Teachers' Domain: About Inspiring Middle School Literacy

Teachers' Domain: About Inspiring Middle School Literacy: "In this professional development video from WGBH, teachers, students, and a literacy expert present their perspectives on the use of the self-paced lessons in the Walmart Middle School Literacy Initiative. Designed for struggling readers in grades 5–8, the lessons use videos, interactive activities, note taking, readings, and essay writing to engage students in science, social studies, English language arts, and mathematics topics. As they learn about a topic, they also build proficiency in reading, vocabulary, and writing skills."

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Free Technology for Teachers: Get 25GB of Box Storage with Fetchnotes

Free Technology for Teachers: Get 25GB of Box Storage with Fetchnotes: "I've written about the collaborative task management tool Fetchnotes a couple of times this year (click here for my latest review). This week Fetchnotes announced a great promotion with Box. Now if you register for a Fetchnotes account and a new Box account, you will receive 25GB of free Box space. Since Dropbox dropped support for sharing of folders (for new accounts), Box has become my preferred file hosting and sharing service."

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TimeMaps - World History Atlas

TimeMaps - World History Atlas: "Explore world history with this FREE, award winning World History Atlas.
The TimeMap of World History is an all inclusive look at world history. It combines maps, timelines and chron- ological narratives that work together to enhance historical understanding. New content added daily."

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Langwitches Blog | Archive | Digital Learning Farm

Langwitches Blog | Archive | Digital Learning Farm: "“Tutorial Designer” is one of the six roles, Alan November lists in his Digital Learning Farm that empower student learners and describes in his book ‘Who owns the Learning?.
Where does your imagination take you?
What ideas come to your mind?
What comes to mind for YOUR STUDENTS TO SHARE?
What lesson or unit, could you “upgrade” to include the creation of a video, audio or screencast?
I believe strongly, that teaching and upgrading to include emerging literacies and amplified skills for the 21st century learner rely HEAVILY on imagination, willingness and ability to experiment, fail, tweak and try again.

Please share samples of you and your students’ imagination and tutorials, guides or step by step instructions."

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10 Things Students Won’t Need To Know When They Graduate | Edudemic

10 Things Students Won’t Need To Know When They Graduate | Edudemic: "A generation ago, change often took a decade, and trends in music, fashion, and politics all phased in and out in these generous chunks of time, but the tempo of life has changed as technological advances have accelerated life to a point when decades worth of changes are now being compressed into a year or less.

This creates unique challenges for today’s school leaders as we try to wrestle our curricula into a shape that can meet the needs of individual children while being vibrant enough so the curricula don’t become an outdated document over the course of a year."

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Primary source activities aligned to the Common Core « History Tech

Primary source activities aligned to the Common Core « History Tech: "I do think that most history teachers incorporate the sorts of things that the Common Core is encouraging – though not often enough and not as intentionally as they should. So their question about “what it looks like” is a good one. So today some examples of how you might use primary sources to align your instruction with Common Core standards.

My first suggestion is that you head over to my Common Core and the Social Studies Classroom page and browse through some of the stuff that’s over there. Tim Bailey has a great article that we link to and there are some helpful videos of classroom examples. You’ll also find a great resource from the Smithsonian called Engaging Students with Primary Sources that gives some specific classroom examples. We will continue to add new and useful goodies to that page so you might want to bookmark the page before you’re done there.

The thing that I really like about the CC is that as part of the ELA standards, K-12 students must use evidence as part of their written arguments. Students also learn to"

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The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "A key concept that’s important for students to learn is the importance of engaging with the text — not just being a passive reader.
There are obviously many effective instructional strategies to help them practice that lesson.  One pretty explicit way is for them to have access to reading “choose your own adventure” stories where they are periodically given choices of what they want characters to do, and then participate in the construction of the story itself.  The Goosebumps series of books is a well-known example of this genre.  In the world of English Language Learner teaching, these kinds of stories are also called “Action Mazes.”"

