Group items tagged

# for students, teachers and parents to use; # for showing the workings that led to a final product (it's time we stopped covering up our learning in English, showing our working in Maths - let's get the process of learning out there for all to see, contribute to and build upon);

education, teachers, learning, students, technology

As former elementary science and math education professor, I was always encouraging preservice teachers to teach science and math from a hands-on, minds-on perspective. My goal was single minded in the sense that for students to learn science and math their curiosity must peaked. This was always a challenge because most of these preservice teachers learned science and math by rote memorization of facts. Their prior knowledge and experience had few opportunities to actually investigate science phenomena and truly understand the usefulness of math.

education, teachers, students, classroom, resources, tools, e-learning, achievements

"With the introduction of iPads and tablets into education I thought it would be a good idea to start a collection of interesting links and suggestions around how these devices are being used in education." Great site with lots of good information.

"With the introduction of iPads and tablets into education I thought it would be a good idea to start a collection of interesting links and suggestions around how these devices are being used in education." Great site with lots of good information.

You can help them think deeper but it takes time and sharpening the saw. Great article. "A common occurrence in classrooms is that the teacher, when he or she sees the students struggle mightily to "think out of the box" will precipitously step in and give the students the answers, or throw the deeper learning activity out all together, thinking that the students aren't ready for it. What these students and the teachers need is to be patient, practice and build those mental muscles over time. One thing that helps teachers and students is a better understanding the nature of the advanced thinking tools."

Nice article to spread around to teachers as they hit post planning. From edutopia, it asks us to do what all of us teachers should constantly do: examine ourselves. Change is a way of life. I've got quite a few I'm pondering for myself as well.

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!

Socrative has even more cool features. Richard Byrne gives an overview on on of my favorite blogs, Free Tech for Teachers. "Socrative's new image option could be great for asking mathematics questions that are diagram based. The image option could also be great for world languages teachers to post a picture of an object that students have to identify in the language that they're learning. And the new automatic grading option could save you a ton of time that you can then invest in something else. "

Doug Johnson is a great read for his blunt, in your face honesty and his point about how technology companies are trying to differentiate is a great one. I think, however, we should extend this to schools as well. If your school is great, say why, but dissing the competition is no way to compete. If you think your school has no competition, think again. So, read this in light of the arriving and coming competition on the edulandscape and have an honest take on how you should "sell" the virtues of your school. If you can't talk about how great your school is and have to resort to how bad the other one is, prepare for a day when you'll shutter the windows and wonder how they're going to keep the bugs out of your empty building. Wake up and smell the wires burning their way into your student's computers and tablets, great teachers are just a click away and we've all got to learn how to blend and trend our courses, teaching, and to bridge our classrooms to add real value as teachers. It isn't hard as you think but if you just sit and teach like you've always taught, you're setting yourself up for some unpleasant days. You can't do everything but you can do something to improve yourself. Next practices are an important part of your best practice. Always innovate and never settle. Standards are only the beginning, you must have purpose if you're going to be a great teacher. Doug says: "But what I do know that when competitors trash each other, I tend to tune out. And I flat out hate it when I know they are lying - and I will NOT buy from a liar. A salesman recently promoted his video storage service by stating "unlike YouTube, we don't own your movies." That's just not true. (YouTube doesn't own your movies, GoogleApps doesn't own your Docs, CIPA, FERPA, etc. do not ban social media.)"

I"ve been hearing a lot of great things from teachers about Book creator as a new way they have students create reports. Called, Book Creator, children can create pages, send them to their teachers and then the teacher can put them together further. 

This is a hands-on laboratory unit from the U.S. Department of Energy exploring the concepts of heat and movement. Teachers set up six laboratory stations that will introduce students to the basic concepts of thermodynamics, including atomic structure, atomic and molecular motion, states of matter, heat transfer, thermal expansion, specific heat, and heats of fusion and vaporization. It also includes a unit exam and teacher demonstrations.

H&R Block asked me to write an article to help people understand the hidden costs of being a teacher. It is important to help people understand the profession we love. If you agree, I hope you'll like and share this article to help others know what it is like to be a teacher.

