Group items tagged

Been watching this group blog of students and want to share it with you. At over 1000 readers strong, this is an educational blog to watch -- students are speaking out. Who is listening? Of course, teachers IN the classroom had better be listening. I hear my students thoughts in person and on our class blog, but how many teachers truly ask and how many listen? Even more so, how many administrators or curriculum directors listen and are involved. Good teachers listen to students and know when to say yes and when to say no. However, it is great that now students can speak out!

A student website that starts on Monday launched by Artus. Cool

The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV) Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet competing demands from multiple stakeholders. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach. It's posted in four installments: 1. A Taxonomy of Reflection 2. The Reflective Student 3. The Reflective Teacher 4. The Reflective Principal It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective. 4. The Reflective Principal Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model) Assume that a principal (or instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision, project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to pick a few that work for you.) Bloom's Remembering : What did I do? Principal Reflection: What role did I play in implementing this program? What role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in place? Bloom's Understanding: What was

"I never realised that doing group work could be such a controversial activity in teaching until I discovered Twitter! This post is not going to consider if you should use group work, but how to do it effectively should you choose to use it as part of your teaching repertoire. As a science teacher, group work is a given. It just isn't practical to equip every student with every piece of equipment they need to complete an experiment on their own. There is also the issue of time, space and safety, all of which, I feel, may be compromised if you have 28 overenthusiastic students trying to do an experiment at the same time."

Text messaging for parents and teachers. Free. Teacher can send group messages or messages to 1 individual parent.

Here's a breakthrough tool to help all teachers better understand copyright and fair use.

How do I know if my use is a fair use? This tool has been developed to help teachers and students reason through the fair use process. You can see an example of how this tool is being used HERE Use the form online. The data from this form feeds into a google spreadsheet so you can compare how individuals or groups reason the fair use of copyrighted material in a work. If you would like to use this form in your work you can click here. If you have a google account, you can sign in and copy into your google account.

The Reggio Emilia Approach is an educational philosophy focused on preschool and primary education. It was started by Loris Malaguzzi and the parents of the villages around Reggio Emilia in Italy after World War II. The destruction from the war, parents believed, necessitated a new, quick approach to teaching their children. They felt that it is in the early years of development that children are forming who they are as an individual. This led to creation of a program based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community through exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment based on the interests of the children through a self-guided curriculum.

Office gossip (this study on an elementary school and their gossip against a principal) hurts EVERYONE including your school and in this case, test scores declined. Remember that when you gossip, you also hurt yourself and if you didn't already know this, take a read here about office gossip and how to intervene and stop it.

For any history teacher who wishes to share sources, ideas and teaching strategies with other innovative history educators.

This wiki was created as part of a U of Manitoba class by a group of classroom teachers IIt has a large number of resources to help clasroom teachers integrate the teaching of digital citizenship in their curricula including links to articles, websites on digital citizenshi, embedded videos, and more. J. Evans

"Ask a group of teachers why they entered the profession and I guarantee you'll get responses like "I had a teacher who was inspirational to me" and "to make a difference to young people". Certainly, I went into the profession with a desire to help and support others and that hasn't changed. In my experience, this is pretty typical of most people who work in education- their motivation is usually based around a selfless and giving attitude and sense of purpose."

Here's the page where you sign up for the MOOC. There are already 83 enrolled in the class. "ELT-T consists of virtual classes, collaborative work by participants, and social engagement around content. It is designed for anyone teaching children or adults, in large or small groups, and in public or private schools. It is also appropriate for teachers-in-training. Whether you are working part-time, full-time, or not at all, you'll find that ELT-T easily suits your schedule. You do NOT need to have special knowledge of technology to participate in this course. ELT-T is overseen by Jason R Levine (Fluency MC) with the help of Sylvia Guinan, Dr. Nellie Deutsch, and a team of passionate English teacher facilitators from around the world.   Course Presenters: Jack Askew of Teaching ESL Online Drew Badger of EnglishAnyone Sean Banville of Breaking News English Kip Boahn of Virtlantis Dr. Christel Broady of Georgetown College Mau Buchler of Tripppin Dr. Nellie Deutsch of IT4ALL and WizIQ Adir Ferreira of Transparent Language Charles Goodger of English FunSongs Sylvia Guinan of ESLbrain and WizIQ Tony Gurr of Momentum Learning Solutions Vicki Hollett of Simple English Videos Jennifer Lebedev of English with Jennifer Jason R. Levine of ColloLearn and WizIQ Paul Maglione of English Attack! Stephen Mayeux of ESLhiphop Justin Murray of Real Life English Carissa Peck of mELTing Activities Chuck Sandy of iTDi Rachel Smith of Rachel's English Shelly Sanchez Terrell of The 30 Goals Challenge for Educators Teresa Hecht Valais of University of Dayton Center for Intl. Programs Andrew Weiler of Strategies in Language Learning Jason West of English Out There"

A conversation that we're having about tagging, folksonomy and taxonomy and when to use each. This was posted as an email request on our Flat Classroom certified teacher group, however, we have as a best practice to pull out those discussion items and put them on the Ning so that everyone can benefit from the discussion when it is something others may want to read. Feel free to join in and see the conversations happening and add your thoughts.

I've started this article with quite a bold statement, but it's a conclusion that I have been coming too over the course of quite a few years now. I should really put this into context though, as most of the teacher training I do deals with pedagogical training for the use of technology and is most often delivered during intensive face to face sessions, usually with groups of teachers working in a computer lab.

"Edublogs is a blogging tool which is allows students and teachers to create online journals/diaries to share their thoughts and ideas with others. They can include text, audio, images and videos. Blogging allows students to engage in 21st century learning within their classroom and beyond. There are many blogging sites available to use. This page focuses on Edublogs and how it can be used by teachers and students to enhance learning."

New Diigo Pioneer badge

If you want more "bling" for your blog -- Diigo has a new program to recognize educational pioneers using Diigo. Since the beginning, Maggie Tsai has listened to educators (not just me) in amazing ways and this is great. If you have a classroom diigo group, then log into your teacher console and snag your "diigo educational pioneer" badge - I'm going to get mine!! We use diigo groups for all of my classes and we have tag dictionaries based upon the major topics we cover.

This is a fantastic web 2.0 tool. Upload images and annotate. You can other embed media inside the annotations. Annotations pop up as you click or hover over the objects you add. You can embed the annotated image into webpage or blog. This could be a useful tool for teachers and students. Lots of scope for creativity with layers etc. You can share to a group and set editing permissions for public or restricted people/groups for collaboration purposes.