Your TechSmith News You Can Use. I've got some exciting news to share with you this month! TechSmith is thrilled to announce that we've acquired Knowmia's suite of technology products. We’re so happy to have Knowmia as part of our family of solutions for educators and learners of all ages. But you may be wondering, what's Knowmia? That’s a great question. Knowmia consists of both an online platform and a mobile component. The online platform is a destination for learning that features short video lessons from great teachers everywhere. The mobile component, Knowmia Teach, is an iPad app that helps teachers plan their lectures and record video lessons on any subject.
TechSmith will continue to support current Knowmia users, and we'll also be incorporating Knowmia technology into our other learning solutions. Part III: Teaching resilience: Attention SmartBlogs. “Squirrel!” In addition to its other endearing qualities, Pixar’s 2009 animated feature “Up“ introduced the world to Dug, a golden retriever with definite attention challenges. Dug sparks several comedic moments with a cry of “squirrel!” Before dashing off-screen to give chase. Resilience requires the ability to imagine what the future can be, and the discipline to reflect on what has been in order to determine a way forward. Attention Attention is a cognitive flashlight, revealing whatever is within one’s mental field of vision.
Noise, whether from within or without, can short-circuit our attention, causing us to miss something important or to lose efficiency in completing a task. How can we keep students’ attention from zoning out? Think only about the next step Attention strays when it’s overwhelmed. To keep students from redirecting their attention, help them see just the next step. Their mental conversations may unfold like this: “I know how to do this. Advertise progress Imagine. 5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can Ask Students. My first year teaching a literacy coach came to observe my classroom. After the students left, she commented on how I asked the whole class a question, would wait just a few seconds, and then answer it myself. "It's cute," she added. Um, I don't think she thought it was so cute. I think she was treading lightly on the ever-so shaky ego of a brand-new teacher while still giving me some very necessary feedback.
So that day, I learned about wait/think time. And also, over the years, I learned to ask better and better questions. Many would agree that for inquiry to be alive and well in a classroom that, amongst other things, the teacher needs to be expert at asking strategic questions, and not only asking well-designed ones, but ones that will also lead students to questions of their own.
Keeping It Simple I also learned over the years that asking straightforward, simply-worded questions can be just as effective as those intricate ones. . #1. This question interrupts us from telling too much. When Bell-Ringers Go Bad: My Quest to Deepen Start-of-Class Activities. Published Online: January 15, 2014 By Kim McCready For most of my 14 years of teaching, I've assigned "bell work" while attending to beginning-of-class duties.
For longer than I care to admit, my bell ringers were bad. These mini-assignments were well-intentioned. My students were writing (writing!) My old stand-by was "revise this paragraph in 5-7 minutes. " I have since designed three campaigns to overhaul how my class begins. We begin with worksheets. Plenty of tools are available: vocabulary books, dictionaries, our class set of sentence-pattern books. Soon, the more competitive students seek to out-do one another by correctly using as many vocabulary words as possible in a complex sentence pattern. After a few weeks, I drop the worksheets. Finally, I pull vocabulary words only from our current major unit of study (Fahrenheit 451, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, etc.). The links between close reading, strong arguments, and skillful writing are undeniable.
The Final Frontier: Tone Chips. Anxious Students? Amping Up May Be Better Than Calming Down, Study Finds - Inside School Research. Strategies For Engaging Students. 5 Ways to Make Your Classroom Student-Centered. Mobiles in the Classroom Interview. Jennifer Carey is the Director of Educational Technology and High School History Teacher at Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove, Florida.
She graciously granted me a 30+ minute interview via Skype on the topic of cell phones in the classroom. To further engage myself with this week's theme of cell phones in the classroom, I conducted the interview and typed up this blog post on my cell phone (#bonuspoints @teach42). I did, however, record it in GarageBand on my MacBook Pro so that I could go back if I missed anything.
I'll have to look into a good mobile phone recording app. The reason I chose Ms. The first question I asked was, "What prompted you to try using cell phones in the classroom? " Ms. I took this break to ask Ms. The next question was regarding school policy. My next two questions were about student and parent response to using cell phones.
