This educational resource site has been absolutely exploding over the last year plus! It started out primarily has a math-based site, but has evolved into science and has been bought out by a corporate entity which hopes to expand to all the disciplines.
We have created a list of what we think are the best available apps out there and have categorized them into the following: Science, Language, Math, Administrative & Content Management, Interactive & Online Classrooms, Study Aids, Video & Imaging, Music, Multimedia, Geography & History, and Mapping Tools.
I am also very curious about the flipped model for my classroom to an extent. It feels hard to trust that my kiddos/parents will practice their rote knowledge, ex. math facts, outside of school when you sometimes don't see homework come back all year from individual students.
I have heard some interesting fixes to this, such as, having students perform the homework while you and the class do a fun activating activity such as a game, etc. This could work... but the question remains; what about kids that have no support at home, need help, and you can't give it to them because you are busy activating the thinking of 20+ other students?
This is also a problem with the current model of education as it stands, those students that don't receive supports at home need more attention, we are only one person, and can't make up for all the lost attention/time at home the way we'd like to. So how can you leverage the technology to help those kids and give them more supports?
They did say that the students connect better when it is their own teacher. You would miss that connection if you just found videos from other people.
Finding videos of other teachers doing your flipped lesson would feel impersonal, tend to alienate those students that are already weary of being connected in school, and most likely just have irrelevant material included amongst the important content. You can't tell a student, "Oh just ignore minute 2:30 to 2:45, they went out on a confusing tanget for a minute" because of their personality/teaching style. You NEED to have your own tangents/teaching style. It's what connects your students to you!
Would be interesting to give this a try with the 8th grade science teacher I work with. Seems like such a perfect fit for science. Do students need to prove that they watched the videos?
This was a great read! At my school we send out a newsletter called the Digital Digest. I plan to include some of the ideas from this article in it. I am also exploring some of the links that are in the article. I particularly love the Mathtrain.TV link. I plan to share this with one of our 4th grade teachers who is looking for ways to integrate tech into her math curriculum. Thanks for sharing!
Animal Quizzes At our site, we have hundreds of free, online, educational games for kids. But anyone interested in online learning can use our site - we have so many subjects - (geography, math, animals, science) and many levels, games and activities for learners of any age.
The regulation calls for the state to provide 10 end-of-course exams, beginning with English literature, Algebra 1 and biology in 2010-11, with other English, math, science and social studies subjects being phased in through 2016-17.
School districts would be required to count the exams for at least one-third of a student's final grade or districts could use other options, including validated local assessments or Advanced Placement exams instead. Districts also could set up a project for students who failed exams.
So, someone at the state level will create a test that every student must pass, or they fail the course. Is there ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER that teachers will now be teaching to that test? ALL curriculum around the state will have to change to match those tests.
Opponents of the exams told the regulatory commission that the testing program would cost too much to administer and be unfair to otherwise good students who perform poorly on standardized tests.