10 Lessons From the Best District in the Country By Elizabeth F. Farrell If they haven’t been tossed already, textbooks at Mooresville Graded School District sit unused, piled in corners of classrooms. Desks are no longer neatly arranged in rows, and students rarely sit quietly and listen to extended lectures. At Mooresville, 20 miles outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, this is the new norm. The district undertook a massive “21st Century Digital Conversion” in 2007. Results of this transformation are off the charts—the graduation rate for African-American students was 95 percent in 2012, up from 67 percent five years earlier. Mark Edwards has spearheaded the digital conversion since taking over as superintendent in 2007. “Ninety percent of our visitors come here talking about hardware and leave talking about culture. The success of the eight-school, 5,600-student district has earned it numerous accolades—Edwards spoke on a White House panel and was named AASA’s Superintendent of the Year in February. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
25 Best Websites for Teachers 1. Best for Young Readers: The Stacks At The Stacks, students can post book reviews, get reading recommendations, play games based on the latest series, watch "Meet the Author" videos, and more. It's like Facebook for reading and it's safe for school, too. 2. Use Scholastic's Book Wizard to level your classroom library, find resources for the books you teach, and create reading lists with the click of a button. 3. With hundreds of lessons for every grade level, you're guaranteed to find a colorful idea for your class, such as the "Chinese Dragon Drum" for Chinese New Year or the "What Do You Love?" 4. Establish a morning routine with Scholastic's Daily Starters — fun, fast math and language arts prompts and questions, including Teachable Moments from history and Fun Facts, such as "Before erasers, people used a piece of bread!" 5. 6. Add the beginner's version of the Wordsmyth widget to your toolbar, and students can look up new vocabulary no matter where they are online. 7. 8. 9. 10.
The Evolution of Classroom Technology Classrooms have come a long way. There’s been an exponential growth in educational technology advancement over the past few years. From overhead projectors to iPads, it’s important to understand not only what’s coming next but also where it all started. We’ve certainly come a long way but some things seem hauntingly similar to many years ago. For example, Thomas Edison said in 1925 that “books will soon be obsolete in schools. Also in 1925, there were “schools of the air” that delivered lessons to millions of students simultaneously. Here’s a brief look at the evolution of classroom technology. c. 1650 – The Horn-Book Wooden paddles with printed lessons were popular in the colonial era. c. 1850 – 1870 – Ferule This is a pointer and also a corporal punishment device. 1870 – Magic Lantern The precursor to a slide projector, the ‘magic lantern’ projected images printed on glass plates and showed them in darkened rooms to students. c. 1890 – School Slate c. 1890 – Chalkboard c. 1900 – Pencil B.
Learn Scratch with Super Scratch Programming Adventure Super Scratch Programming Adventure. Update: There is a new version of this book, Super Scratch Programming Adventure! , to go with the updated version of Scratch. We downloaded Scratch for free a couple of weeks ago to let kids have something fun and easy to start learning programming. Scratch is a beginner computer programming software that has a drag and drop interface, and gives fast results without any prior knowledge. The description from the Scratch website is: “Scratch is a programming language learning environment enabling beginners to get results without having to learn syntactically correct writing first. I ordered Super Scratch Programming Adventure! from Amazon, based on its fantastic reviews, to add an element of structure to their learning. IrishWrath, with his companion Titan. IrishWrath, age 13, is not really into programming, but I think it’s important to have a basic understanding of code so I’ve put coding as one of his subjects this term. “It’s a comic, enough said.”