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“textivate” Has Potential, But….. | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

“textivate” Has Potential, But….. | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "You can copy and paste any text up to 500 words into textivate and get, in return, multiple different exercises using that text, ranging from “scrambled sentences” to “Fill-in-the-blanks.” In fact, you can automatically try twenty-seven different variations. You can get a public url for it (it says you can also get an embed code, but it didn’t give me one). You can see what I did with it here."

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Free Technology for Teachers: A Simple Visual Thesaurus

Free Technology for Teachers: A Simple Visual Thesaurus: "Words Like is handy little website for those times when you need a thesaurus. Words Like works in your choice of two ways. You can browse the word clouds or simply enter a word in the search box. Any word that you click on in either the word cloud or in the list generated by your search will lead you to at least one word with a similar meaning. Definitions are provided for every word on Words Like."

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Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Video Projects to Try With Your Students

Free Technology for Teachers: 5 Video Projects to Try With Your Students: "Video creation projects are some of my favorite things to do with students. I like video projects for a number of reasons not the least of which is that students generally enjoy them too. I like video projects because when they're organized properly students have to write, research, produce, and revise just as they would if they were writing a story or research paper. The difference is that shared finished video projects have the potential to reach many more people than a well-written essay does. Another bonus is that I can invite my administrators into my classroom to watch a few short videos and they can quickly see what my students have been doing."

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A Role Model for My Girls

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A New Way to Lecture

Open publication - Free publishing - More education

Unlimited Possibilities

HowStuffWorks "Learn how Everything Works!"

HowStuffWorks "Learn how Everything Works!":
This is just a fun site. You can spend time learning about such a wide variety of subjects. They have several podcasts that are worth subscribing to through iTunes!
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I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This: “Next Up in Teacher Evaluations: Student Surveys” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This: “Next Up in Teacher Evaluations: Student Surveys” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "Education Week Teacher has just published a report titled Next Up in Teacher Evaluations: Student Surveys (Learning First also has a good post on the same topic). It discusses the growing interest in using student survey results as a part of a teacher evaluation process and specifically talks about what’s happening in Pittsburgh."

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Free Technology for Teachers: Easy Group Blogging With Posterous Spaces

Free Technology for Teachers: Easy Group Blogging With Posterous Spaces: "In Posterous Spaces you can allow people to make contributions to your blog by simply sending an email to "yourblog'sname" @ posterous.com. For example, if I created the blog "awesomeblog.posterous.com" I could allow others to contribute to the blog by simply sending an email to "awesomeblog@posterous.com." You can choose to moderate or not moderate those contributions. From an administrative standpoint, using the email method of contributing to a group blog is much easier than having to enter permissions for each person you want contributing to your group blog."

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Google Drive and Docs for Teachers 2012

Why Good Classes Fail

Why Good Classes Fail: "This is a quick little essay about why a teacher can employ all the “right methods” (pick your buzzword: student-centered, learning-centric, participatory, collaborative, problem-based, etc.) and embrace all the most rich, compelling, and engaging technologies, and still fail. This is an essay in the true sense of the word (which Gardner Campbell has recently reminded me is derived from the French infinitive essayer, “to try” or “to attempt”) … so this is just a try, an attempt, and in that sense also an invitation for you all to jump in and let me know your thoughts as well."

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Whack-A-Bone

Whack-A-Bone: "Whack-A-Bone will lead you toward an instinctive knowledge of the major bones of the body. Build up, scan and whack the arm, leg and core. When that has been perfected, scan the entire skeleton and finally, whack Harold silly."

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Pathfinders

Pathfinders: "LOST? Help is here! Pick a subject you need to research and you will be given a list of sites to guide you with your work. We now have 101 pathfinders!!"

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How Google is teaching computers to see — Tech News and Analysis

How Google is teaching computers to see — Tech News and Analysis: "Google is attempting to teach computers to recognize human faces without telling the computing algorithms which faces are human. It’s a machine-learning problem made for this era of unstructured data and easy access to large compute clusters. It could help the search giant make huge strides in building the next big opportunity in tech, enabling computers to “see.”"

