Category: Teacher resources

5 Digital Goals for You This Summer

Ah, summer. Is it really that time again? It’s hard to believe those amazing children I started with in September are about to move on.

Which means I must come up with activities to keep myself busy until I return to the next classful of eager faces.

Truth, I know exactly what I’m doing this summer. I’ve spent much of this school year drooling over exciting tools I wanted to learn to use, unable to eke out the requisite time. Too busy with classes and homework and report cards and student needs to focus that nine-pound muscle inside my skull on the nerve-wracking horrors of Something New. What if I can’t figure it out? What if it sucked up all my skimpy free time and I had none left for, say, reading a book?

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10 Factors to Consider in Tech Report Cards

It used to be simple to post grades. Add up the test scores and see what the student earned. Very defensible. Everyone understood.

It’s not that easy anymore, especially in technology. Here are all the factors I take into consideration when I’m posting grades:

Does s/he remember skills from prior lessons as they complete current lessons?
Does s/he show evidence of learning by using tech knowledge in classroom or home?
Does s/he participate during class discussions?
Does s/he complete class goals?
Does s/he save to their network folder?

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5 Strategies to Assess Student Knowledge

This is always challenging, isn’t it? Finding evidence that students have learned what you taught, that they can apply knowledge to complex problems. How do you do this? Rubrics? Group projects? Posters? None sound worthy of the Common Core educational environ–and too often, students have figured out how to deliver within these guidelines while on auto-pilot.

Where can we find authentic assessments that are measurable yet student-centered, promote risk-taking by student and teacher alike, inquiry-driven and encourage students to take responsibility for his/her own learning? How do we assess a lesson plan in a manner that insures students have learned what they need to apply to life, to new circumstances they will face when they don’t have a teacher at their elbow to nudge them the right direction?

Here are my top five strategies to determine if I’m succeeding:

Anecdotally

I observe their actions, their work, the way they are learning the skills I’m teaching. Are they engaged, making their best effort? Do they remember skills taught in prior weeks and apply them? Do they self-assess and make corrections as needed?

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5 Must-have Skills for New Tech Teachers Plus One Extra

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If you teach technology, it’s likely you were thrown into it by your Admin. You used to be a first grade teacher or the science expert or maybe even the librarian and suddenly, you walked into school one day and found out you’d become that tech person down the hall you were always in awe of, the one responsible for classroom computers, programs, curriculum, and everything in between. Now that’s you–the go-to person for tech problems, computer quirks, crashes and freezes, and tech tie-ins for classroom inquiry.

You have no idea where to begin.

Here’s a peek into your future: On that first propitious day, everything will change. Your colleagues will assume you received a data upload of the answers to every techie question. It doesn’t matter that yesterday, you were one of them. Now, you will be on a pedestal, colleague’s necks craned upward as they ask , How do I get the Smartscreen to work? or We need microphones for a lesson I’m starting in three minutes. Can you please-please-please fix them? You will nod your head, smile woodenly, and race to your classroom for the digital manuals (if you’re lucky) or Google for online help.

Let me start by saying: Don’t worry. Really. You’ll learn by doing, just as we teach students. Take a deep breath, engage your brain, and let your brilliance shine.

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16 Memorial Day Websites for Students

Memorial Day is the time we remember all of those soldiers (and anyone in the Armed Forces) who gave their lives in the defense of American freedom. In war and peace, they made the ultimate sacrifice, and because of them we are privileged to live the American Dream.

Once a year, we honor them, their sacrifice, and those they left behind. Here are some activities to help students understand the import of this day:

You Know You’re a Geek When…

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Thanks to Julia Hayden for this lovely list:

- You look at a movie trailer and think, “I have that typeface.”

- You get sudden attacks of bittersweet nostalgic feelings when thinking about your long-lost old Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX-81, TRS-80 (or other hardware), and use large amounts of money/time trying to track one down.
- You are wearing ten year old spectacles, made of steel.
- You realize you never cook, eating only take-away pizza.
- You seriously consider devoting a web page to your computer. (Not the brand, mind you, but the actual computer itself)
- You get depressed when you get less than 10 e-mail messages a day.

- You plan to get two Masters degrees.

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11 Ways to be an Inquiry-based Teacher

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It’s hard to run an inquiry-based classroom. Don’t go into this teaching style thinking all you do is ask questions and observe answers. You have to listen with all of your senses, pause and respond to what you heard (not what you wanted to hear), keep your eye on the Big Ideas as you facilitate learning, value everyone’s contribution, be aware of the energy of the class and step in when needed, step aside when required. You aren’t a Teacher, rather a guide. You and the class find your way from question to knowledge together.

Because everyone learns differently.

You don’t use a textbook. Sure, it’s a map, showing you how to get from here to there, but that’s the problem. It dictates how to get ‘there’. For an inquiry-based classroom, you may know where you’re going, but not quite how you’ll get there and that’s a good thing. You are no longer your mother’s teacher who stood in front of rows of students and pointed to the blackboard. You operate well outside your teaching comfort zone as you try out the flipped classroom and the gamification of education and are thrilled with the results.

And then there’s the issue of assessment. What your students have accomplished can’t neatly be summed up by a multiple choice test. When you review what you thought would assess learning (back when you designed the unit), none measure the organic conversations the class had about deep subjects, the risk-taking they engaged in to arrive at answers, the authentic knowledge transfer that popped up independently of your class time. You realize you must open your mind to learning that occurred that you never taught–never saw coming in the weeks you stood amongst your students guiding their education.

Let me digress. I visited the Soviet Union (back when it was one nation) and dropped in on a classroom where students were inculcated with how things must be done. It was a polite, respectful, ordered experience, but without cerebral energy, replete of enthusiasm for the joy of learning, and lacking the wow factor of students independently figuring out how to do something. Seeing the end of that powerful nation, I arrived at different conclusions than the politicians and the economists. I saw a nation starved to death for creativity. Without that ethereal trait, learning didn’t transfer. Without transfer, life required increasingly more scaffolding and prompting until it collapsed in on itself like a hollowed out orange.

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42 Great Story Websites You’ll Love

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Check out our latest addition of great websites–Stories. There are 45 websites for grades K-5, everything from audio to international to write your own. Enjoy!

Humor that Inspires–for Teachers! Part II

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If you liked the last Humor that Inspires, here are more to kick-start your day:

“It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion.” – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti
“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.” – Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” – Henry Ford (1863-1947)
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” – Warren Zevon
“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
“The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head.” – Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
“Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.” – Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it” – Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.” – Seneca (3BC – 65AD)
“Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?” – Bumper Sticker
“God, please save me from your followers!” – Bumper Sticker
“Fill what’s empty, empty what’s full, and scratch where it itches.” – the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
“Luck is the residue of design.” – Branch Rickey – former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” – Mel Brooks
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