "I'm a professor at the University of Oklahoma. My co-authors and I conducted a study that will soon be published in Business Communication Quarterly where we find that graphic novels are more effective than traditional textbooks for direct recall of material. The study used material about human motivation commonly taught in introductory management courses. In addition to the superior recall associated with the graphic novel version of the material, more than 80% of students indicated the graphic novel format compared favorably to traditional textbooks. Now anyone in the world can conduct their own study to see if their experiences match our findings, as I will be teaching a class beginning June 10 and ending July 15, that is free under the MOOC format and will feature a graphic novel textbook as well as a traditional principles of management text - both books I've co-authored. OU students can enroll through regular registration and take the course for credit, but anyone interested in the class can enroll for free under the non-credit option. The only cost of the class under the second option is the cost of the two texts, which can be purchased for under $100 total."

Another small change. Google alerts NO LONGER allows RSS delivery. This is a big deal for many of us who use the service to monitor our brand. Big yuck. I hope they don't discontinue this for Google news. IF you want to monitor your school's name, go to this site and set up the alert and send it to email.

" Kristy Cooper's insanely rigorous mixed methods study, Eliciting Engagement in the High School Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Teaching Practices, published in the April 2014 American Educational Research Journal, does an exceptional job of showing what works. Cooper, an award-winning researcher at Michigan State University with an MA and Ed.D from Harvard, examined the impact of three well-supported strategies that teachers employ to increase student engagement. As you read each summary below, try to guess which practice had the greatest impact." Todd Finley shares the three methods and asks which has the most impact: 1) Lively teaching, 2) Academic Rigor and 3) Connective Instruction. A fantastic must-read on student engagement that you'll want to email your staff.

Create MP3 'text to speech' files from websites to 'read' on the go. The site makes an audio file using a voice synthesiser. Combine with a simple notepad site and add your own text to read anything you like. An email address is required. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

"Warning: Surfing the internet in class is now linked to poorer test scores, even among the most intelligent and motivated of students. Michigan State University researchers studied laptop use in an introductory psychology course and found the average time spent browsing the web for non-class-related purposes was 37 minutes. Students spent the most time on social media, reading email, shopping for items such as clothes and watching videos."

Fantastic for inspiring the message that we all need to be questioning and considering questions we don't know the answers to as we move forward into the 21st century

An incredible set of Google forms that you can use in your classroom. One tip - never collect emails or you violate Google's terms of service and can lose access to the spreadsheet like we did with our Eracism project last week.

An incredible set of drama resources from Kennesaw state. Drama teachers will LOVE this page, so email it to them.

Heartwrenching, heartaching, upsetting, but all too true. For those who want to see inside the life of many US public school teachers, Peter Hirzel has a gutsy, edgy post on salon and says many of the things that are often whispered and said in email. But there is a part that I want EVERY teacher to hear because it reflects something I say a lot to teachers: "When we have each others' backs, we are invincible. So I hope all the teachers continue to be kind to one another, because one kind word was very, very often the only thing that got me through the day." BE KIND TO EACH OTHER. Encourage each other. Smile. Say hello. You are fellow journeyman and deserve each other's respect and kindness. Please hear this. Don't be discouraged, but if you're in edreform and don't read this post, you shouldn't be in edreform because you don't get the conflicting emotions plaguing the psyche of so many teachers today.

Now cnet and their Download.com is installing spyware. This is a sad day when we cannot trust download.com but it is looking to be true. My tech forums in email have been full of slams  against download.com and what they are doing to install the Bing toolbar and other services in a proprietary installer which is a bit over the top. Let your IT people know.

I love this lesson plan which includes algebra, ratios, angles, and stastics that most 9th and 10th graders I know could compute. This could be a very fund summary activity. Look at this PDF and powerpoint and create your own. If you do, please share it with me in the comments or email it to me, I'd like to share what you do.

One of my favorite tools is evernote. I email to evernote. I pull it up on my ipad. I take photographs and scan to evernote and can search text. It is on my phone, my ipad, my computers. My notebook that I carry everywhere. Great tool.

Great article about the importance of Computer Science. This is one of those that superintendents and principals should email their curriculum directors, school board members and PTO's to support and encourage this kind of education. "This is not about helping the tech industry. It's about the tech industry helping the rest of America. Today, 67 percent of software jobs are outside the tech industry. If hiring computer programmers is challenging for Silicon Valley, it's an even greater challenge for every other industry in America. Tech jobs aside, teaching kids basic computer science is valuable no matter what career path they might choose. Every child can benefit from a strong foundation in problem-solving. As software is taking over the world, a rudimentary grasp of how it works is critical for every future lawyer, doctor, journalist, politician and more. American schools are struggling to teach basic math and English, and skeptics may worry that we can't afford to teach anything else. We'd argue that computer science is part of the solution: it motivates kids to learn other subjects. If a school can afford to teach biology, history, chemistry and foreign languages, it should teach computer science too."