On Monday during our department meeting, the entire department began a discussion of how we should implement more appropriate technology to improve student learning. Every member of the department is excited about ways that technology can positively influence students. What a great start as we begin the new year. We are now looking for ways to demonstrate to our administrators that what we are doing is helping students learn science better.
I spent 13 years between teaching middle school and high school, as well as some adjunct work at the graduate level. For the last two years I have focused on working in my field, but now I am ready to come back to teaching - not full time, but as an adjunct professor. I find I really miss the interactions found in the educational environment, and I really miss working on curriculum and thinking about how to best structure activities for learners.
I guess I should write up a brief description of this project, especially if I'm going to blog about it!
The major concept is that students will take on the role of newspaper reporters, and write articles about a given area of World History (I chose Ancient Rome for this first project). They will do their own research, and publish their articles on a wiki. I came up with 35 different articles that students could write about, and created wiki pages for each of them. Students work in… Continue
By 3rd period, the kids had discovered the mail function. This was no surprise, as those kids are particularly social. No big deal, I'll just have to keep an eye on them to make sure they're getting their tasks done.
My 5th period has a few groups that are really struggling with the overall concept of the project. Some of this may be due to the higher percentage of ESOL students, but I don't think that accounts for it entirely. I may… Continue
Added by Matt Richardson on September 26, 2007 at 3:01pm —
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Low-grade panic pretty well described my mood over the last few days.
My plan was to start a new project with my classes today. The idea was to create a wiki about Ancient Rome. Students would pretend to be newspaper reporters, and compose their stories on thew wiki.
The panic came from, first of all, the sheer size of the task of setting up the wiki pages for each assignment. I have 35 or so assignments, and each needs it's own page (of course, I didn't discover Wikispace's… Continue
Added by Matt Richardson on September 26, 2007 at 6:21am —
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There's truth in the sales adage ... "When need meets passion, sparks fly!"
Thus, my chief aim in designing THE FUNANCHILL TIMES™ material parked on a private (for now at least) wikispaces.com is to engage the interest of notoriously "shy" students (at least about speaking English) through their "loves".
For example, more than anything, boys (of all ages) love delicious food, so I've found one idea that works ... "express tickets" into the school caf (it offers…
Time for a new blog meme to help us spread the word about the upcoming K12Online07 conference. Please share either three (3) reasons to participate based on your experience from last year or (if you didn't attend last year) three (3) things you hope to gain from the experience this year.
I am looking for information on how the learners can benefit from using the Internet. I need that information to write chapter 4 of my research. I have discovered that most schools in my district do not have Internet including my own school. Now I need literature that can support that Internet is important for learners in today's classroom.
We've formed a group to support our ALI exhibit from this year's
Apple Distinguished Educator Institute. Our goal is to encourage conversation around kicking field
trips up a notch by adding digital components and Web 2.0 apps.
We're into the first real week of the Monsters Project and some new teachers have been attracted this year. I emphacize that this is a "starter" project for teachers wanting to get involved with global education. I am adding a wiki to to the project this year - it has been basically web-based in the past, that is, participants send me their contributions or links and I add them to the project web site. The wiki will be an experiment to see who wants to try it, to use it to add content and share… Continue
Added by Terry Smith on September 24, 2007 at 11:04pm —
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I'm looking into offering some sort of online time management for students that allows them set priorities, keep track of assignments, and look at calendars. I have been exploring Airset, which seems promising. What's the most important to me is that the program helps kids set priorities rather than functioning as a mere list of work they need to do. Any suggestions?
Added by tdsmorris on September 24, 2007 at 8:39pm —
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Today is a day which we should be showing our appreciation for those people who work so hard finding resources and helping our students to meet the demands of the various assignments teachers assign. I’d especially like to thank those blogging librarians who give me all
kinds of great insights and links to various informative sights.
I feel like a giddy schoolgirl this morning–just having so much fun interacting with other educators around the world who are also giddy about what they are doing.
While most of us in the U.S. were sleeping, Jeff Utecht of Thinking Stick in Shanghai was testing out a new site called…