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eSchoolNews is a monthly publication that comes to me via email (I'm sure many of you receive it) that is chock full of articles about technology in education. September's issue covered many topics but one in particular stood out to me, Does Research Support Flipped Learning?, intrigued me because the sub title suggests that it might work and improve student learning. A few key points include "Students are actively involved in their own learning.." and in many cases this method "..maximizes time with the instructor and increases the focus on higher-order thinking skills." WOW! Those are two of my favorite skills for students to master. The article also points out four essential elements of a flipped classroom - cleverly calling them the "four pillars of F-L-I-P" (Flexible Environment, Learning Culture, Intentional Content, Professional Educators.) A short article that does a good job of highlights the trend of a flipped classroom.

I flipped my intro to library. I really loved the format of Monday night's class and immediately flipped my intro to library to Advisory Research Challenge: Locating and Evaluating Information. Six research challenges, one that everyone had to do and the rest in pairs. The focus was on RMHS and RPL resources for RMHS students, which are many and varied and very sophisticated. Total fun. Time flew. Kids had to dive in, do the research and then present. It was so apparent to discern what needed to be clarified and/or emphasized. Thanks G-Dawg1

Importance of social networking not only for teachers but students as well. Very interesting..

This article brings up some really good points about the types of skills students need and how educators can make sure they are developing theses skills. Having students design and participate in PLCs is a great way to start developing the skills that are going to be essential in their future. Thanks for sharing.

Interesting article, Meg. I started following the guy that was mentioned, Paul Moss, on twitter, and hope to get some good ideas. I love the idea of starting to get kids networking in an educational way. They are already experts on doing it socially! If we have another EdCamp format, I'd love to have a discussion about what PLNs could mean for students, even as young as middle school.

This is the October series of webinars from the Connected Learning Community. The first webinar, "Mobile learning: turning place into a learning space," took place today and the full recording of it is available at this url.

Beth Holland is an insightful, creative educator who I saw at MassCUE yesterday so I decided to follow her and see what else she had to say. This is an interesting and insightful discussion of the potential positives and negatives of screen time. A good reminder to keep it meaningful, and as we have all said, avoid "technology for the sake of technology." "Television rots your brain." In a similar vein, video games turn your mind to mush, and staring at a screen for too long potentially makes you a zombie. In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a report suggesting that children under two should not have any screen time.

The three questions this article asks are something I think a lot about when using the iPads in my classroom. Last year when I first started using them in my classroom they were mostly being used as mobile educational gaming devices. The kids were using apps that reinforced the phonics and math concepts we were learning, but they weren't really going anything further than that. They certainly were engaged and learning so I don't feel that it was time wasted, however I always knew there was more they could be doing with the devices. The third piece, is it empowering, was the piece I was missing last year and am trying to incorporate more this year.

Great article. I agree there needs to be a balance with screen time and how we should use that time. The 3 questions of screen time being appropriate, meaningful, and empowering are key to allowing students take charge of their learning. The article states "… teachers had found educational apps to reinforce math and reading concepts, the students passively interacted with content rather than constructing understanding. The interaction primarily consisted of students just tapping on a screen." I feel it is important for us to limit these types of apps and find the few that are going to allow students to "construct understanding" and apply content they learn outside of screen time. To me, this strikes a good balance. At MassCUE this past Thursday, I attended a session by a district that made the decision to use apps that allowed for creativity. They recognized that there were many apps for gaming and skill drills, but they wanted their students to be able to use their devices to apply learning in a meaningful way. This was music to my ears. I applaud their efforts, and based on the examples of student work that were shown, it's working.

This week's theme is looking at student work for deeper learning. The resources are outstanding. If you haven't seen it before, watch the video Austin's Butterfly.

Each year, hundreds of visitors--including journalists and researchers--flock to schools like San Diego's High Tech High or Napa Valley's New Tech High to get a glimpse of how teaching and learning can be re-invented and re-imagined.

Janet, This sounds amazing. I'll probably regret it but I signed up for the course which begins Jan 20. If nothing else the response you receive once you fill out the form is worth the effort!

