Group items tagged

"Our students just finished a second round of Student Led Conferences (SLC) this school year (one in Semester 1 and another in Semester 2). SLCs are a formal opportunity for students to present to their parents about the state of their learning. The students' advisor (a teacher responsible for a specific group of students during the school year) serves as a facilitator to prompt and guide the students if needed, but is a silent presence as the students share their learning with their parents. SLCs are not a time to talk about grades, student behavior, but about learning habits, process, improvements and goals. Although there was emphasis placed on an ongoing documentation of each subject area as learning and reflection happened throughout the school year, a significant amount of time was dedicated to prepare for the SLCs"

"The title of this post "Use Experience to Reach Others" is from a blog post one of our 7th grade (Jewish) students wrote after skyping with (Muslim) students from Minnesota. (Thanks Micah!) Last month, out Middle School students became the Experts as they were talking bout Judaism to 7th grade classes from Michigan, who were studying World Religions. Our students asked the class from Michigan if they had any Jewish students (which they didn't) and if they knew any Jews personally (which they didn't). There was one Muslim student in their class and our students immediately asked her questions about Islam. After the Skype call was over, our students expressed interest in contacting and connecting with other Muslim students in order to learn more about their religion."

"This is an end of the year reflection by Middle School students after contributing and working on a collaborative Math wiki this past school year. Related blog posts about the Math Wiki project: * Thoughts on Setting up a Student Created Wiki * Setting up and Introducing a Collaborative Student Math Wiki * Math Tutorial Music Videos * Student Thoughts about their Math Wiki (Midyear Survey Results) * Empower Student to Be Lifelong Learners NOT Dependent Learners * Students as Meaningful Contributors"

"As I am meeting with teachers individually, I can't stress enough the importance of READING other blogs (professional, student, blogs about your hobby, blogs about other interests you have etc.). I am trying to filter and funnel quality blogs in education, their grade level and areas of interest to them as I come across them, so they can build a quality RSS Reader. BUT.. we need their help in having a basic understanding of blogs, its pedagogical uses, as a platform of a new writing genre (digital writing) and how our blogfolios fit into your curriculum and the BIG PICTURE of LEARNING. The blogfolios are not a platform to use only for a particular subject, but should give evidence of learning for each student."

"Blogging is about reading and about writing in digital spaces. We want students to make their learning and thinking visible. We are developing a platform and a blogging pedagogy for students to document, reflect, organize, manage their online learning records and using student work on blogs as a source for formative assessment. Timely feedback from their teachers, peers and a global audience is critical to the process."

"We are finally getting ready for the ACTUAL writing part with our students. Until now you have prepared your students by: * exploring other student authored blogs * talking about online safety, online identity and cyber bullying * making the difference between social and academic commenting clear As with commenting, talk with your students about the difference between social and academic writing. A true educational blog is NOT about socializing, but about students and teacher helping each other grow in their learning."

"As I am speaking of the benefits of blogging as a professional and student, I sometimes wonder if the word "blogging" is not a word we speak as we talk at cross-purposes with other educators. When I use the word "blogging", I am NOT seeing: technology, a project, an add-on to the curriculum content. When I use the word "blogging", I am seeing: learning how to read and write in digital spaces, the possibility of writing for an authentic global audience, a platform for reflection, investigation, documentation and curation, a platform that supports and amplifies modern skills and literacies. On the tails of Visible Thinking Routines for Blogging, comes this new blog post that wants to make Blogging VISIBLE!"

"There is more to blogging with your students than simply creating a blog and starting to copy and paste work, that traditionally was done on a paper journal or worksheet in the classroom, into that digital space. Blogging is about quality and authentic writing in digital spaces with a global audience in mind, observing digital citizenship responsibilities and rights, as one documents, organizes and makes one's learning and thinking visible and searchable."

"We did it! Our school has a blog for EVERY classroom. We are also in the process of rolling out individual student blogs to be the platform for student portfolios. It is a huge shift for teachers to "think" blog as their home/school communication hub. An even higher learning curve among teachers seems to be the shift to using the blog as a platform"

"I am pleased to share with you an opportunity for Middle School Students to collaborate on a global perspectives project. Mark Engstrom, the Assistant Principal and Middle School Geography teacher at my new school in São Paulo, Brazil, and his collaboration partner, Laurie Clement, a MS teacher in Windsor, Canada, have put together various projects to connect middle school geography students from around the world and to facilitate collaboration among them. This past school year, our students in Brazil worked together with students from Canada, USA and Sweden. They are expanding this opportunity to more schools and countries."

