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"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"These questions intrigued Ana Paula Cortez, one of our Portuguese teachers at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, and compelled her to explore them with her students. prep--Inspiration: 7billionothers.org--In 2003, after The Earth seen from the Sky, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with Sybille d'Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, launched the 7 billion Others project. 6,000 interviews were filmed in 84 countries by about twenty directors who went in search of the Others. From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes: What have you learnt from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children? What difficult circumstances have you been through? What does love mean to you? Forty-five questions that help us to find out what separates and what unites us. These portraits of humanity today are accessible on this website. The heart of the project, which is to show everything that unites us, links us and differentiates us, is found in the films which include the topics discussed during these thousands of hours of interviews. Objective: Raise awareness of culture and interconnectedness of common themes/threads that connect humans no matter of their cultural origin. Take advantage of our multilingual students to share and connect speakers of different languages. Students: 7th & 8th grade Portuguese Language Learners Project Idea: Middle School students create a video (testimonies, journal type) responding to pre-set prompts from 7billionothers.org (love, happiness, work).Future extension idea: personalize the prompts by tweaking to address specific middle school topic…. friends, family, what do you want to be when you grow up….) Process: 1. Discuss video filming techniques.. observe the ones recorded on 7billionothers.org: Framing, Angle, Stability, Background"

"My 7th grade advisory students together with Ms. Arcenas' group has been discussing the impact of Google Glass, mainly because I have been bringing my Google Glasses to class and am sharing my experience with the students. As a grade level, we have been exploring Digital Citizenship and the impact wearable technology has, is and will have on our perception, definition and lives as Digital Citizens. Students jotted down their initial feelings about the Pros and Cons of Google Glass technology in a collaborative spreadsheet. Invading people's privacy (surprisingly!), cheating and becoming distracted or lazy was a major concern to many students."

"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"

"Alan November talks about the importance of making students contributors to their own learning. I have been following his work for years (seen him present in person a couple of times too). I have been especially paying attention to his thoughts about how, over the years, it seems that we have taken away the reason/relevance for learning of our children."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"How do we learn vocabulary of a second, third or fourth language best? As a class, we discussed different methods including mnemonic devices and how they help us remember, organize and make connections in our brain. Some of us prefer: visual connections rhyming words acronyms a sentence in context humorous connections etc. In order to embed modern skills and literacies and connect to our school's Core Values and mission, students created Popplets. The tool (Popplet) allowed students to create a web based mind map. Each bubble/ "popplet"represented a vocabulary word related to medicine/illness/symptoms."