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Technology - Alexis Madrigal - The Radical Optimism of Eric Schmidt - The Atlantic

Technology - Alexis Madrigal - The Radical Optimism of Eric Schmidt - The Atlantic: ""All of us grew up with an assumption that what we were seeing on television, especially in legitimate news, was edited and properly vetted. That's no longer the case. Furthermore, you can anticipate very powerful forces will attempt to do misinformation campaigns to you for one business objective or another," he said. "It will be worth it to them to spend millions of dollars to spend millions of dollars to create fake websites and so forth to convince you that something that is really bad for you is really good for you. Because they have a business interest to do so and the Internet allows that.""

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Technology - Gabriella Coleman - The Anthropology of Hackers - The Atlantic

Technology - Gabriella Coleman - The Anthropology of Hackers - The Atlantic: "Pasty kids with greasy hair typing on command lines. Dark villains of the networked world. Security magicians with odd political beliefs. We have a lot of ideas about who hackers are, but very few people have actually tried to seriously investigate the anthropology of one of the more fascinating social groups to emerge at the end of the 20th century. NYU's Gabriella Coleman studies their culture, an odd brew of faith in freedom of information and traditional liberalism, along with a generous salt-and-peppering of nerdiness and counterculturalism. In the latest edition of our syllabus-as-essay series, Coleman guides us past the stereotypes and into the many hideouts and projects of the hacker underground."

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Friday Five: Leading Digital Ethnographers | Edelman Digital

Friday Five: Leading Digital Ethnographers | Edelman Digital: "With recent developments in social browsing, understanding online social networks has become critical to the success of any PR or marketing campaign. At the core of social networks are people who are brought together by different interests and ideas. Each social community is shaped by different rules and behaviors, and success depends upon your ability to understand and behave by those rules. In short, you need to become a digital anthropologist. Digital ethnography is the study of online communities and human-technology interactions through the use of qualitative research methods. There is no universal approach to digital ethnography, and there are diverse methods to learn from. Ranging from the study of hackers to Internet Freedom in the Middle East, below are five digital ethnographers on the cutting edge of studying online social networks and digital culture."

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Free Technology for Teachers: Google Body Browser = Google Earth for Anatomy

Free Technology for Teachers: Google Body Browser = Google Earth for Anatomy: "I saw Google's Body Browser earlier this week, but because I didn't have the time to test drive it until this morning. After installing the latest version of Google Chrome (Body Browser won't work without it) I was able to see what all the talk was about. Body Browser gives you a 360 degree view of the human body. You can turn on layers to see bones, muscles, organs, and the nervous system. You can turn on all the layers at the same time and alter the transparency of each layer. Turn on labels to have labels appear each time you click on a part of the body. For example, if I have the bones layer turned on along with the labels, when I click on a bone a label will appear. Watch the video below to see Google Body Browser in use."

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Free Technology for Teachers: Track 2012 Hurricanes in Google Earth

Free Technology for Teachers: Track 2012 Hurricanes in Google Earth: "The Atlantic hurricane season started this month. In past years Google added a hurricane tracking layer to Google Earth. That doesn't seem to be the case this year. Fortunately, you can still track hurricanes in Google Earth if you follow the directions shared by Seattle meteorologist Morgan Palmer. The directions are straight-forward, but you will need to be able to download files to your computer  and have the latest version of Google Earth installed in order to track hurricanes in Google Earth."

