Remake Your Class: 6 Steps to Get Started At my design consultancy, TheThirdTeacher+, we believe that, whether it is a large-scale transformation or a small-scale hack, redesigning your classroom is a fun and empowering adventure. When you involve your students, colleagues and community, you can create a powerful conversation about the role of the environment in the student learning experience. We worked with Edutopia, a collection of creative collaborators and volunteers to help Steve Mattice, a math teacher at Roosevelt Middle School, reimagine his classroom. You can watch the transformation unfold in these videos. Here are the steps that can help you get started today. 1. Remaking your physical environment is an exciting way to transform your teaching practice and your students' learning experience. 2. After giving yourself the permission to playfully begin, it's time to discover. Reflect on the status quo: Grab a pen and post-its. 3. Remaking your class can happen at any scale. 4. 5. 6.
RoomRecess.com - Free Online Educational Games for Elementary Children Critically Examining What You Teach by Grant Wiggins, Ph.D, Authentic Education In my 100th blog post I complained about the course called ‘algebra’. Some commenters misunderstood the complaint. Though I said a few times in the article that my critique was not about the content called algebra but the aimless march through stuff that makes up almost every algebra course in existence, some thought I was bashing the value of the content. Not so. The issue, then, is not ‘algebra’ or ‘history’ but what we mean by ‘course of study’. Notice that I haven’t merely defined a course. Textbooks Are Tools, Not Courses or Content Areas Next time I will say a bit more about my criteria, but we can’t ignore the other lurking issue in this discussion: ‘coverage’, i.e. teachers marching through the pages in a textbook. The textbook does not know your personal or school priorities; the textbook does not know your students; the textbook doesn’t identify any priorities or through lines that unite all the chapters, etc. Websites Books
6 Learning Technologies Teachers Should Break Down And Embrace by James Petzke Teachers in today’s world have finally begun to embrace technology. This makes sense seeing as we live in a world where the ability to work with technology is key in virtually any profession. Making sure students are equipped for today’s world is a huge part of the job. In fact, teachers that don’t do so are in many ways doing their students a disservice. There are a few, though, that have never really caught on the way they might have. 6 Learning Technologies Teachers Should Break Down And Embrace 1. The latest successful social media platform, Vine in the classroom allows you to create and share short videos. All teachers seem to use some sort of quick one liner, analogy, or joke that helps students understand a topic. 2. I just graduated from High School a year ago, and it shocked me that during my four years I never once had a teacher tell me to use Khan Academy, or implement it in a lesson. 3. Missing school is always tough on students. 4. 5. 6. Conclusion
Things I Will Not Be Missing In My Paperless Classroom. As I head into the new school year, I'm not scrambling for my old lesson plan book or looking for notes in some long buried folder. All of my work is saved in Evernote and I will be sharing the work with my students on the second day of school. As I was sitting and thinking about all of the things I was going to need to start the year, I was struck by the number of things I will not need now that I'm as paperless as I can get. In no particular order, here are the things I will not miss in the upcoming school year. 1. I will not miss these guys at all. All of my student work will be on Turnitin.com or saved in their Evernote notebook that can be shared with me and acts as an e-portfolio. 2. I mentioned these guys above and they make the milk crate problem even worse. Again, having students use their Evernote accounts to save all of their work, I do not need them to keep binders to store assignments. 4. I love that they still make these with these covers. 5.
Five Tips for Building Strong Collaborative Learning Teachers share successful tactics for helping kids learn from each other with examples from math and English classes. Students at The College Preparatory School often collaborate in groups, as in this math class where students work together to solve a set of geometry problems in the classroom (above), and then work in the same groups on a related project outside (right). Credit: Zachary Fink At The College Preparatory School (College Prep) in Oakland, California, student collaboration happens on a daily basis. From group-centered math assignments, to student-led discussions in English class, College Prep's culture enables students to both teach and learn from each other, strengthening skills that will deepen their learning. Here are some of the strategies educators there use to help promote collaboration and empower student-centered learning in their classrooms: 1. Many classrooms at College Prep are arranged specifically to enable the flow of ideas across a shared workspace. 2. 3. 4. 5.
My 7 Favorite Tech Tools for My Class So many of my Tweeps have been sharing some of their favorite tech tools that they use in their classroom so I figure I might as well too! In no particular order here are my favorite tools to use with my students and a few I plan to use this year that I'm really excited about! Ever since I found out about Remind101.com in July of 2012 I have been obsessed. I'm a guy who always has my phone on me. Always. I have absolutely loved being able to send text reminders to parents about field trips, tests, upcoming activities, all kinds of things! And it helps that Remind101 has one of the nicest teams of people out there that I've met! Sophia.org has been an excellent resource in my classroom. Even though I upload all my videos to several different places for my students, my students have clearly chosen Sophia.org as their favorite place to access videos. I absolutely love Sophia and like Remind101 they have an incredible team of people behind the name! But for me, best of all is the App!