10 Internet Technologies Educators Should Be Informed About – 2011 Update These Technologies Are Changing Education. Are You Familiar With Them? It’s been nearly two and half years since the publication of the first “10 internet technologies that educators should be informed about” article on this site and given the fast paced evolution of technology it’s time for an update. The start of new school year is the perfect time to refresh this list! Below you will find updated information for 5 of the technologies from the original posting, and 5 new technologies that have earned their rightful place in the list (displacing 5 other types of tech, that while still worthy, are not quite as relevant today, IMHO). This is not intended to be a definitive listing, but rather an informed resource that provides insights and raises awareness. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Another important education technology trend is the exploding use of mobile devices. About Kelly Walsh Print This Post
Realm of Racket Realm of Racket The people at no starch press were kind enough to give us a review copy of Realm of Racket: Learn to Program, One Game at a Time! This is a coding book presented in coding style with plenty of recursion. It’s written as if the reader were a computer compiling and running the content. The style begins on the title page with the author listing in a list, complete with parenthesis and follows through with side notes scattered throughout the book in the style of Racket comment syntax. #| Just like this one …they even throw in a different font to nerd up the text just that little bit extra |# There are eleven authors credited in Realm of Racket, which you would expect to result in a mishmash of styles and opinionated banter. In the author Matthias Felleisen’s own words “The author team really consists of eight students and two ‘old’ people: David Van Horn and myself. As with the Land of Lisp the content is presented in the form of games.
The Kindle Fire 6.3 update may help light up the classroom I really enjoyed using the Amazon Kindle Fire and if I didn't have so many other tablets I would definitely have kept it in hand. I spent the day with a high school classmate last weekend and he was telling me all about the Kindle Fires he bought for his kids and how great it was to get powerful tablets for just $200. Some good news came from Amazon yesterday as they rolled out a significant software update that takes the Kindle Fire to version 6.3. This latest update provides the following: Sharing: Customers will be able to easily share favorite passages and notes from their books directly from Kindle Fire, without even leaving the book. Make sure you have a charged up Kindle Fire and are connected via WiFi before attempting the update. Looking at this list of updates I see that the possibility of using low cost Kindle Fires in the classroom is closer to reality. Related ZDNet coverage
Python for Kids: Teach your Kids to Code in Python. Python for Kids: Teach your Kids to Code in Python. IrishCyborg has really gotten into programming. He likes to play with Scratch, having learned a lot from Super Scratch Programming Adventure!: Learn to Program By Making Cool Games (Review). , but it was basically a repeat of Super Scratch Programming Adventure and a lot less fun. and Python for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming. When Python for Kids came IrishCyborg dived in. Python for Kids is broken into three parts. Learning To Program. Most chapters ends with some colourful puzzles that logically build on one another, to re-enforce your child’s understanding. Jason, the author, has a great sense of humor, and writes in an easily accessible style to a child, yet still interesting enough for an adult to read. Rocket © IrishCyborg Here is what IrishCyborg(11) said about Python for Kids, I loved the “quirky” and full colour illustrations. I am delighted with Python for Kids, another No Starch Press book that hits the mark.
4 Stages: The Integration Of Technology In Learning The 4 Stages Of The Integration Of Technology In Learning by Terry Heick For professional development around this idea or others you read about on TeachThought, contact us. Technology can be used in the learning process in a variety of ways. Some are supplementary, serving the original design of the classroom and usually automate some previously by-human task or process–grading multiple choice assessments, searching for a source of information, or sharing messages and other data across large groups. But fully integrated and embedded in the learning process, technology can be transformative–and disruptive. Scaffolding the learning of anything unfamiliar–somehow–is a way of supporting the learner and setting them up for long-term independent success. Should elementary school be stage 1, middle school stage 2, and so on? Should all learners begin a school year at stage 1 and move as far as they can towards stage 4? Can a planned learning experience be evaluated using this framework in mind?
Engaging reluctant boys to write through the local schools football league For over 4 years I have been the league secretary for the Urmston and District Primary School Football league. Since taking over the role, I have restructured the league so that 13 local schools complete all their fixtures which has seen a massive increase in participation and seen more children and schools playing football. The way the league now works is that a host school welcomes two other schools and plays 3 games of 20 minutes. As the league has been successfully running in this way for 3 seasons, I wanted to try and use it to inspire more of the reluctant boy writers to become more motivated to write. On our school blog, I have included a page for the league which includes an updated league table. Each week, I give a child from my school team the responsibility of writing a match report on the games. It has truly been an inspiring approach and through the use of Twitter some children have had feedback from some of the best football journalists in the world.