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."

"In an attempt to bring new additions to your Blog reader, I am starting to feature guest posts on Langwitches. Be assured that these guest posts are from educational bloggers, I highly value and their voices contribute significantly to my own learning. Today I am sharing a blog post and a newly published book by my friend, colleague and co-author Mike Fisher. Follow him on Twitter and add his blog to your RSS reader. By Mike Fisher Originally blogged on MiddleWeb.com on December 8, 2013 Back in the early 90's, my grandmother taught me how to bake biscotti in a traditional way. She was a baker by trade and taught me about the precision of measuring ingredients to get a perfect dough consistency, how to lay out the initial loaf, cut on the diagonal and re-bake until the cookies reached their optimum crunch."

"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."

"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."

"Rodd Lucier, from the Clever Sheep blog, published a post titled Seven Degrees of Connectedness. The closing questions to Rodd's post caught my eye:"

"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.""

"Guest post by Silvana Meneghini, Academic Technology Coordinator, Graded- American School of São Paulo. Originally posted on her blog On the Edge. Pedagogical ideas like student centered learning, collaboration, and critical thinking have been around for a long time and are slowly making the way into the classroom. When technology came into play in schools, there was a big focus on technology tools and acquiring tech skills. Nowadays, there is a perception that technology has to be seamless and the main focus is on pedagogy. "

"I am thrilled to see so many students creating blog posts and going BEYOND "writing" text made up letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. Being able to "read" and "write" in other media is part of becoming fluent in media literacy. In addition to media literacy, knowing your rights and responsibilities as an ethical digital citizen is a vital part of participating in our digital world. My frustration with educators not knowing about observing copyright when producing content online was expressed in a previous post titled No! You Can't Just Take It!. I see sprinkled attempts of students trying to "do the right thing", but coming up short many times. This is all part of the process for students, but frustrating when they do not receive any feedback from a teacher of how to correct the behavior."

"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."

"This post title is "Teaching Information/Research Skills in Elementary School", but this post is as much for adults and older students. Many adults are overwhelmed with the quantity and new kind of media that is available and accessible through technology. Older students in High School and College might not feel overwhelmed, but have never been taught how to navigate, evaluate, save and retrieve the information that they are seeking."

"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."

"I am honored to be able to cross-post Stephen Wilmarth's blog post below on Langwitches. If you are interested to read more about Steve's International Experimental program at the Number One Middle School in Wuhan, China take a look at: Take a Peek into China's First 1:1 iPad Class Learning…Young Chinese Perspective Bringing a 1:1 iPad Program to China"

" Two months have passed since this post, I am continuing to read more and more.. almost exclusively in digital form now… books… RSS reader… via apps… on Twitter… I want to tackle and document the following questions, originally from Ryan Bretag in his post Reading Digitally: Exploring the World of eBooks. He is continuing to explore the questions he poses on his own- Evaluating eBooks, ePubs and book apps"

" 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."

"Edna Sackson, Teaching and Learning Co-ordinator from Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne, Australia, documented a model lesson I was teaching at my recent visit to their school. Edna graciously agreed to allow me to cross post her documentation and reflection of that lesson below from her blog What Ed Said. Edna is an model example of beautifully and fluently combining documentation, reflection and sharing FOR learning. Does 'the research' know best? "I think that enough research has been done on the delusion of multi-tasking to say, yes, do all the back channel stuff, but perhaps leave it to afterwards?" … This is part of a comment left on my previous post, in which I introduced the notion of back channeling as a form of documenting for learning."

"The faculty at my school has a problem! Their heads are spinning because they have several different social media platforms available for them."

"In another post, Embedding Visuals Into Teaching and Learning, I looked at ways to support our students' ability to navigate a media rich world and "read and write" in that world. I shared how teachers could easily and quickly create visuals, that supported a question they wanted students to explore, break up long and monotone passages of text, review a concept discussed abstractly or make a real life connection. Wonderopolis is a fascinating site with great visual prompts for you to "hook" students into inquiry and further research."

"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."

"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."

"In the spirit of my previous post Tutorial Designers, Guides, Step-by-Step Instructions: Amplification & Imagination, we are getting into the habit of "creating" by articulating our learning create documentation of learning in various media learn to take the extra step to share that learning online for others to learn from us"