Please explore this blog and find a video, an article, a link, and one additional item you find interesting, and be prepared to discuss and present the topics to your fellow student teachers. In addition, be prepared to answer the question of how you can use a blog and other technologies to enhance student learning and communication. Please use the Tag Cloud in the left column and the categories drop list on the right to help you explore topics. Blog entries are posted chronologically and many great items do not appear on the first page.
Our Courts is a website envisioned by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor that is dedicated to teaching students about 21st century civics. The website includes lesson plans, games and a place where students can send messages back and forth with Justice O’Connor.
While you’reteaching about goverment also check out Alex Kane’s Bill of Rights Lesson from our Educator Resource Center. This lessondescribes andreinforces studentsunderstanding of the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. After the lesson, go back to theOur Courtswebsite and have students review what they learned by playing the Do I have a Right? game.
Seems we are busier than ever these days. Whether you’re a “newbie” or a seasoned veteran, “keeping up” is a LOT of work, and something many of us obsess about. You can rely on your PLN, to be sure, but you also need resources you can use on your own to stay abreast of the latest and greatest tools.
Kids Past has put together an easy-to-read World History “textbook” for kids. Kids Past also offers five history games to which students can apply the knowledge the find in the textbook. The textbook and games correspond to each other.
Applications for Education The Kids Past World History textbook could be a nice supplement to a classroom textbook or lesson. A teacher could use the games as a review activity for students. With the congruence between the textbook and the games a student could have two browser tabs or windows open and refer back to the textbook when they get stuck on a question. Educational games like those offered on Kids Past can be super opportunities to assess a student’s learning in an informal environment that they enjoy. Educational games are also a method of allowing students to progress at a self-determined pace.
There are tons of free historical games, interactives and simulations on the web. Playing history aggregates info on these resources in a simple, searchable database making it easy to find, rate, and review historical games. There are currently 130 shared games.
From business know-how
Have you ever wished there were an easy way to put your PowerPoint presentations on the web, and narrate them?
What about photos? A picture may be worth a thousand words, but if you’re a realtor, you may want to embellish a photo slideshow with a verbal description pointing out the crown molding in all the rooms, the home’s proximity to the beach, or the top-of-the-line kitchen appliances that are only a year old.
Now, you can do those things easily and for free thanks to a new service called MyBrainshark. A “show-and-tell” website for business communicators, MyBrainshark gives you a simple way to upload, narrate, share and track PowerPoint presentations…..read the rest of the article here.
The requirement that schools meet state standards, or else, is in conflict with the notion of student autonomy. How this plays out in classrooms is all too familiar to teachers.
A child may want to do research on turtles, but mastery of turtles is not a state objective. While pursuing his keen interest in turtles might increase the child’s reading and math skills, given the stakes, a teacher could be forgiven for insisting that this child adhere to the required curriculum…..Read the rest of the article here
The essence of the demand for freedom is the need of conditions which will enable an individual to make his own special contribution to a group interest, and to partake of its activities in such ways that social guidance shall be a matter of his own mental attitude, and not a mere authoritative dictation of his acts.
- John Dewey Democracy and Education
Educators are painfully well acquainted with the phenomenon known as “burnout.” Some days it seems that the bulbs have gone out in most faculty lounges and administration buildings. But what if, hypothetically speaking, this syndrome also affected students? How would they talk and act? Teachers around the country to whom I have put this question immediately suggest such symptoms as disengagement and apathy – or, conversely, thoughtlessness and aggression. Either tuning out or acting out might signal that a student was burning out. In both cases, he or she would presumably just go through the motions of learning, handing in uninspired work and counting the minutes or days until freedom……read the rest of the article here
From Cool Cat Teacher Blog
Flat Classroom Project keynote for this quarter from Dr. Curtis Bonk where he discusses the trends that are opening up education.
By TODD FARLEY
Published: September 27, 2009 NY Times Op-Ed
LAST week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged standardized tests are flawed measures of student progress. But the problem is not so much the tests themselves — it’s the people scoring them.
Many people remember those tests as lots of multiple-choice questions answered by marking bubbles with a No. 2 pencil, but today’s exams nearly always include the sort of “open ended” items where students fill up the blank pages of a test booklet with their own thoughts and words. On many tests today, a good number of points come from such open-ended items, and that’s where the real trouble begins……Read the rest of the article here