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In schools, all you need is web | Official Google Blog

In schools, all you need is web | Official Google Blog: "While students in the northern hemisphere say goodbye to each other and another school year, we’re in sunny San Diego meeting with thousands of educators and administrators at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. While on break from teaching, these folks are here to teach others how they’re bringing innovation into their classrooms—a lot of which centers around the web. "

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Must-Watch Video On Khan Academy (& Must-Read Post About It) | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Must-Watch Video On Khan Academy (& Must-Read Post About It) | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "Justin Reich just posted Don’t Use Khan Academy without Watching this First, and it’s a very important post where he shared this video two teachers (and an important commentary about it), Dave Coffey and John Golden, created:"

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Free Technology for Teachers: Use Storybricks to Create Stories in Virtual Worlds

Free Technology for Teachers: Use Storybricks to Create Stories in Virtual Worlds: "Storybricks is a new service (still in alpha mode) for creating multilayered online stories. Storybricks works online if you have the Unity web player installed. Storybricks provides you with settings and characters that you can use to weave a narrative. All of your characters can have emotions and relationships with other characters. You make the emotions of one character respond to the actions of another."

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Five Act Lesson Cycle – Humor In The Classroom | Ecology of Education

Five Act Lesson Cycle – Humor In The Classroom | Ecology of Education: "Ancient physicians believed that humors ruled the health–both physical and mental–of the human body. Any imbalance was a sure cause for illness and disease. This belief gave rise to the practice of administering curatives such as bleedings, purgatives, diuretics, among others in order to restore the balance of humors within the patient’s body. Similarly, the classroom teacher must perform delicate procedures within the lesson cycle in order to balance the collective humor within each class period."

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Free Technology for Teachers: 15 Free Tools for Storing and Sharing Files

Free Technology for Teachers: 15 Free Tools for Storing and Sharing Files: "Six months ago I shared a list of good file sharing tools for teachers and students. Since then, I've come across some more tools to add to that list. Here is my new list of file sharing tools for students and teachers. Using these tools can help you avoid having an email inbox that is overflowing with file attachments."

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Google Blockly Lets Kids Hack With No Keyboard | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

Google Blockly Lets Kids Hack With No Keyboard | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com: "Google has released a completely visual programming language that lets you build software without typing a single character.

Now available on Google Code — the company’s site for hosting open source software — the new language is called Google Blockly, and it’s reminiscent of Scratch, a platform developed at MIT that seeks to turn even young children into programmers."

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interactive illimitably - Choose an unique writing style and paint chat on this online whiteboard

interactive illimitably - Choose an unique writing style and paint chat on this online whiteboard: "An online whiteboard to paint chat with others using your mouse or tablet. Create your chat room to communicate using an unique writing style"

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Themed A4 page borders for kids, editable writing frames and more - SparkleBox

Themed A4 page borders for kids, editable writing frames and more - SparkleBox:

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Radical experiment in teaching – World Simulation, Twitter, and media literacy | adambohannon

Radical experiment in teaching – World Simulation, Twitter, and media literacy | adambohannon: "Last week Dr. Wesch and his class ran the 5th(?) successful World Simulation for Intro to Cultural Anthropology here at K-State. I was there helping get things set up and video taping the action. Every year the World Sim always proves to be an awesome experience. Having taught for Dr. Wesch twice and guided more than 60 students in creating their own culture to let loose at the simulation, I can attest for the simulation’s effectiveness. Afterwards, students always give it rave reviews. It’s valuable to be able to roughly simulate world history and get the feeling that you are a part of something rather than a casual observer (having taken the class back in 2004 and participated in the simulation, I can attest to that as well)."

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An Education Revolution Beckons in the Digital Age

By Joe Robertson - Kansas City Star

Are we ready to quit letter grades?

Dump standardized tests?

Turn inside-out the role of schools as the authorities of knowledge?

While educators try to imagine it, students who’ve already freed themselves are galloping through the digital world.
At their best they are collaborating, creating, seeking justice, making art, defining their significance.
“Don’t we want to create students who can do that?” says Michael Wesch, a gone-viral phenomenon on the Internet who essentially launched himself digitally five years ago from the basement of his small farmhouse outside Manhattan, Kan.
He’s a 36-year-old cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University who has become the prophet of an education revolution.
They’re already out there, he says. Students and young adults who have made their mark persisting at new ideas, starting companies, connecting the world to social justice issues, fueling citizen rebellion in Egypt, distributing humanitarian aid to Haiti.
Read the full article here.

