Group items tagged

"This post is part of C.M Rubin's monthly series in the Huffington post: The Global Search for Education: Our Top 12 Global Teacher Blogs. This month we are answering the following prompt: Can Social Media Have a Role to Play in Managing a Successful Classroom? As in previous posts in the series, I am examining the prompt from a semantic point of view and ask myself immediately: What do we consider " managing a successful classroom" (and even what does it successful mean)? I also stumbled immediately over the word "CAN" and cringed when I wondered if it could say "Should" or "Must"? Semantics aside and out with an easy and short response: YES, social media can play a role in a successful classroom."

"Another glimpse into the classroom! Previous video clips: Socratic Seminar & Backchanneling, Visible Thinking Routine: Chalk Talk, Mystery Skype Call, Collaborate & Curate In the spirit of opening up classroom walls and creating a ripple effect of teaching and learning by sharing ideas, methods, action research and modern literacy upgrades, here is another video clip. You are watching a 7th grade Humanities classroom, led by their teacher David Jorgensen at Graded-The American School of São Paulo. The students are reading The Giver, by Lois Lowry and have been annotating their thoughts as they are reading individual chapters in a Google Doc chart/table, labeled: Observations Inferences Rituals Questions/ Predictions"

"3 years ago, we created blogs (WordPress platform) for ALL classroom teachers and resources. There was an expectation for teachers to be at least on the first step of the blogging ladder, illustrated in the image below. Their classroom blog needed to be, as a minimum, a replacement of a weekly folder filled with parent-school communication and homework assignments. Teachers were expected to learn how to update their blogs (at least on a weekly basis), insert images and videos and categorize their blog posts."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"very classroom at my school has it's own blog. Teachers are using it at various levels for parent/school communication, student work, two-way communication with commenting, documentation for classroom happenings as well as the hub and archive of classroom images, videos and audio."

"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."

" 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."

"As I am on a Twitter adventure with our 4th and 5th graders and their teachers @teitelbaumsteph & @shellyzavon, I am breaking down steps to tweeting and the process of learning during Tweeting as a classroom. Ryan Bretag's post Twitter for Thinking Publicly echoed beautifully my thoughts about the "use of Twitter beyond the usual lower level posting assignments, message blasting, or basic discussion forum-like uses.""

"Alan November elevated the "Official Scribe" as one of the roles that empower student learners.I see the role of the scribe as follows: The official scribe plays an important role in the classroom community. Their work is essential for students who were absent from class or need a review on a specific topic previously discussed. The official scribe also takes pressure off other students from having to take notes, but invites them in to contribute with corrections, additional information or resources."

"We are fortunate to have a Visible Thinking Routine (VTR) expert at our school. Claire Arcenas, our MS/HS Physical Education teacher, previously a third grade classroom teacher who has done extensive readings and research in experiencing, implementing, embedding VTR in teaching and learning. Recently, she started sharing her experience and reflection on her professional learning blog: Visible Thinking Across Subject Areas. Claire invited me to an 8th grade PE class before a unit on Volleyball skills and allowed me to film her facilitating the VTR called Chalk Talk. She explains the overview of her volleyball unit on her classroom blog post: Can You Dig It?"

"There can never be enough examples from the classroom to share. The benefits are many, from creating a ripple effect of digitally documenting and sharing to a glimpse in someone else's classroom by having the opportunity to be a fly on the wall via a video clip. I have shared the Excitement of Learning that can unfold with a Mystery Skype call before. The following video clip is from David Jorgensen's 8th grade Humanities class (São Paulo, Brazil), recorded during their first Mystery Skype with a class from rural Iowa, USA."

"With the wonderful small, but high quality, Flip Video cameras (and similar brands), it has become affordable (around US$ 150) to bring video production into the classroom."

"I am getting ready to post on my school's 21st Century Learning Blog a message for parents about the school's move from Edline, the portal that was used in previous years for parent communication, to individual classroom blog."

"We (Head of school,Jon Mitzmacher, 5th Grade Classroom teacher, Shelly Zavon, Middle School Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Reppert, Technology Director & 21st Century Learning Specialist,Andrea Hernandez and two of our students, Sabrina & Hannah) were interviewed by Alan November for his NL Podcast Series about the use of student jobs in the classroom!"

"Difference between social and academic commenting. You could create a blog for your young students, in order to allow them a safe online space where your young students can socialize and "practice" in an online environment. This type of blog fosters a virtual kind of classroom community that can spill over (positively or negatively) into the physical classroom as well."

"I wanted to share my third presentation slides from BLC11 Transforming Culture in the Classroom"

"The word "mistake" is a harsh word. It implies flaws, pointing fingers, errors in judgement, something wrong and possibly even a dead end. I would rather think or connect the word "mistake" to first steps, stepping stones, experimentation and exploration. With that being said, those "first steps" or that exploration cannot become a routine cemented in stone how technology is being used in the classroom. Stepping stones are meant to lead to something else. For the sake of the prompt given, here are my top 5 "Mistakes" (in no particular order) which I see, read and hear about as I travel the world to learn and work with schools, teachers and students: Technology being used to substitute an analog activity Technology use being seen as an add-on to allow students to use devices, the Internet, a program or an app as a reward, for entertainment, as a time filler for students who finish early Technology use as a separate subject area Technology as a $1000 pencil initiative Technology seen as the solution to motivate and engage students"

"It was a post titled "Formats for Visual Thinking in the Classroom" from Richard Byrne on Free Technology for Teachers, that prompted me to write this post."