Thought provoking article that stresses even more that developmentally Kindergarteners are not ready for the curriculum that they face.

Kerry, thanks for sharing this. This article was well worth reading. It makes me sad to think of what we are continuing to do to young kids, and scared for their future. Just thinking back to when I was in kindergarten, I remember lots of time to explore and play in different stations, including building and dress up stations. We did plenty of learning through play, and still all learned to read and make it through school. I'm in the middle school and don't always know exactly what's going on in the lower elementary schools, but it does seem like things are continually being pushed to younger and younger ages. The math that the sixth graders are doing now is similar to what I did in 8th grade algebra. Many of them are not developmentally ready for it, and then feel like failures if they can't get it. At an even younger level, I'm seeing it with my nephew who's 3 1/2 and in preschool. His teacher told my sister-in-law that he's behind because he can't write his name yet. Now she's concerned about it of course, but I'm thinking that's a little premature. And the last thing he needs at this age is someone trying to force him to write his name - he'll already be on a track to hating school..... I'm going to share this article with her. Also, when they talked about learning to read, I loved the quote about kids who learned to read later showed better understanding because they had had time to develop more language at an earlier age.Thanks for sharing.

Another great post - I agree with so much of what this article states, and I hear so many other educators and parents expressing concern about the trend that has been developing in all elementary grades, but especially kindergarten. The question is, if we all agree that it's not working, how do we change it?

This blog was written a couple of years ago, but it has great information on the Digital Learning Farm. There is a chart of iPad apps to be used for each of the jobs in the Farm model. I found the chart to be a valuable source of information for someone starting to implement this model.

This is a great article with some useful app information. Can't wait to begin our farm :)

I was happy to see that last year we did a decent job using the digital learning farm and can't wait to perfect it this year. This blog will be very useful in helping us do just that!

This site was put together by Garth Holman and Mike Pennington, 2 teachers who are doing amazing work with getting the students to own the learning. I saw some of their presentations at the BLC13 Conference this past July. They are mentioned in Alan November's book "Who Owns the Learning" so it was a treat to meet them in person at the BLC Conference. Lots of great information and inspiration on their website.

This is a short lesson developed for Pearson to consolidate some clear, useful structures for activating students in the classroom. Some of it is definitely more geared towards Language Arts, but it's worth a look for approaches to take in any class, and is a good reminder of some of those methods we learned back when we were learning to teach.

A really interesting reflective post about parents' concerns about screen time and our increasing use of screens as a way to encourage learning. What should schools do when curriculum and instruction conflicts with parenting? No easy answer here. Just posing more questions.

Interesting post, Kerry. I don't have any answers, either. And since I'm not a parent, it's hard for me to imagine how I might feel on the parent side of the issue at this time. It's interesting because in our jigsaw group discussion on chapter 6, we talked about a similar issue. Wagner points out how parents of the innovators he showcased in his book limited screen time, but also set an important distinction between screen time where kids are watching TV and playing video games, often independently, and screen time in classrooms where kids are engaged in collaborative learning projects. I certainly agree that there is a difference, but it makes sense that there should be some balance, or some limit, somewhere. In education it always seems that the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other before settling somewhere in the middle. It will be interesting to see how this issue unfolds. I'd also be curious to hear from the perspectives of the parents in our EBTL2 class, since they are also educators involved in the BYOD initiative and growing world of technology.

So, I'm a parent of a 7th grader and a 3rd grader, and obviously I'm also involved as a teacher at RMHS. We have 1:1 iPads in my LLD English classes but they stay at school. I haven't had any push-back from parents so far about assignments or screen time. I did look at this link, and I looked at the forum as well, and I think as a parent, what was a little concerning about the forum comments, was the lack of empathy and understanding from teachers towards parents. As a parent, I also have concerns about screen time, and I see that there are certainly ways that we can limit recreational screen time. We do as much as we can. But, sometimes if my 7th grader has a project, I might not know much more about it than she is able to communicate to me (sometimes this is a lot, and sometimes it is not much). There have only been a few times when this has happened, but I have tried to set some limit about how much time to spend on the project, my daughter has really fought it, because she's been concerned about not doing a good job, etc. Occasionally new technology or apps take longer for her to master than the intended time for the project or assignment, and so something simple or seemingly quick takes much longer than it should. Situations like this can turn parents off to technology if they don't understand the big picture, or if they don't have any confidence that the teacher understands the big picture. Sometimes we don't give kids enough time in class to "play around" with apps or new approaches before turning them loose to do an assignment independently, and that too, can lead to stressful situations at home where both parent and child don't know how to do the assignment. I think the point is that any change is going to make people uncomfortable, and some folks are going to react more strongly than others. The more we can communicate and explain what's happening, and let parents know that the technology and experimentation is a vital part of the learning proce