Science of NFL Football

Science of NFL Football:

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Free Technology for Teachers: Provide Tech Help Remotely via Chrome Remote Desktop

Free Technology for Teachers: Provide Tech Help Remotely via Chrome Remote Desktop: " Using the Chrome Remote Desktop App (still in beta) you can grant access to your computer to another person who also has the Chrome Remote Desktop App installed."

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Digital Ethnography

PBS Teachers | Cyberchase

PBS Teachers | Cyberchase: "CYBERCHASE, the award-winning, research-based adventure series and website, helps kids develop strong math and problem-solving skills. Explore this site for ways to help your favorite kids get the most out of math! Designed for kids ages 8 to 12 and packed with mystery, humor, and action, CYBERCHASE delivers positive messages about math by teaching concepts in a fun way that kids can understand. "

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Project Glass

A Gopher Guesses Your Number - A Math Game

Free Technology for Teachers: A Gopher Guesses Your Number - A Math Game: "Magic Gopher could be a fun little way to get students thinking about the "magic" of mathematics. Allow them to struggle with the challenge of figuring out how the gopher gets it right every time then explain it."

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Board approves new principals, tech fee

Today's News-Herald - Serving Lake Havasu City & The Lower Colorado River Area: "The $5 technology fee will help offset costs “associated with providing technology and software license for general student use district-wide,” the agenda states. Annual costs have reached around $225,000 for technology licenses."

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How to Make Contact with Parents – SimpleK12

How to Make Contact with Parents – SimpleK12: "Every morning before my students started trickling in, I’d write three emails out to parents about three children who had blown me away (or made progress, or made me smile, or shared something new, etc) during the previous day. I kept track, and by the end of my five months teaching, last year, I had ALMOST sent one email to each parent."

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Free Technology for Teachers: What's Your Goal? Thinking About Tech Choices

Free Technology for Teachers: What's Your Goal? Thinking About Tech Choices: "I am often asked by educators (classroom teachers, school administrators, librarians) to help them “use technology.” My response to their requests is always, “yes, I will help you.” The next thing out of my mouth is, “what is your goal for using technology?”"

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Insanity — Mandatory Retention Of Third Graders Who Don’t Read At Grade Level? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Insanity — Mandatory Retention Of Third Graders Who Don’t Read At Grade Level? | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…: "Several states are considering requiring mandatory retention of third graders who don’t read at grade level. Here are some articles and posts about this insanity, and I’m adding them to The Best Resources For Learning About Grade Retention, Social Promotion & Alternatives To Both:"

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Myths and legends teachers' resources

Myths and legends teachers' resources: "This section provides access to a range of resources created or recommended by teachers for use in lessons. These have been categorised in to 'general resources'; i.e. those that could be used with any of the myths and legends within this site, and resources specific to a particular myth or legend. There is also an opportunity for you to add your own resources to share with other teachers."

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7 Educational YouTube Channels – SimpleK12

7 Educational YouTube Channels – SimpleK12: "YouTube is packed full of great content for educators and students. A few great things about online videos...

there are a lot of them out there.
they cover a wide range of subjects.
they are free!"

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Free Technology for Teachers: Watch 75 Full-Length National Geographic Films

Free Technology for Teachers: Watch 75 Full-Length National Geographic Films: "I've highlighted Snag Films and Snag Learning in the past. It's been a while though so I thought I should point out that Snag Films has some great educational content available for free viewing. One great example of this is their National Geographic channel containing 75 full-length documentaries. You can view these videos online or use the iPad, Android tablet, and Kindle Fire apps to watch Snag Films."

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Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Places to Find Free eBooks for Yourself and Your Students

Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Places to Find Free eBooks for Yourself and Your Students: "The Internet is full of ebooks. Much to the chagrin of textbook publishers, some teachers are now using ebooks instead of issuing textbooks to students. Others are building their own etextbooks. If you would like to find some free ebooks that you and your students can use take a look at the following resources."

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