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Students at Burlington High School are reviewing hour of code tutorials and their thoughts. For high school students, this is a great way to learn and share and also helps teachers identify best practices and best tutorials. Great job, Jenn Scheffer.

Some very practical tips from Sharon Plante on using ipads as assistive technology. I love the links and how she uses things. Great work.

PISA Scores help and hurt... of course, the world won't be happy until every country and every child and every system is at the 100th percentile - something that won't happen. From Valerie Strauss about what Finland should do as the result of their "slipping" scores. In the Washington Post. "Finland should also continue to let national education and youth policies - and not PISA - drive what is happening in schools. Reading, science, and mathematics are important in Finnish education system but so are social studies, arts, music, physical education, and various practical skills. Play and joy of learning characterize Finland's pre-schools and elementary classrooms. "

Students across the country have already started working on their IWitness Challenge project sponsored by the USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education, but there's still time for youngsters in your community to enter this free online program geared to all secondary-school students. The deadline to enter the Challenge is Dec. 2, 2013. The winning student, along with their teacher and a family member will be brought to Los Angeles to showcase their work as part of the 20th anniversary activities for the Shoah Foundation, which was founded by director Steven Spielberg in 1994 after making "Schindler's List." Tthe IWitness Challenge (iwitness.usc.edu) connects students with the past in a very personal way that spurs them to take action to improve the future. With access to many of the Shoah Foundation's 52,000 testimonies of survivors, liberators and rescuers, students experience history in a way that hits home. Instead of reading facts from textbooks, students feel the emotions and build relationships with those who lived through seemingly impossible situations. But students do more than watch the testimony. The IWitness Challenge compels them to think, to make smart choices and to create their own project and video from what they've learned. By encouraging teachers and students to create their own lesson plans, IWitness allows them to expand on practically any subject they wish to pursue. From civics, government and history to poetry, art and ethics, educators can tailor lessons appropriate for their classrooms. And by using the embedded editor, participants not only learn valuable searching and editing skills, but also how to make ethical editing decisions that ensure their finished assignments are a fair and accurate reflection of what they've seen. All work is kept safe inside the IWitness site and not accessible to the public. Using IWitness is free, but teachers or homeschool parents must register at iwitness.usc.edu.

Great article with practical and pedagogical ideas

If you've integrated sliderocket (now becoming ClearSlide) into Google apps for edu, you'll no longer have Google integration or free accounts past the end of the year. Sliderocket was acquired by clear slide. "Thank you to everyone who has inquired about SlideRocket's free educational initiative through Google Apps. As the integration of SlideRocket into ClearSlide has progressed, it has become apparent that a shift in our approach toward educational accounts is necessary and appropriate. Specifically, due to both technical and practical reasons, we will no longer be integrating with Google Apps or offering free educational accounts beyond the end of the year."

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.

The course is an ideal introduction to the world of computers and IT in an increasingly digital world. The course practically examines a multitude of topics including data, problem solving, biometrics and security and more.

Eliminating math misconceptions is difficult and merely repeating a lesson or extra practice will not help. Telling students were they are mistaken will not work either. Recognizing student misconceptions and immediately focusing on the misconception is important. Providing guiding questions using inductive reasoning is the best approach, along with the use of writing prompts which help reveal further student misconceptions.

An adoption model/framework for integrating new learning into instruction/practice. Similar to CBAM. 

"Despite sluggish gains in reading, our nation has not seriously integrated digital tools and new teaching practices into all classrooms. Schools of education are still failing to teach student teachers how to integrate digital media in the classroom... We recommend the following for policymakers, business leaders and practitioners to consider help make schools more effective."

Example: Drag Race Division is a multi-player racing game that allows students from anywhere in the world to race one another while practicing their division facts!

The literature review unequivocally found that it is not possible to provide a meaningful framework to describe or measure the direct impact of ICT on student learning per se. Most educational researchers view media comparison studies as of little value, misleading, and not generalisable. Where such studies have been conducted it has not been possible to identify a purely ICT effect disentangled from other elements of the learning environment. Most educational researchers would view such disentangling as counterproductive. Further, it has become increasingly difficult to measure student learning as more is understood of the complexities of learning. However, this review has identified significant impacts of the use of ICT on students, learning environments, teachers and pedagogy, schools provision of ICT capacity, and school and system organization, policy and practice. These are presented here as five dimensions

Wow! Read about these gutsy teachers in the Bronx. Perhaps there is hope for penetrating the less than optimal practices of the union

Great article that every parent should read. Good practical thinking and tips. Love the parallel to the ball field.

"Safety Skills Safe is a new programme of practical, activities to develop primary children's skills, self-confidence and safety awareness when using social network sites. Safe brings together the FREE social network for schools, Radiowaves, with leading safety organisations Childnet International and The I in Online. "

Elementary teachers using facebook to communicate with parents, practice good grammar, and synthesize infomation. Wow!

Student test scores are not reliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, according to a new Economic Policy Institute report, Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers. The paper was co-authored by a group of distinguished education scholars and policy makers, including four former presidents of the American Educational Research Association, a former assistant U.S. Secretary of Education, EPI Research Associate Richard Rothstein, and others. The authors find that the accuracy of these analyses of student test scores is highly problematic. They argue that the practice of holding teachers accountable for their student's test score results should be reconsidered.

I'm sorry, but if this is news to anyone, you've been asleep at your desk. I'm sick of people being all professional about this issue, it is well past time to rebel against it. It's bad for the teachers, it's bad for the students, it's bad for society, and it's bad for the economics of education too! Get active, join a group against NCLB & high-stakes testing, and END IT. I would post the group(s) I work with, but I don't want to be dismissed as promoting them - find one(s) that are right for you and get behind them.

Lecturing individual students is a common classroom management practice-just another tool in a teacher's tool belt. But it's a colossal mistake, born of frustration, that does nothing to curb unwanted behavior beyond several minutes. The reason?

Lots of ideas for using iPad/iPod apps with students by grade level.

Blog with practical ideas for using mobile apps in the classroom.