Group items tagged

"There's something about origami that really seems to capture children's imagination. In most of the classes that I have taught over the years, there has been at least one child with a real passion for origami. Many a show-and-tell has been dominated by incredible paper-folding creations, from water bombs to paper dragons. Think back to your own school days; which of these origami classics do you remember creating?"

"A recent study published in Oxford Economic Papers indicates that university education has a dramatically positive effect on the development of non-cognitive skills like conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness, in addition to the expected intellectual benefits. The paper also shows that the impact of education on these skills is even more dramatic for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds."

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."

"This paper explores how new digital technologies can be used to design curricula that are flexible enough to adapt readily to individual differences. The authors propose that universal design for learning-as the confluence of advances in the neuroscience of human variability and in multimedia technologies-can create an "ecology for learning" which provides rich, diverse, student-centered learning pathways for all students. "

This site has a fantastic collection of KS1-3 English, Maths and Science past SATs paper, completed with audio tracks. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular

A superb site for finding, printing and making cubic paper characters. Make well known characters from TV, cartoons, movies and lots more. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Art%2C+Craft+%26+Design

We know that your busy and don't always have time to search and sift through the good and the not so online. Find useful articles and Ideas from about Problem Based and Inquiry Based Learning at the Authentic Classroom Paper.li. Subscribe to get a new addition everyday

AcaWiki is like "Wikipedia for academic research" designed to increase the impact of scholars, students, and bloggers by enabling them to share summaries and discuss academic papers online. AcaWiki turns research hidden in academic journals into something more dynamic and accessible. All content on the site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

AcaWiki is like "Wikipedia for academic research" designed to increase the impact of scholars, students, and bloggers by enabling them to share summaries and discuss academic papers online. AcaWiki turns research hidden in academic journals into something more dynamic and accessible. All content on the site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

postpost is a tool like paper.li, but for facebook. if you are a visual person and like a newspaper style newsfeed, you will enjoy this.

If you use Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (or know someone that does), here is a right now project to tie in. Make cranes to generate a donation to Japan, and participate in a communal art project.

Designs for easy-to-make paper dinosaurs that you can download from this site and print out on your printer. All that is needed is scissors and glue. Soon your office will be overrunning with raptors. How about triceratops with names on them as place settings at a kid's birthday party? Or a 30-minute crafts activity?

"The purpose of this paper is to examine how KML, Keyhole Markup Language, can be used for thematic mapping. A thematic map displays the spatial pattern of a social or physical phenomenon, such as population density, life expectancy or climate change. "

Got a student who needs a fun project? This might be right up his/her alley.

Lesson Plan, rubric and assignment packet for planning a position paper.

If you use Diigo but are researching a certain topic for a book or term paper and also use Evernote, I recommend setting up an ifttt.com recipe similar to this one I'm using for my collaborative writing book. Everything tagged "collaborative writing" goes automatically to my collaborative writing book. You could use this for a course. You could take everything on Diigo tagged with the course number into a notebook (or into a Google spreadsheet, for that matter.) There are many other sources of information you can use to collect information on a topic in one place. 

In a recent PEW study, National Writing Project (NWP) and Advanced Placement (AP) teachers said that "a top priority in today's classrooms should be teaching students how to 'judge the quality of online information.'"  Furthermore, teachers are concerned that students don't get past Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube into deeper (and more accurate) ways of collecting information. If you want to discuss research sources, social bookmarking is the best way to do this. We should see more classrooms using Diigo (the most superior bookmarking service, in my opinion) or Delicious as they discuss and share the documents they will use in their research papers.  I've found when topics need deeper research or when the sources of research are in dispute, that social bookmarking is the best way to facilitate those discussions. It is a powerful form of pre-writing for students. If they can begin the conversations around research articles and sources, then more accurate information will emerge in their final document. Often students don't verify the sources of information and should learn to view all online information with skepticism and a critical eye as they converse over what makes a good source. Social bookmarking is a key source of discussion, data collection, and citation in the modern classroom.

This is a tough one and I've had two or three this year who will call out - in a disruptive way. Sometimes it is when I'm speaking. I have one great class that causes me to struggle because of several who have a bit of a problem with knowing the appropriate time to engage (not in the middle of a question or when someone else is talking.) I encourage kids to have a pencil and paper or a tablet in  hand to jot down notes of what they want to say - sometimes they are afraid they'll forget. Other times, when it is class discussion, I use poker chips. Each student gets two. When they want to interject, they spend their chip. Every student must participate twice before anyone can have a third input. It is a daily grade and so easy to assess b/c everyone must give up their chips.  This article takes it much further and is a good one if you're struggling with this. "Namely, how do you deal with a student who, despite receiving consequence after consequence, continues to call out in class? Before we get to the solution, it's important to note that there are times during a normal school day when you may want to allow your students to respond to you or their fellow classmates without raising their hand"

In this must-read post, Lisa Myers says so many things right. So many of us teachers have shocked that people have seen into the heart of who we are but why did some teachers have to die for people to see it? "No, for most of us, our all does not include a sacrificial death, but it does include a sacrificial life. It means working a full day at school then continuing that work at home well into the evening as we grade papers and prepare materials that will lead to authentic learning in the classroom. That's our surface work. At a deeper level, however, we also do the following:""