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The Tour Builder uses a slide-like format for creating tours. Each slide or stop in the tour can have a date or range of dates attached to it. The tour plays in same sequence as that students build stops in their tours. Have students create the stops in the tour chronologically to tell a timeline story.

StoryMap JS is a nice tool for creating mapped stories. On StoryMap JS you create slides that are matched to locations on your map. Each slide in your story can include images or videos along with text.

EDpuzzle is a neat tool that allows you to add your voice and text questions to educational videos.

sign videos to studen

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12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now Tweet or post status updates as a class. Teacher Karen Lirenman lets students propose nuggets of learning that are posted for parents to read. Write blog posts about what students are learning. Teacher Kevin Jarrett blogs reflections about his Elementary STEM lab for parents to read each week. Let your students write for the world. Linda Yollis' students reflect about learning and classroom happenings. Connect to other classrooms through social media. Joli Barker is fearlessly connecting her classroom through a variety of media. Use Facebook to get feedback for your students' online science fair projects. Teacher Jamie Ewing is doing this now, as he shared recently. Use YouTube for your students to host a show or a podcast. Don Wettrick's students hosted the Focus Show online and now share their work on a podcast. Create Twitter accounts for a special interest projects. My student Morgan spent two years testing and researching the best apps for kids with autism (with the help of three "recruits"), and her work just won her an NCWIT Award for the State of Georgia.

Ask questions to engage your students in authentic learning. Tom Barrett did this when his class studied probability by asking about the weather in various locations. Communicate with other classrooms. The Global Read Aloud, Global Classroom Project and Physics of the Future are three examples of how teachers use social media to connect their students as they collaborate and communicate. Create projects with other teachers. (Full disclosure: I co-created Physics of the Future with Aaron Maurer, a fellow educator I first met on Twitter.) Share your learning with the world. My students are creating an Encyclopedia of Learning Games with Dr. Lee Graham's grad students at the University of Alaska Southeast. The educators are testing the games, and the students are testing them, too. Further a cause that you care about. Mrs. Stadler's classes are working to save the rhinos in South Africa, and Angela Maiers has thousands of kids choosing to matter.

12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now

believe there is room for both whole class reading AND choice reading. We think the problem isn’t that we all read the same book; it’s that we expect kids to read it the same way

Over time you, your principal, and fellow teachers will be able to work together to create the school culture that you want. Your school culture will support your classroom culture and make your job much more manageable.

decide on your classroom boundaries

Be consistent.

Teachers who are interested in shifting their classrooms often don’t know where to start.

Sometimes you may not understand why certain things aren’t working. Ask your students. I’m often surprised by how much they know and how adept they are at articulating what they need.

2. Tea Party I have no idea where this name came from as there is no tea served, but the idea is a fun one. Give every student a quote on a related topic. For example, during Fahrenheit 451 the quotes relate to conformity and nonconformity. When we read Lord of the Flies, the quotes are all about human nature. The students have to read their quote to as many classmates as they can in 5 minutes. Then we have a follow up conversation as a class about the quotes they found most interesting and powerful. Just the act of standing up and moving around makes this activity fun for students.

5. Crowdsource Instead of Lecturing It’s not fun for students to sit still, listen and take notes for a prolonged period of time. I’ve tried to replace some direct instruction with crowdsourcing. Instead of telling students about Shakespeare’s sonnets or life during the Great Depression, I allow them to work in groups with their devices to research information and share it with the class.

Storytime Every week I ask students to sit on the floor for a children’s story. At first they think I am crazy, but they love this routine. Regardless of the subject you teach, there are awesome picture books on a related topic. I’d make time to read to your students.

The primary purpose of education is to enable students to make a living as adults; without this capability, everything else falls away. Yet we still teach within a basic framework established in the 19th century. In today’s education environment, we seem to be slipping back from the future into the 19th century’s contextual emphasis on reading, writing, and math. The consequences could be dire, even propelling us back to a two-tiered education system: just reading, writing, and math for the disadvantaged in underresourced schools, alongside a richer 21st-century curriculum for the country’s productive employees and future decisionmakers.

• Generative Computation The ability to create a limitless variety of “expressions” from a generative catalyst of modest content. Think Beethoven’s four-note theme, which he spun into the Fifth Symphony. • Promiscuous Combination of Ideas Mingling of different domains of knowledge, thereby creating new products, relationships, techniques, and technologies. Think of a recipe that combines the chemistry of ingredients with knowledge of temperature and time, along with taste, feel, and smell. • Mental Symbols Encoding sensory experiences, both real and imagined, into complex systems of communication. Think metaphor or analogy. • Abstract Thought The ability to imagine what isn’t yet.

"It's a thing you do in the context of an overarching pedagogy," not the pedagogy itself, he said.

What's the best use of your face-to-face instruction time?" Mr. Bergmann said.

engaging reluctant learners continues to be a challenge

Resistant means "refusing to accept new ideas or changes." This label carries a layer of judgment that may prevent us from trying to understand our coachee's reality, dilemmas, competing commitments, or even aspirations.

Inquiry is an ongoing process of asking questions and examining evidence in order to improve our practice.

What might be underneath the resistance I'm feeling?

The term "21st-century skills" is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today's world.

The research, to date, has provided no evidence that having either computers or whiteboards in schools has any positive effect on students’ reading and writing proficiencies.

Twenty-first-century learning means that students master content while producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources with an understanding of and respect for diverse cultures. Students demonstrate the three Rs, but also the three Cs: creativity, communication, and collaboration.