I then asked Ms. The final question I had planned was about the evidence that Ms. I ended the interview by asking Ms. Using QR Codes to Differentiate Instruction. An expectation of the Common Core Learning Standards is that teachers differentiate their instruction to meet the needs of all children. This includes special education and general education students, as well as English-Language Learners. One of my favorite technology tools, the QR code, can be used to meet the needs of a variety of students in one classroom. Teachers can create QR codes for differentiated instruction activities. A QR (quick response) code is similar in principle to a barcode -- a matrix image that can be scanned using a mobile device like a smartphone or a tablet with Internet access. There are many free QR Scanner apps that are perfect for classrooms using both iOS and Android devices.
When children scan the code using the camera on their tablet, they'll be taken directly to a website. In a differentiated classroom, children are working in groups based on level, interest or learning style. Have you used QR codes in your classroom? See more see less. Students Set Goals by Del Siegle. Click for video about student goals. goals An ancient Chinese proverb notes that no wind is favorable if one does not know to which port one is sailing. Goals provide a standard against which students can gauge their progress, and setting goals can have a substantial impact on student self-efficacy and achievement. Setting and measuring goals is probably the most effective classroom modification teachers can make to increase student confidence.
When students achieve short-term goals, they gain an initial sense of self-efficacy for performing well, which is later substantiated as they observe progress toward longer-term goals. Goals are effective in two ways. Smaller can be better When it comes to goal setting, smaller is better. Research on Goal Setting Ronald Taylor (1964) compared the goals of underachievers and achievers. Specific goals are far more effective motivators than general ones, such as “Do your best.”
What to do... Check Your Understanding. Well-Behaved Students and Engaged Students Aren't the Same Thing - Rules for Engagement. Strategies For Engaging Students. Special-Needs Students Gain Workplace Experience. Seven Ways to Use QR Codes for Your Business. Are you familiar with QR codes? You’ve probably already seen them around—those quirky squares with the intricate black and white design inside. The design is actually a matrix code that stores a lot of a large amount of information in a small, square space.
When scanned, it quickly and accurately decodes that data such as URLs and text (hence the acronym “QR” which stands for “quick response”). With the advent of smart phones and barcode-scanning apps, resourceful marketers began using QR codes (also known as 2D barcodes) as a portable way to promote their businesses. QR codes often pop up in ads or other types of marketing. Get creative with your codes Despite their high-tech nature, it’s easy to create your own QR codes and place them on almost anything. . - Business cards: Why not update this classic business mainstay? - Name tag or shirt: Don’t feel like passing out business cards at a convention or conference?
- Receipts: Ever thought of using your receipts as a selling tool? Anti-Bullying PSA Project [LESSON] Response: Student Engagement "Requires A Conversation" - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo. Students Who Challenge Us:Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do. Among the many challenges teachers face, often the most difficult is how to engage students who seem unreachable, who resist learning activities, or who disrupt them for others. This is also one of the challenges that skilled teachers have some control over.
In my nine years of teaching high school, I've found that one of the best approaches to engaging challenging students is to develop their intrinsic motivation. The root of intrinsic is the Latin intrinsecus, a combination of two words meaning within and alongside. It's likely that our students are intrinsically motivated—just motivated to follow their own interests, not to do what we want them to do. Teachers' challenge is to work alongside our students, to know their interests and goals, and to develop trusting relationships that help students connect their learning to their goals in a way that motivates from within. How can teachers do this? What Skilled Teachers Can Think 1. 2. Which mind-set we hold makes a tremendous difference. How Can Teachers Prepare Kids for a Connected World? Educators are always striving to find ways to make curriculum relevant in students’ everyday lives.
More and more teachers are using social media around lessons, allowing students to use their cell phones to do research and participate in class, and developing their curriculum around projects to ground learning around an activity. These strategies are all part of a larger goal to help students connect to social and cultural spaces.
And it’s part of what defines “participatory learning,” coined by University of Southern California Annenberg Professor Henry Jenkins, who published his first article on the topic “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture,” in 2006. His work sprang out of the desire to understand the grassroots nature of creativity, how projects are being shared online and what an increasingly networked culture looks like. “PLAY describes a mode of experimentation, of testing materials, trying out new solutions, exploring new horizons,” Jenkins said. Related.