World-Shaker

Exactly what it sounds like, and on YouTube.

Can you even imagine what a cool project this would be?

Before the end of the school year I had a discussion with a mum who asked what her child could do in order to continue to be successful in math (e.g. “successful” in a very general, “life skills” sense). “Sam” had always struggled with math and had finally reached a place where she felt successful. Yay!

Mum and I had a great chat, and together (together in the true sense of the word as she had many excellent ideas as well) we came up with the following list of suggestions.
& so … If you had been a fly on my classroom wall you would have seen two women, working together, creating & building on the ideas of one another for the child.

(The Bonus: In the end I feel that I benefited as much as they did.)

This is a really great collection of advice for you to click through to. I strongly recommend it.

By the way—I really feel like there’s not a lot of content on here for Math teachers. What tags are you using? Who do you follow that really hits into math?

stoweboyd:

Clay Shirky offers up a precis of Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse Of Complex Societies, as the staging for an argument about media disruption:

Clay Shirky, The Collapse of Complex Business Models

In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter…

A very compelling read. It’s hard to imagine the largest social network on earth “collapsing,” but it’s still very interesting.

edtechsandyk:

“If we want to ever get technophobes comfortable with technology, those of us who love the stuff have got to stop being tech snobs.”

Great reminders in this post of the need for treating our colleagues like the professionals they are no matter where they are in their own learning. Conversation going on in the comments on the post is excellent reading as well.

Hear, hear!

gjmueller:

Have you ever thought of using music to stimulate writing activity in English?

This is a nice little activity to stimulate a little writing in class. I have used it to practice relative clauses but there’s no reason that you can’t just forget a language focus and just get learners to write….

I love this.

musiceducators:

lessonsfroma4thgrader:

I wrote it for a class in college. We were supposed to create something that somehow defined “The Perfect Teacher.” I wrote this:

The Perfect Teacher

In Kindergarten, I learned how to share. That is really the only thing I remember.

In first grade, I was taught to be kind and not throw rocks…

This is one of the best things I have ever read on the subject of Education on Tumblr.  You must read this and you must reblog.

These are very cute. Per the poster’s request, none of their content has been reposted here. I’m simply sharing the link.

But these are very cute.

Flubaroo is a free script that you can use to grade the quizzes that you administer through Google Docs.

That last sentence is worth the price of admission alone.

The price of admission being “free,” of course.

A collection of eight excellent articles to help any educator get started with the free online storage service, Dropbox.

As I wrote in my previous blog, A Neurologist Makes the Case for the Video Game Model as a Learning Tool blog and the accompanying video, the most popular computer games take players through increasingly challenging levels as they became more and more skillful. As skill improves, the next challenge stimulates new mastery to just the right extent that the player could reach with practice and persistence. Students need challenge suited to their background knowledge and abilities if they are to remain motivated to persevere and build mastery of foundational knowledge.

This is an excellent article for those of you interested in incorporating gaming elements into your teaching. There are two really solid strategies in here, along with some great, practical advice.

willrichardson:

Provocative essay by NYC librarian Joseph Grasso that captures the moment in ed in a nutshell. Would love to be able to hand this out at the exhibit floor at ISTE today, especially those making millions on test prep and a NCLB assessment garbage.

It is an easy truism that when simplistic…

Well-worth the read.

smarterplanet:

A Web app tailors language learning to your ability, and turns the experience into a game.

A world memory champion and a neuroscientist have joined forces to create a language-learning website called Memrise, which combines mnemonic tricks with a game to help users learn quickly and efficiently. Its carefully paced learning structure and competitive points system, the app’s developers believe, make their site more effective than other language-learning tools.

Memrise makes learning a game with virtual gardens that users must tend. As they do, they also earn points and thereby fight their way up a community-wide leaderboard.

Mandarin Chinese and English are the only languages that have been rolled out yet, but others including French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic can be used in beta form. The app was recently featured at this year’s Boston Techstars event, which presented startups that were chosen to receive investment.

The premise is that each word or phrase is a seed for users to plant in their gardens. A new word is planted when a user is exposed to it. Once planted, the seed sprouts in a few hours and must be harvested—that is, the user is tested, typically by having to type out words or choose characters, depending on the language. With each success, a plant is moved to a greenhouse, where it will thrive or wilt depending on how well the user tends it by practicing with the word.

I really hope this works.

Awesome stuff over here. Their first example is below. It’s worth a click-through for the second example alone, which is a great expansion on how to use TED talks in your teaching.

Example 1: Paper.li for multiple perspectives

The first example, from Marsha Ratzel, uses Twitter and a free service called Paper.li to bring multiple perspectives on current events to her Earth science students. By following news organizations, research centers, and individual scientists through a class account, her students have a constant stream of relevant content. The power of this approach really showed itself when I was looking for examples of student projects related to the spring 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Many of the examples I found were dry and simplistic factoid worksheets. However, Marsha turned her students loose on the resources from their Twitter account and challenged students to create rich multimedia presentations to tell the story from multiple perspectives. Read more about this example in The Ratzel Room Daily: Encouraging Kids to Think About Science in the Real World.

I’ve blogged about this a few times in the past, but this is a great reminder of an outstanding feature in Wikipedia that lets you create a book from a collection of Wikipedia articles. This would make great introductory reading for your students if done properly, and it’s free!

Some solid, practical advice. Here are the first three:

Don’t Vent About Students

You may forget that the student you’re ranting about is a friend of one of your friends, and might still be able to see your status updates.

Find Out If Your School Has A Social Media Policy

Some universities now have policies for faculty use of social media: You may not be allowed to friend students or discuss work at all, even on your private account, so make sure before you update your profile.

Use Facebook As A Backup Tool

If class is canceled because of bad weather, direct students to Facebook, and send out course materials, readings, and discussion questions so that your class doesn’t fall behind.