Group items tagged

"I believe we are on our way of taking a modern classroom learning opportunity and upgrading assessment forms to match new skills and new literacies while not forgetting traditionally assessed ones. We took a classroom Twitter feed (Part One) , looked at the conversation skills students exhibited during the Skype call (Part Two) and now are moving on to looking at "blog post writing" as assessment. Keeping a previously created blogging rubric in mind, we took a closer look at the blog posts written by the 4th and 5th graders during the actual skype call and edited and formatted after the call had ended."

"Is it personality? Are some people born with it? Can it be learned? I am talking about REFLECTION. At the beginning of the week, I had the opportunity to be part of a workshop during our pre-service ( we just returned from our summer break here in the Southern Hemisphere) with our ES Principal, MS Principal and HS Assistant Principal. The topic was student reflection. The following ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS emerged out of the planning for this workshop: How does student reflection impact student learning? How can we embed reflection into assessment practices so that it is not seen as an add-on? How can we make the reflection visible and sustainable?"

"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."

" Copyright and Backchanneling in the Music Classroom April 1, 2015 - Assessment, Documenting4Learning, Featured Carousel - 1 comment This post is another one in the series of posts originating from Professional Development Framework: Documenting for Learning Dani Aisen, a music teacher, at Mount Scopus Memorial College, was part of a small group session with Specialists (Resource teachers) during my visit at the school in Melbourne, Australia. It was an opportunity for these teachers to question and talk more in detail about the keynote presentation (Documenting FOR Learning & The Now Literacies Through the Lens of Sharing) and for me to share examples of how to support modern literacies in their specific subject areas."

"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:"

"In a post, titled It's All About Sharing and Collaborating, I wrote about a Russian educator who had translated material from Langwitches into his language in order to SHARE the content with his colleagues who spoke no English. Alec Couros, told the Amazing Story of Openness and his diagram of the Networked Teacher as it has been translated into many languages now."

"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!"

"Alan November's concept of the Digital Learning Farm, asks schools and teachers to empower students by giving them relevant responsibilities that allow them to contribute in meaningful ways to their learning community (class/school/etc.). How can we give students the opportunity to CONTRIBUTE versus completing projects that end up in the trash, bottom of their backpack or at best on the refrigerator door for display in their house."

"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"

"Digital Portfolios have intrigued me for a while. I had a preconceived notion about what a portfolio was, an accumulation of work that demonstrated accomplishments, an analogy to a photographer's photo album which showcased his best images…"

"Teachers are worried that students simply "google" answers to a homework assignment or "copy and paste" entire paragraphs for research papers from the Internet. They are right. Nowadays, it is very easy, fast AND accessible to find answers. So, what do we do? * Do we punish students and fail them if they found the right answer online? * Do we spend our time and energy checking if they did not plagiarize by simply copying from another website into their papers? * Do we use services such as Plagiarism Checker or Turn It In to catch students? John Sowash, The Electric Educator, writes about Google-Proof Questioning"