The Taboo show talks about things that are hard to discuss. The most recent show talks about how to teach with a broken heart. I know I've been broken hearted enough to quit at least twice in my short 12 year career and most teachers I know have been there. This is an important topic with lots of great discussion from one teacher who is there and some who've been there. If this is you, take a listen and I hope this helps. "Even the best teachers feel disillusioned about teaching at times. However, some are brokenhearted and dispirited about what teaching has become, yet continue teaching because they have limited alternatives. Is there a solution? Follow:@blairteach, @JessedHagopian @coolcatteacher, @bamradionetwork"

This has got to be the funkiest instant poll, quiz, response site around. Create questions, quizzes and polls with optional uploaded images for participants to complete in real time from a computer or mobile device. The users access the quiz by using a pin code. The 'question master' gets the data back instantly and it is stored on the site or can be downloaded. This is superb for checking the knowledge of children in your class or that your audience is still awake. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Got this email from a teacher Hi Vicki- I love your blog, tweets and contributions to flipboard! I am a teacher at a local school district charter high school and appreciate your zeal for teaching and learning. I am not sure if you have heard about Kahoot! but wanted to ask you to check it out by following it on Twitter or watching a few youtube videos of Kahoot in action. I have no financial investment in it or any reason for recommending it other than how much we are enjoying using it at our school and how valuable a tool I believe it to be. Questions can be entered by students or teachers and pictures can be uploaded to each question to add visual appeal. The students can use computers, smart phones, tablets and don't have to have an account- they just log in to kahoot.it and then join the interactive quiz. Everyone gets so involved and passionate and it is great for reviews before tests or for supplemental instruction. The results can be viewed on a spreadsheet and provide formative assessments. It can be used for any ages and any subjects. I am so jazzed about this great new tool and hope you will be too. https://getkahoot.com Kathryn Lewallen Payson, AZ Payson Center for Success High School

This looks like a very cool English game that uses all kinds of shows to teach. Thinking that ESL teachers will want to test this one out. Mau Butler send me this message about this new site: Hello Vicki, I've been an ESL teacher for 20 years, in several countries, and a reader of your coolcatteacher blog for a while. Congratulations. You do excellent work. :) For the past 3 years, I've been building a very innovative approach to teaching and learning English, which is now ready to use. Considering your work, I thought you'd be interested in trying it out. It's called Tripppin and I strongly recommend you see it for yourself on www.tripppin.com but this is us in a nutshell: "Tripppin is an English practice platform, which blends offline and online learning experiences into a game, a music channel, cooking shows, animation, entertaining videos shot around the world, and excellent support for English teachers everywhere." Hope you can have a look :) Thank you.

Connecting can still be a struggle.

Sometimes teachers reach out and find others are not there. This is what it takes to set up collaboration. I've found that it takes a teacher totally committed to eventually find a person to connect with -- it takes two determined teachers to make it happen -- her experiences are similar. So, if you have students who speak mostly spanish and would like to collaborate -- please please connect and leave a comment on this post. Share resources and places that you're connecting. Sometimes, twitter, as she says, does end up being the best way to connect.

This website is a virtual convener. It facilitates a 'handshake' between teachers interested in cross collaboration project. The comforts in connectivity, constructivism, and collaboration make this 'handshake' more intelligent. This virtual convener is based on connecting teachers using more than simply the grade level or location of classrooms.

I love how this teacher is truly emerging into the blogosphere, after a comment from me, and pinging technorati with thoughts, this teacher's post has received noticed from the bloggers at the Wikinomics blog. This teacher is doing an excellent job with blogging and we're only seeing the beginning.

Publishing from Google Docs to blogger. So, this is what you could do. The teacher has enabled the link to the blog in the teacher's account settings. Students and many others create a document and then share it with the teacher. After the document is as it needs to be, the teacher can then post to blogger from google docs automatically. This really gives you the best of wikis, blogs, and peer review as well as the ability to look at the revisions and who has contributed. This is something that I'm going to look at doing.

Information on posting to blog from Google Docs