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Throughout the ages of educational ideas and philosophies teachers have been big fans of having their students keep a journal. Journals are kept in language arts, foreign language classes, and I have seen them in science classes. Students don't particularly like doing them unless they enjoy writing. If given a choice between keeping a journal in their spiral notebook and keeping it online, I would wager that a majority of students in this digital age will prefer to keep it online. So why not give them the choice and tool of Penzu.

This post was useful to language teachers and educators who are novice at implementing technology in their teaching contexts. It has listed samples of some of how to integrate web2.0 tools into language classes to train linguistic skills.

My Carnigie's story maker is an excellent tool that can be used for teaching creative writing to your students. With this tool, students will be able to create a story in minutes, with animation if desired, and then share their story with somebody else or even create a print out.  My Carnigie Story Maker is extremely user friendly and students can get started within minutes and won't need much training to do so.  Students will be able to get their creative juices flowing as they practice their English Language skills and if you happen to be a Foreign Language teacher, this site would be great for your students as well.

This website is a great resource for speech/language pathology and special education.

How schools and families can partner to set boundaries with digital communication and make children conscience of how they use technology. 

Interesting view that schools have a powerful role to play..."Schools have taken on a more significant, all-consuming role in helping parents find the right language to communicate with children, especially in the digital realm." It is easy to forget that parents are looking for guidance about their children and effective technology use.

"Kurt Wootton, co-author of A Reason to Read. "In my view, the repetition must not come before allowing students to participate in the creative tasks, but rather repeated practice walks side-by-side with the creative process."" I find this statement to "hit the nail on the head" as the debate between rote memory and creative "aha" moments continue. The analogy of the musician practicing for hours playing scales as well as note for note renditions of other's work is appropriate to this discussion. The book, "Outliers",by Malcolm Gladwell, addresses the 10,000 hour rule. To paraphrase; To become world class at anything, it takes 10,000 hours of focused practice. The author's examples range from Bill Gates to The Beatles. When two sides are set up as an US vs THEM debate, it misses the oppoprtunity to combine perfect practice with creative inspiration. Putting together a perfect meal is based on proper choices of various food combinations. Putting together a perfect learning environment is very similar in that a combination of repetitive learning and creative opportunity helps the learning as well as creative process.

"Kurt Wootton, co-author of A Reason to Read. "In my view, the repetition must not come before allowing students to participate in the creative tasks, but rather repeated practice walks side-by-side with the creative process."" I find this statement to "hit the nail on the head" as the debate between rote memory and creative "aha" moments continue. The analogy of the musician practicing for hours playing scales as well as note for note renditions of other's work is appropriate to this discussion. The book, "Outliers",by Malcolm Gladwell, addresses the 10,000 hour rule. To paraphrase; To become world class at anything, it takes 10,000 hours of focused practice. The author's examples range from Bill Gates to The Beatles. When two sides are set up as an US vs THEM debate, it misses the oppoprtunity to combine perfect practice with creative inspiration. Putting together a perfect meal is based on proper choices of various food combinations. Putting together a perfect learning environment is very similar in that a combination of repetitive learning and creative opportunity helps the learning as well as creative process.

Mind Map for different purposes across the curriculum

Content Area/Grade Level/Course Title/Activity Type: English/Language Arts/High School/Literature/Student Activity Topic/Lesson Name: Literacy Circle Book Report

A British website that has many free resources to download in PDF. Sometimes needs to be tweaked for American English, but a fantastic resource for literature, language, media resources.

This article by Melissa Venable deals with the skills one needs to effectively communicate in an online class. Whether it is between the teacher and the student or student to student communication. This is a skill that needs to be developed especially for the online teacher. The 7 C's are - Clarity, Completeness, Conciseness, Concreteness, Correctness, Courtesy, and Consideration. She further points out that there may even be more C's that need to be part of this equation - Confident, Conversational, Coherent, Creative, Convincing and Check. Her basic message is "More effective communication practices lead to a more effective learning process."

While the Cs in the article are associated with online courses, they can also be applied to face-to-face instruction, as well as written and oral communication. In all forms of communication, it is worth striving for these Cs.

While online courses bring concerns for underdeveloped face to face skills, these courses help students develop a more effective communication. In this platform students are more aware of what they are saying. Students must present their thoughts in clear, concise, correct sentences. They must also take care to be considerate of their audience. That the written word doesn't allow for tone of voice or body language to help get their ideas across. Students must really think before the "speak."

K-12 lesson plans for using a document camera in the classroom

This article discusses the importance of differentiation and especially the need for students to "redo" their assignments until they get them correct. By allowing students to "redo" they are improving their higher level thinking skills. Good and short article with practical reminders.

I love this article! Great reminders for all of us as educators to simply differentiate learning for our students. -vary the length or quantity of the assignment. -extend or curtail the duration of the assignment. -change the language of the assignment. -scaffold the learning activity from hard to medium to easy. -compact the activity and teach only what they don't know. -give them learning activities that let them perform the same learning objective with multiple mediums like summarizing a story they have read through narrative, drama, song, poetry, art, or design They also discussed the ability to redo assessments and I agree with this but somewhere in my teaching experience this has been engrained in my head only once. But I realize the feeling of success this allows a student.

In this blog, Ben Johnson reiterates the misconceptions in education about all students getting concepts in education at the same time. He goes on to discuss the importance of true differentiation in the classroom and that it is not creating an imbalance among students but a way for all students to succeed. He emphasizes the things teachers already do in the classroom to help students succeed and ends with a suggestion to allow students to redo their work in all areas (not just English and history).

A lofty empirical research article intended for doctoral candidates and other researchers but if you can get past the SAT style language the information contained is rather interesting. While my high school students will not be writing formal literary analyses I am interested in them producing high quality papers based on valid research questions/topics and having them think of new ways to view the same literature. Some of the texts we read in class have so many articles and summaries already prepared that it is sometimes hard for students to think of new ways to approach the material and this article offers some interesting thought processes to consider when preparing a literary analysis.