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This infographic is an impactful one helping school boards and IT departments understand the important of BYOD environments. In 2011 70% of the workforce between 22-34 used tablets and globally 46% of the mobile workforce has a smartphone. Using, managing, and maximizing these tools is an important part of modern life. Perhaps today's issues are helping students learn to focus, but keeping them out of school is shortsighted decision that will be looked back upon as a lack of vision... that is if you can help kids focus and help teachers encourage the use of them effectively. "Smartphones and Tablet sales will soon take over laptop and desktop computer sales: Don't stick just to books - why not let students use the technology they'll need in the future?"

There are many who don't understand this one point. I used to have someone who required me to have beautiful lesson plans. They were detailed. I spent more than an hour a day on them. So much time so that sometimes I felt unprepared when the kids actually walked in the door. When those detailed plans were removed and I was allowed to focus on the content created for the students to use and then keep a grid (I keep links, etc. to what I'm doing) - THAT Was when real innovation happened in my classroom. Things like wikis, blogs, etc. happened after those super-restrictive requirements were taken off my shoulders. I had the wrong audience when I had those detailed lesson plans - my audience was the principal at the time. Now, I still have plans but I keep it in a grid in a book and then keep copies of what I use with students in dropbox and other places. I do far more now than then because my focus is the students. Lesson plans aren't bad. However, if you spend your time making the LESSON PLAN itself pretty and perfect then likely you're not spending your actual time PLANNING, printing, collecting, and creating what you'll be doing with your students. Also, when you do things like #geniushour and 20% time projects, you no longer have a lesson plan but a project plan which is an entirely different thing altogether. Don't fault teachers for this.  Teaching is the hardest job everybody thinks they can do and few really can.

Focus on close reading in Common Core.  Many fear teachers are not prepared for this dramatic a shift where the textbook is the first, sole focus.  

"With a greater focus on accessibility and inclusivity, Microsoft has announced ten major updates to their services available in 2019, that can have a positive impact on using their tools for teaching and learning. In a blog post, Mike Tholsfen highlighted how the Immersive Reader technology, along with Line Focus in Microsoft Word, and an even more impressive feature of being able to change page colours in Word desktop."

"Even with 'expert' advice from consultants, self-proclaimed gurus, or politicians, managing behaviour in secondary schools is an art within itself. Different personalities, socio-economic conditions and expectations are all unique to each individual setting so no one slant on how to manage behaviour will suit all schools. Yet the role of pastoral care in many schools has evidently been diminished with the focus turning towards academic achievement in high stakes exam results, with pupils being reduced to 'units of progress'. This is not only a UK shift in focus, with many jurisdictions around the world following a similar pattern."

"Building a rich vocabulary, across the curriculum, is one of the main aims for most teachers. Not only does a rich vocabulary help to create strong writing skills, but also can help with improving access to all areas of the curriculum. In his book, Andrew Jennings explains why vocabulary should be a focus in your classroom, providing resources and inspiration to help optimise vocabulary learning. Resources include a focus on SPaG facts, key vocab words that support various popular primary topics, an etymology section to inspire pupils, and looking at various grammatical features that can help build a repertoire of rich vocabulary. Throughout, the book provides other resources that can be copied for classroom use, or be used to take home to help build vocabulary skills away from the school setting."

A great way to get started with technology is to join in an exciting project. this project by Susan Silverman was designed using the principles of Universal Design for Learning. I've heard her present and she is a pro. (Along with my friend Jennifer Wagner.)

Susan Silverman creates excellent projects for global collaboration among elementary students.

This week's discovery exercises focus on learning about RSS feeds and using Google Reader (a free online newsreader) to bring your feeds together. If there is another online reader that you are more comfortable with, or that you already use, please feel free to use it.

Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing. Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully-for the next day or the year ahead-by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

Do you focus as much on the process of learning as the content? Do your students reflect as much on how they learn as on what they learn.

Many of us start with a degree of self-consciousness when we first lead discussion. We wonder whether participants will understand and respond to our focus question and whether we will understand their responses; we worry about whether we will easily think of follow-up questions and whether we will be able to keep discussion focused on the problem of meaning we have raised. Leading is not an easy task and it requires practice. But while there is no substitute for experience, there are things you can do to establish good conditions for thoughtful discussion.