"If you are blogging with your students, you have been exposed to them. You have been exposed to hundreds of unimaginative, cloned, generic and uninspiring BLOG TITLES. When opening your RSS reader that contains the latest blog posts of your students, you are confronted with a list, similar to the one below."

"My Middle School is using blogger (part of Google) as a platform for our students' blogfolios. The blogfolio (term coined by Andrea Hernandez) is part blog and part digital portfolio. Students not only showcase their best work, but document their learning journey. A blogfolio shows student work at a particular moment in time (due to its chronological nature) with a reflective component to show evidence of growth and learning over time."

"Our 4th and 5th grade students(9-10 year olds) have been working with Mike Fisher, co-author of Upgrading your Curriculum and author of children's poems. The goal of their collaboration is to create an eBook of Mike's poems with students' illustrations. Once produced, students will work on marketing, advertising and disseminating the eBook. Over the course of the last few months, they:"

"To piggy back onto my last post about Alan November's call to make students contributors to their own learning, I wanted to share the "Skype Jobs" of my students. There is a sense of excitement in the room, when our students get ready to conduct a Skype call. I almost want to compare it to a "traditional" vision of a newsroom before a deadline. Everyone is buzzing, running here, running there to get ready for their job assignment. Don't ask why, but I have the memory of a scene in the "Watergate"movie with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in my mind."

"7th grade Geography teacher, David J. at Graded-The American School of S?o Paulo, was planning an in-depth country data study and interpretation. He decided to allow his students to explore the use of infographics to visually represent the data and compare their findings. He explained to his students: Instead of a focused, issue-based case study, the major project of the quarter will be a comparison of three countries (one from Europe, one from North or South America, and one from Africa or Asia). You will research many categories (citing sources correctly), represent the data using infographics (group collaborative component), and then provide reflection (annotations) on how and why the countries are similar or different on these topics. Additionally, students will write comments comparing their own researched countries' information to the data of other students."

"Part of my work, at my school, is to create a framework for our Middle School that will take (already) blogging students from Elementary School and prepare a smooth transition for them, as they move on to High School. I am looking BEYOND the one classroom or one specific teacher blogging with their students."

"cross posted with permission from Dr. Silvana Meneghini,'s On The Edge Blog. Silvana, the High School Technology Coordinator at Graded, The American School of São Paulo, shared a How-To post to connect augmented reality to student reflection by adding a layer of learning (not technology for technology sake). I highly recommend adding her blog to your RSS reader and following her on Twitter to connect with her learning and teaching journey. Enjoy Silvana's post below: Augmented Reality allows you to expand the experience of the real world with information, video, sound, GPS data, and so on. If well utilized, it can be much more than just another cool tech thing… You will see below an example of how Augmented Reality was used to expand the experience of visitors to our school's Art Exhibit. As students had to reflect on and verbalize their artistic choices, an augmented reality layer was created for viewers of the exhibit. In the process, students were excited about sharing with an authentic audience and had to really recall and reflect. It created a hyperlinked reality that enabled amplification of the viewers' learning experience that was much more engaging than text."

"All of our classrooms at MJGDS have their own blog. Several grade levels are piloting individual student portfolios based on a blogging platform. * How do you keep up with all this information? * How do you filter and organize it? * How can you avoid having to go back to blogs to check if the owner has updated with a new post? You can download this How-To-Guide for Subscribing via RSS & Google Reader to Classroom Blogs as a pdf."

"We have heard plenty from teachers. We have heard plenty from educational "gurus" and theorists what students should/shouldn't be learning and how we should/shouldn't be teaching. I have written and talked plenty about the need for globally connected educators. I have even written a chapter in Heidi Hayes Jacobs' upcoming book about Global Literacies. It is time to hear from students!"

"I can die happy now :) I have seen learning in the 21st Century modern classroom! The learning just oozes through the cracks of the physical classroom walls. Learning is amplified by the amount of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is NOT about the technology tools, but what students can DO with them to learn in new ways. The learning is about an authentic tasks, that allows students to contribute in a individualized and personalized manner to make them realize that their work matters in the real world. It all started out with a conversation between Mike Fisher and me. He had written over 40 children poems and was in the process of wondering what to do with them? I was looking for an authentic task for 9-11 year old students. We felt we had a perfect match! How about getting the students Language Arts and Art teacher involved? The initial idea was to make a unit of poetry come alive, study Mike's poems and visualize the poems by creating illustrations."