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In late November I wrote a blog post outlining five resources for free spelling games. That blog post was among the top twenty most read posts of 2008 therefore I am sharing some more online spelling games for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. 1. Spelling Wizard from Scholastic.com lets students, parents, and teachers create their own word search and word scramble games to play online. Each game can have up to ten words. To use Spelling Wizard simply enter ten words into the list field then select word search or word scramble. Spelling Wizard is probably best suited for students in Kindergarten through second grade. Scholastic also offers a free tool for creating online spelling flashcards. 2. Read Write Think has an online activity for young (K-2) students based on four childrens' books. Read Write Think's Word Wizard asks students to select one of four books that they have read or have had read to them. After selecting a book the Word Wizard creates a simple online spelling exercise based on the words in the book chosen by the child. 3. Spell Bee was developed at Brandeis University with funding from the National Science Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Spell Bee allows students to play spelling games in a head-to-head format. Spell Bee allows teachers to create accounts for students so that teachers can track student progress. 4. MSNBC has an interactive spelling bee based on the words from the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. There are three games to play and the words get progressively more difficult the longer you play. The words are read to students who then type the word into the spelling box. Just like in a real spelling bee, students can get the definition and or hear it used in a sentence. The difficulty of the words in the game make it best suited for middle school and high school students. 5. Spelling Bee The Game is an online spelling bee similar in style to the MSNBC game mentioned above. Aft

Looking at the New Directions for school leadership and the teaching profession discussion paper, the only evidence presented to support the assertion that Victoria's education outcomes are not improving is the report "Challenges in Australian Education: results from PISA 2009: the PISA 2009 assessment of students' reading, mathematical and scientific literacy" Specifically the New Directions paper focuses on reading literacy, where in 2009, 14,251 students were given a two-hour pen and paper comprehension test. To get an idea of what types of competencies the reading test is assessing we can look at the sample test , with questions range from comprehension about a letter in a newspaper, the ability to interpret a receipt, comprehension around a short story, an informational text, and interpreting a table. While it doesn't seem unreasonable to want our students to be able to accurately perform these kind of tasks, these tests are not a true or accurate representation of the skills and competencies our students need in today's technology driven world.

Helping students to cultivate the skills needed for writing is often about cultivating a love of writing. Every student needs to be able to express themselves clearly, concisely and intelligently, whatever they are going to end up doing in later life. "The best way to help them develop those skills is to make writing personal and give them a vested interest in communication. Blogs have become one of the most popular website formats in recent years. Blogging websites have become the essential ways for many people to broadcast their personal stories, challenges and insights. This has created both a new generation of budding writers as well as a generation with a keen interest in the stories of others. Blogging offers an immersive experience. Students are simply encouraged to begin a blog chronicling their life story or a subject that ignites their interest. That's when the skills are picked up and developed as a matter of course. The initial blogging assignment should be simple, but at the same time offer a bit of a challenge." Post offers some useful advice about blogging.

"There are many ways to build student engagement in the classroom. What we need to get away from is the adult in the classroom answering their own questions, and fostering an atmosphere where students can rely on each other and work in collaboration. As with anything, this requires balance because we want to make sure the student who doesn't want to answer questions actually takes the opportunity to do so. As Hattie says learning is hard work and it offers us challenges. We know that as adults but want to prevent our students from seeing the challenge because it doesn't always feel good. We need to change our expectations to make sure that students understand they do have to take ownership over their own learning, and not giving them the answers sometimes may be the place to start. "

Formative Assessment, assessing student performance routinely as instruction unfolds can transform teaching and learning. Writer actively experimented with giving more feedback to my students, using rubrics, models of student work, and having students assess their own work as well as that of their peers. Problem is Baltimore County school administrators have ordered all teachers to begin using a grading system next month that will require them to judge whether each of their students has mastered more than 100 specific skills. Elementary school teachers have classes of 25 kids while highschool teachers can have more than 100 students. Over the course of a year, many teachers would have to make as many as 10,000 marks indicating whether a child had learned a task.

Free blogs for each student in a class.

Kidblog's simple, yet powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs. Set up your class with no student email addresses.

"Are you creating a learning space where your students have ample voice, engage frequently with each other, and are given opportunities to make choices.Some guiding Questions to help you reflect on the learning environment you design for students:"

Student-centered classrooms include students in planning, implementation, and assessments. Involving the learners in these decisions will place more work on them, which can be a good thing. Teachers must become comfortable with changing their leadership style from directive to consultative -- from "Do as I say" to "Based on your needs, let's co-develop and implement a plan of action." This first of three posts on student-centered classrooms starts with the educator. As the authority, teachers decide if they will "share" power by empowering learners"

Blogging with students - stepping it up to blogging-commenting

"Formative assessment is vital to teachers in any classroom environment. Teachers have been formatively assessing students for years, because they need to know what students know in order to help them understand what they do not know. Many classrooms are moving to 21st century with technology initiatives. Suggested here are three tech tools will help teachers engage students while simultaneously gauging their understanding of concepts: Kahoot!, Formative and Padlet"

"Project-Based Learning (PBL) naturally lends itself to differentiated instruction. By design, it is student-centered, student-driven and gives space for teachers to meet the needs of students in a variety of ways. PBL can allow for effective differentiation in assessment as well as daily management and instruction. PBL experts will tell you this, but I often hear teachers ask for real examples, specifics to help them contextualize what it "looks like" in the classroom. In fact, the inspiration for this blog came specifically from requests on Twitter! We all need to try out specific ideas and strategies to get our brains working in a different context. Here are some specific differentiation strategies to use during a PBL project. "

Openness proponents contend that distance education often isolates students behind password-protected gates. By unlatching those barriers, professors like Mr. Couros are inventing a way of learning online that feels less like a digital copy of face-to-face classes and more like the open, social, connected Web of blogs, wikis, and Twitter. It can expose students to a far broader network than they would encounter discussing their lessons with a small group of graduate students.

Diipo.com is a social networking sites that is set up for just teachers and students. Teachers can set up class sites where they can post announcements as well as assignments along with links and attachments for students in that particular class site. Students can be added to class rosters, upload files, post entries like a blog, contribute to other group projects, and more.There is also a Ning-like virtual teacher's lounge where educators can interact.

Tiki-Toki is a multimedia timeline creator. The results can be works of art-no joke! It is very easy to use, after registering for an account, students are guided step-by-step through creating an interactive timeline. Students can add text, images (Flickr) and video (YouTube or Vimeo) to a timeline. Images can be uploaded from a student computer or found through a search on Flickr.

@kathleen_morris post "There is no denying that students get a lot more out of blogging when they receive comments. Comments provide feedback, encouragement, advice, positive reinforcement, learning, conversation and new ways of thinking among other things. I have been blogging with my class and I have learnt that there are some tips for attracting comments to your blog.."

"Addressing the challenges unique to students with ADHD will help these students find ways to handle their condition effectively and even use it to their advantage. Their unique perspective can be channeled into creative writing, finding new solutions to problems, and most of all, finding, reaching, and even exceeding their goals and fulfilling their full potential."

Technology tools are being brought into classroom to enhance learning experiences and engage students. All teachers need expand on the set of rules to their classroom to help students understand appropriate behaviors and use of these technologies. The rules suggested in this post give students the freedom to use these new tools without abusing the privilege.

Assessment doesn't have to be a big deal that causes anxiety on the part of both students and teachers, as often happens in the end of unit or end of year exams. In fact it can be carried out as part of the normal classroom routines, so that a teacher can be constantly checking to see that students are understanding the concepts.