Grading handwritten answers by students as a feature of a copier? Producing data analytics as a result. IF this works, it will not only sell more copiers, but also make handwritten work more of a commodity. Maybe if a computer can quickly grade the easy stuff, teachers can spend more time assessing project based learning and other work that computers cannot do. This won't help me much - except when I teach binary numbers and memory conversion which do require me to check work (I never do multiple choice.) I could see how math teachers would be thrilled. "Xerox later this year plans to roll out Ignite, a software and web-based service that turns the numerous copiers/scanners/printers it has in schools across the United States into paper-grading machines. Unlike such staples of the educational system as Scantron, which uses special forms where students choose an answer and fill in the corresponding bubble, Ignite will grade work where the answers are written in by the students, such as the numeric answer to a math problem. Ignite takes right and wrong answers and turns them into web-accessible data for teachers with reports that say whether a student or groups of students are consistently having more trouble with certain kinds of math problems. Those reports can be used by teachers to tailor what they're teaching - such as by identifying what group of students needs more help with a certain topic - or given to students so they know where they should focus their studying. It also opens the door to specific tests or homework assignments for specific students becoming more the norm, each tailored to academic strengths and weaknesses."

"Visualizing Cultures was launched at MIT in 2002 to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning. The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be). Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address "culture" in much broader ways-cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of "Self" and "Others," and so on."

This older video from Seth Godin about "curiosity" is a fantastic video to show teachersac about inspiring curiosity. This is the habitude my school is going to start with and focus on for the next six weeks. I'm showing this video on Wednesday. We show this starting with "why does this matter." 

Testing students over material that is NOT in the curriculum is not fair. I think that states should have a way to mark things not covered and just take the hits across the board for not having it in their curriculum instead of causing children to suffer through feeling ignorant. Common Core may be great, however, if it isn't in the curriculum it is unfair and shouldn't be done. What can we do? Do we cause children to stress out unfairly because adults can't get their act together or it takes time to change the curriculum? I don't know the answers, but the thought of a child looking at a test and knowing that some things didn't happen in the classroom and the impact of "feeling dumb" that will happen just turns my stomach, literally.  From the NEw York Times. " And they are likely to cover at least some material that has yet to make its way into the curriculum. The new tests, given to third through eighth graders, are intended to align with Common Core standards, a set of unified academic guidelines adopted by almost every state and goaded by grant money offered by the Obama administration. They set more rigorous classroom goals for American students, with a focus on critical thinking skills, abstract reasoning in math and reading comprehension."

Excited to be in Virginia on July 17 at TechSplash! Hope you'll join us if you're the area. "The purpose of Tech Splash 2013 is to showcase exemplary examples of technology integration in the K12 classroom as well as focus attention on new and emerging technologies. Date:            July 18, 2013      8-3:30pm Location:     Lebanon High School, Lebanon, Virginia Cost: $25 prepaid, $35 onsite "

Inspired by UK Parliament debate secured by @karlmccartney MP - Click here to read tweets from the debate - the #UKEdChat poll this week established that the discussion will focus on the Educational Performance of Boys.

We are a happy and stable staff, and my colleagues are a fabulous group of people who look after each other and genuinely care about one another. We have an experienced leadership team, and always aim to take account of how people are feeling and the pressure they are under when trying  new approaches and changes to practice. Even so, it has become more and more clear that workload is becoming untenable and wellbeing is suffering a result. I feel that we have felt obligated at times to put policies in place that seem to be there to collect evidence for Ofsted rather than solely to improve the learning of the children in our care. We want to change this.

"English…done! Reading…done! Assembly…go, go, go! Packed primary timetables can sometimes feel like you're racing through an army drill. It can be difficult to stop, and allow children time for deeper thought and study. Integrating meaningful STEM into the week can often feel like a bit of a headache. Project Based Learning as a method of teaching STEM, could be the solution to this. Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths are the four disciplines many schools are hoping to focus on this academic year, looking at an applied and integrated approach."