Group items tagged

this blog is going to try to chronicle how I use technology in an effort to teach and write more effectively. A couple of initial caveats: 1. This blog is decidedly biased towards the humanities. Both because that is where I work, and because it seems to me that is where the greatest resistance to technology has been. 2. This blog is also markedly Mac biased. While many of the hints and tricks I have developed work across a range of platforms or are web based, most of my work is done on a Mac. While there are certainly reasons to choose to run a PC over a Mac I find that for my needs, and I would argue for many in the humanities (the sciences can be a different matter) a Mac is a better choice. 3. I am by no means an expert. This is meant as a place to begin a discussion, I hope that others can contribute their experiences, hints and tips as well.

Welcome to Poets' Corner, one of the largest and oldest text resources on the web. The goal of this ongoing project is to develop a user-friendly library that is both a useful reference and an appealing place to browse and explore - and there is a lot here to explore. The collection covers nearly 7,000 works by almost 800 poets - ranging from some of the best known works in the English language to works that were never widely known or whose popularity has been obscured by time.

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.

"I went shopping at 8 o'clock one evening in my local supermarket (one of the German chains) and was chatting to the man on the checkout who was moaning about his job and his employer. He says he has to work very long hours (tonight he was going to finish at 1:00am) - longer than his contract says he should; he gets paid for the hours he works but only at standard hours. He doesn't like some of the jobs, they are not really his responsibility but they have to be done. There is a union but they don't seem to be very helpful. His bosses don't always seem to consider the consequences of their actions - the manager was leaving as I was being served and commented that he'd left two bags of garbage on a till further along and they would need moving in a bit. The man serving was the only person on the tills and he said that between customers (there weren't many at this time of the evening) he had to move the garbage and clean all of the tills then when the store closed he needed to work at changing stock and stacking shelves. As the manager left he turned and said, "I asked Matt if he could stay and help you but he gave an unequivocal no!""

"what strategies and plans can senior staff follow to ensure that they are truly making a difference to the work-life balance of teaching colleagues? Following a recent #UKEdChat session (click here to view), our community came up with a collection of ideas which you can adapt yourself, or share with the senior leaders in your school to set into motion to help improve the work-life balance of all staff."

"Any research based or inquiry-based project seems to work well for me. I enjoy leading the children through the process of developing a research question. It's always interesting to hear what goes on in the minds of these inquisitive learners. Last year my grade 8 (14-year-olds) were working on the impact of government systems on individual and Societies. Students took up the case studies of India and Pakistan, some of them worked on Arab-Israeli conflict, and yet another group picked the Berlin Wall and its impact on the population."

"There are lots of stressful careers, but teaching combines the elevated baseline of chonic stress of the day to day, coupled with bouts of intensely stressful events. Inspections, staff meetings, work scrutiny, piles of unmarked books in the boot of your car, all can cause stress and anxiety. Plus the current culture of the profession, where boasts about the long hours individuals work are wore like medals rather than alarm bells, make us feel inadequate unless we are working ourselves to the verge of medical exhaustion."

It's probably one of the most commonly used strategies evident in classrooms around the world, but researchers from the University of Liverpool have concluded that group work can actually harm memory. In a joint study, psychologists from the University of Liverpool and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) have revealed that collaborating in a group to remember information is harmful...

Use your smart phone to digitise your student's work and make an online assessment record. Use images, files or Videos from YouTube. Add comments and much more. You can also upload images of work through the website. Why not get your class to upload their own? Really excited about this! http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Planning+%26+Assessment

Work more effectively with this clever little timer site that fits in breaks in to your working time. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

Possible theory and practice to use for development of PLN model for schools

What Work-Learning Audit Reveals

Designed by researchers for researchers. This tool will allow you to organize your research online & offline. It automatically captures data for citation in MLA, APA, & Chicago. The aspects that they are working on will be amazing in relation to collaboration with other people.

firefox extension for compiling a complete works cited while researching on the internet.  pretty nifty tool - wish it worked on other browsers as well.

We will discuss what schools are doing to prepare for possible closures, how teachers can work efficiently at home, how schools and colleagues can offer support, and how technology can help to keep learning happen.

You have until NOvember 26 to nominate for the Edublog awards. There are many who don't care for this awards system because there are many great bloggers, but I think anything that recognizes educational blogging is a good thing. So, nominate away, here is information. Here's the page that tells you how to do this. "The 2012 Edublog Awards are a go! The Edublog Awards is a community based initiative started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes.  The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media. Working together, we create an invaluable resource of the best-of-the-best on the web! How Does It Work? There are 3 parts to the awards: Nominations - NOW through November 26th Voting - TBA The Live Awards Ceremony - TBA"

This is a call out specifically to my friends out there in the Atlanta area or anywhere in Georgia to put in for a poster session at Georgia Tech's conference about the Foundations for the future. I wish I could get away but am a bit tied up at school right now. Here's the information and link: "Foundations for the Future (F3), a K-12 outreach and research program at Georgia Tech Research Institute, knows that Georgia teachers are using technology in amazing ways to inspire and engage students. One of the most frequent comments we hear is that it is difficult for educators to know what's working for other educators because there is so much going on, not everyone can afford to attend conferences, and access to technology is inconsistent across the state. We want to honor and highlight teachers and their projects. What better way to get inspired than through a fellow colleague! What better way to meet other passionate educators and share your experiences! F3 is hosting the 2013 F3 Educator Showcase during our May Explorers Guild meeting. The showcase will include a panel discussion along with a poster session. If you are interested in applying for the poster session, all you need to do is follow the guidelines below. Posters will be chosen by a selection committee of F3 partners and Georgia Tech colleagues. Chosen posters will be printed for participants so that after the event they can take the posters back to their school to continue highlighting the good work taking place there! This event helps support F3's mission to help acquire and leverage instructional technology resources for Georgia's classrooms, schools, and districts, share best practices, and establish a community of learners. We look forward to your submissions and can't wait to see you all at the event in May!   Guidelines for Poster Abstract Submission: Title: Accurately and concisely present your idea in 15 words or less Abstract: In 350 words or less, tell us about how using technology

I love these thoughts about being a thought leader. I think also, this could be said of leaders in schools as well. "It's important that if you want to be a Thought Leader in your industry, you take the time to develop your thoughts and publish information that will educate, entertain and engage your readers. Think about the issues you've worked through yourself in the past with your business and talk about those. Share your challenges and how you struggled to get through them, but what you did eventually to achieve success. Or, sometimes even more enlightening, share your failures, and how you're working never to experience that particular failure again. An old Afghan proverb I heard on the radio last week said, "If you think you're leading, and no one's following, you're just going for a walk.""

I love Carol Lieber's book "The Advisory Guide" (published by Educators for Social Responsibility) Make it matter by making it a core function of the school. We don't have traditional Parent-Teacher Conferences here. We have Parent-Student-Advisor conferences where teachers all write narrative report cards which are then processed / talked about / reviewed by the parent, student and advisor together. This makes the Advisor the primary link to the families, which goes a long way toward really making the power of Advisory tranparent to families (and teachers.) If a child gets in trouble, advisors are looped in immediately. Our college counselor works with the advisors so that they are the primary school-based adults to help students make decisions about their college process. Kids should never be the implied object of their own education.