Infographic that is a great guide to making sure you have designed your flipped lesson/unit with the right frame of mind and that your students will get the maximum learning experience. I like that it specifically talks about how the flipped model requires a great teacher to work, rather than eliminating the need for a teacher (which I've read as a criticism of the flip in other places). I also like that it specifically requires time to be carved out for student reflecting and thinking.

This document discusses instructional practices that support social emotional learning in three common teacher evaluation frameworks.

Explains how social media can facilitate and expand student learning. Robyn, it even has a cook infographic!

You want students to learn. Shall we play a game? Absolutely! But what is a game? Game: a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck. Not exactly.

So I know that we all have heard about multi-sensory learning for a long time now, but this blog post about multi-sensory study skills has some good insights and explanations about why some of these things work. You can never really have too many alternative, multi-sensory approaches to use with your students and it's sometimes hard to stay fresh with these ideas.

I like the idea of working with the students to figure out which ways they learn best, and how they can customize studying to fit their needs. I think too often we're guilty of pushing methods that have worked for us personally, but they may not work for someone else. It's a good reminder to be open, and to continually ask kids what makes information more memorable for them. I'd also love to see real study skills instruction in the middle school (as a course). I think many times teachers tell kids to "study" for a test, but we haven't really taught them what that means, or what that looks like.

Interesting article on setting guidelines for limiting the amount of time kids spend on a device. Also brings up issue of parents not really knowing how to help their child use the device for educational purposes. My guess is that most parents defer to their children as the experts on their devices and yield to what they want for apps.

Some nights I am so tired and don't want to read to my daughters, but I always do anyway. Lately my pre-K-er is pointing out her "sight words" while we read too. I know it is important bonding time for us, but it also makes a big difference for her long term learning. This infographic explains it all.

I love this visual! Whenever parents ask me what they can do at home to help their child, I tell them to read, read, read! Not only is it building their literacy skills, but kids also love being read to. No matter how crazy my class gets, and it gets pretty crazy sometimes, the minute I start reading a good book all my students are quiet and engaged. Whenever it's time to start a new topic or concept I try and find a good book to introduce it to the kids and they always seem to get more from it than I planned!

Great article. I second what Kelly said. We always tell parents to read to their children, no matter how old they are. This is always an interesting conversation with third grade parents as they want their children to read on their own. Then we further explain why reading to them is important and see their "aha" moment.

Northstar Elementary in the Northeast Heights was packed today with students and teachers getting ready for a learning lesson, but it's a different kind of learning lesson. 18 fourth and fifth graders taught their teachers how to use apps. The project was spear-headed by April Requard--the school's technology director.

This is fantastic - thanks so much for sharing, Janet. This project seemed to elicit great energy from both kids and adults!

This powerful spoken word video was one of Edutopia's "8 EduWins of 2013." As an educator, it made me think about the messages that I give to my students on a daily basis, and how important it is that we don't just fall into the trap of the way things have always been done. Students today need to see the relevance of their learning; they want to know how and when they will apply skills and information. Worth watching.

I found this video along with another Spoken Word video "Why I Hate School But Love Education," extremely powerful and captivating. The message is exactly what we are talking about in class and trying to change in our classrooms. The whole presentation of the video was motivating as well. I really enjoyed listening to him speak and agreed with his points. His presentation in the first video is what made click on the others. Both videos are definitely worth watching.