Going 1-to-1 This Fall? Seven Topics to Include in Your iPad Boot Camp If you’re in the midst of rolling out iPads or tablets into classrooms this fall, we can help. More and more schools have been implementing a 1-to-1 iPad or tablet model, providing one device per student and enabling youth to become more prepared 21st-century learners. While this structural shift is exciting, it also requires significant planning. Adequate teacher training, tech support, loss prevention, bandwidth, and parental involvement are all factors that must be addressed before the devices are even rolled out in classrooms. And then students need to actually learn how to use and care for the devices. Technology coordinator for John Fiske Elementary School Kenyatta Forbes recently described some of the pressures of “going 1-to-1,” a transition her school will make this fall. Make students a part of the process: Prior to the boot camp, involve students in drafting your school’s Acceptable Use Policy [AUP]. For more resources, check out the full, free 1-to-1 Essentials program.
A Really, Really Well-Written Set Of Classroom Rules A Really, Really Well-Written Set Of Classroom Rules Well, actually 2. You could make the argument that they’re too simple I guess. Or that they seem elementary and wouldn’t work beyond 4th grade. But I’m not so sure. It all boils down to your approach to “classroom management,” or rather promoting the tone to learning and personal interaction your students deserve. But if you count yourself among another group–one that hopes that behavior is not only learned, but a product of self-awareness and self-respect–then a new tact must be taken. The first one (from postermywall.com) is fairly traditional, but simplified and almost entirely focused on the human being the rules were written for, rather than the rules themselves. The one below (from loveandlogic.com) is also simple, but masterfully walks the student through the typical escalation of a “problem.”
30 Simple Ways To Connect With Students Are you properly connecting with your students? As the new school year approaches, it’s important to figure out the most effective ways to connect and engage your students as they come off their long vacation. A lot of their minds will be wandering for many weeks after coming back, and we thought that it would be useful to share a few of the more effective ways to enhance learning in your classroom . Below you’ll find a list of nearly three dozen awesome and simple ways to connect with students. From simply getting to know them, to listening to a student’s body language, to actually connecting with the world, there’s a lot of new ways that you can effectively mold young minds. One of my favorite options below is the assignment of roles for the classroom. Just like this post, there’s also an idea to add visuals to everything you do. This is a useful visual aide and you can find several other awesome ones over at Mia MacMeekin’s blog .
Who’s Who on a Movie Crew: An Animated Primer Next time the credits are rolling, stick around so you can educate your fellow audience members on what exactly a gaffer does. This is but one of the mysteries addressed in Who’s Who on a Movie Crew, a campy but undeniably informative primer on film set responsibilities and hierarchies. Some job details get glossed over – grips have far more to keep track of than can ever fit in a rhyming couplet – but it’s in keeping with the deliberately anachronistic animation style and equipment. The breezy style makes for appropriate viewing for all ages. Hundreds of starry-eyed youngsters (and their parents) stand to benefit. Honey, are you sure you want to be a production assistant? More in-depth, non-rhyming explanations of the various roles can be found on Vimeo’s Video School. Related Content: The Film Before the Film: An Introduction to the History of Title Sequences in 10 Minutes Alfred Hitchcock on the Filmmaker’s Essential Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’
43+ Alternatives to YouTube Excellent educational content can be found on YouTube. However, not every teacher can access YouTube in his or her classroom. That's why a few years ago I compiled a big list of alternatives to YouTube. Over the years some of those sites have shut-down, started charging a fee, or have switched into another market. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 10 Teacher Resources For Global Learning - by Kristin Marino According to the Levin Institute at SUNY, globalization is …”a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology.” Students of globalization can study how the process affects culture, political systems, the environment, economies, and humankind all over the world. The study of globalization is far-reaching, and many great teaching resources are available. 10 Teacher Resources For Global Learning Comprehensive websites Globalization 101 is a project of the Levin Institute at SUNY that offers resources and tools on a wide variety of globalization topics and concerns, including culture, development, education, environment, health, human rights, law, technology, trade and women. The Center for Global Studies at Penn State offers video presentations, curriculum ideas, links to publications and more. Videos Lesson Plans Collaboration
- Summer Learning Series-Putting The Internet To Work For You With IFTTT 0 Comments August 16, 2013 By: Steven W. Anderson Aug 15 Written by: 8/15/2013 5:22 PM ShareThis This is the ninth post in my Summer Learning Series. Let's face it. If This, Than That (or IFTTT) is a powerful website where you set up triggers and recipes to do tasks for you. It starts with the If This: Here, you decide if something happens. I am going to create one for the weather. Then you decide what should happen: Now you have several options, some of which make sense, like triggering an email or sending a text, while others don't make much sense like updating your Facebook status or sending an update via RSS. Once set up, you are good to go. I have several recipes I use. I use a bunch of these. One of the best parts of IFTTT is the sharing. So be like me. Do you use IFTT? cross posted at blog.web20classroom.org Steven W.