Group items tagged

This weekend I had the great pleasure of participating in my first webinar: The 3rd Virtual Round Table Online Conference. It was an amazing experience, I had the pleasure of "running" into many friends from my PLN and loved the sessions I was able to attend. During the Unconference we all decided on some topics of interest and then each went to a virtual conference room to discuss the theme we had chosen. In the room I went to we talked about error correction - ways we do it, when we do it, etc. We shared ideas, our experiences. There were some great ideas, and I chipped in with an activity I really enjoy doing and the students have the greatest time with it. But most importantly, I believe it to be one of the most effective ways of error correction, because the correction is made by the students; they correct sentences they've written. (By the way, for those of you who were in the room, I am sorry if I stumbled or did something wrong - I was extremely nervous about speaking there!)

What a cool way to have fun with language, use the projector and have kids work in teams collaboratively. :)

"At Key To School (KTS), we believe that Moodle is indeed a gift to all educators. However, it was observed that setting up and maintaining a Moodle server was an uphill task for many educators, not made easy by the restrictions imposed by many non-managed hosting providers. On the other end of the spectrum, the managed Moodle hosting was too costly for a first time Moodler who wanted to get acquainted for Moodle. We strive to ease both the learning curves well as provide the most affordable price - free, for all Moodlers. "

Moodle options for the high school?

This is the heart of Teachit Primary - an ever-growing collection of practical, tried and tested lesson plans and resources created by teachers for teachers. Access to the vast majority of them is free once you have registered - you can browse, search, download and print resources whenever you like. But it's only as a member that you get to use them properly - because then you can tweak, adapt, edit and get whizzy. Never again will you need to reinvent the wheel.

Play this game to experience the challenges and excitement of international trade. See if you can get the best price for the goods you sell and the biggest bargains for the goods you buy. Watch how the global economy is doing: the prices you'll be able to get and the deals you can make depend on how healthy the global economy is.

"n the Tournament Spelling Bee, you'll be challenged by a series of words, with the spelling difficulty adapted to your skill level. The more words you get right, the higher your score will go, on a scale from 200 to 800. You can compete against other spellers, since we keep track of high scores (with streaks of correct answers serving as tiebreakers). "

Some very cool and easy to implement ideas to get your kids blogging, you could have this as a checklist so you don't have to always be thinking how to get kids/parents interacting on the blogs.

"Social media is growing at explosive rates. Just take a glance at Gary's Social Media Count which includes recent statistics from January 2011. Be certain to click on the 'social', 'mobile', 'games', and 'heritage' buttons at the top of the page to get the full impact."

Want some stats about Social Media? some are incredible!

Here are the activities so you can go at your own pace.

One of my favorite brain training game sites right now is BrainGames360.com. They have a great collection of high quality games that are all designed to test the different facets that are associated with brain games. Each one is tagged with the cognitive skills it tests, so it is easy for the teacher to track down the type of skill they are looking to practice with their students. All the games have HTML codes that let you put your favorite games on your own classroom blog or website, and they are all organized into categories like Logic, Strategy, Reflex and more. Try Mini Train, or Get Groovy, to get a taste for what the games on this site are like. Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/106947.aspx#ixzz1EGaIrAFx

Apologies if you get this twice (i will email the link in outlook as well) This could be very much worth a read, i am interested in what people think about getting comments from others about work etc.

"This is an amazing tool that is as interesting in it's process as it is in the majestic simplicity in which it performs it's task. Identifont asks you a series of questions about the characteristics of the font you are trying to identify. As you answer the questions more and more fonts are discounted as viable until you get the font of your choice."

Very cool way to track the font you want! I like the boolean link as well.

"Credit: Bill Duke The biggest question about technology and schools in the 21st century is not so much "What can it do?" but, rather, "When will it get to do it?" We all know life will be much different by 2100. Will school? How close will we be to Edutopia? "

"In Shidonni, kids get their own online "pen and paper" to sketch animals. The moment they do, their creations come to life 'virtually'. Kids can then create worlds for their animals, feed them, play with them and share them with their friends. "

"This list of top tweeters is specifically designed with maths teachers in mind. Many of the tweeters are fellow maths teachers from across the globe whilst others are people who get very excited about maths and just love to tweet about it. Many of these people tweet about a lot besides maths but I think each of them would be a valuable addition to your timeline if you're a maths teacher or interested in maths. Follow them if you'd like links, ideas and conversation about maths and maths teaching."

For Greg and me but relevant to classroom teachers also.

Core Routines The core routines are a set of seven or so routines that target different types of thinking from across the modules. These routines are easy to get started with and are commonly found in Visible Thinking teachers' toolkits. Try getting started with with one of these routines. What Makes You Say That? Interpretation with justification routine Think Puzzle Explore A routine that sets the stage for deeper inquiry Think Pair Share A routine for active reasoning and explanation Circle of Viewpoints A routine for exploring diverse perspectives I used to Think... Now I think... A routine for reflecting on how and why our thinking has changed See Think Wonder A routine for exploring works of art and other interesting things Compass Points A routine for examining propositions