Halloween learning

It's late October, and kids' minds are turning to costuming and candy, marauding and merriment -- yes, this is Halloween time! While parents get mired in guilt over fair-trade candy and childhood obesity issues and some schools ban Halloween celebrations altogether, many teachers take advantage of the excitement in the crisp autumn air and brew up some activities related to All Hallow's Eve. (Amy Erin Borovoy at Edutopia)

To learn more and to watch some Halloween-related video that could be used for learning, click the above hyperlinked text.

A primer on copyright and Creative Commons

Copyright and Creative Commons Explained by Common Craft can be very useful in helping students understand why they cannot simply copy and paste whatever images they like that they find online. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

What can and cannot be used and how....Creative Commons licenses describe just how material an individual creates can be used by others. And there's some interesting and important information on this topic at Free Technology for Teachers.

Getting students engaged

If you're looking for ways to increase student engagement, you can find resources at Edutopia. These resources include a number of blog posts in which teachers describe ways they've gotten students in their classrooms more engaged. To learn more, click the hyperlinked text below.

Student Engagement

Get advice from educators on how to build a positive climate for learning, improve student curiosity, and enhance classroom collaboration.

How to participate in TED-Ed

Get Involved

The most meaningful TED-Ed videos are collaborations between the TED-Ed team and at least one of the following: a curious learner, an exceptional educator, or a talented visualization artist. If you are one of these types of people, or if you know someone who is, please help guide our effort to create a library of lessons worth sharing by acting on one of the options below.

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text. 

Science searching

Symbolab is a new search engine designed for mathematicians and scientists. The search engine is a semantic search engine which means that rather than just searching the text of your query Symabolab attempts to interpret and search for the meaning of your query. What this means is that when you type in an equation you will get results as links and get results as graphs when appropriate. Think of it Symbolab as a cross between Google and Wolfram Alpha. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

A reminder about Edutopia

Edutopia is dedicated to transforming the learning process by helping educators implement the strategies below. These strategies -- and the educators who implement them -- are empowering students to think critically, access and analyze information, creatively problem solve, work collaboratively, and communicate with clarity and impact. Discover the resources, research, experts, and fellow Edutopia members who are changing our schools. Join us in reinventing the learning process! (from Edutopia)

Click the above hyperlinked text to learn more

Why teachers should write with their students

Particularly, the “workshop” classrooms are “writers’ workshops” geared toward increasing awareness of and exposure to the power of writing for students. One of the core ideas at play in these workshops is the idea of the teacher as a writer, as a model for students in a professional context. When they write, she writes. What they write, she attempts too.

When I consider the effect this has on students, it is nothing short of transformative. When students understand the purpose for something outside of an assignment, they tend to remember it better. When they see an adult attempting what they ask others to do, they are motivated to join in. Teachers of writing (and teachers who use writing, for that matter) have an obligation to consider themselves as writers and act as such in the classroom. ( Steve J More at Edutopia)

Open education resources and the Common Core

In Utah, the state department of education is pulling together textbooks aligned to Common Core State Standards made up entirely of open educational resources, or OERs. South Dakota officials have created a repository of open education materials aligned to the common core for teachers. And at the national level, the education organization Achieve has launched a set of rubrics designed to help educators evaluate both the quality of OERs and their alignment to the common standards. (Katie Ash at Education Week)

One student on writing instruction

As a high school student myself, I was intrigued by Peg Tyre's article about a Staten Island school's turnaround. Tyre shows the importance of writing skills to academic and professional success. She looks specifically at the new and improved curriculum at New Dorp High School, which emphasizes analysis over self-expression. 
On a basic level, the idea works just fine. To perform well on tests and slap together personal statements, students need to be able to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs. The grammar and paragraph structure learned in English class are also handy in most jobs when schooling ends and students are tossed headfirst into the "real world." An astrophysicist must be able to describe her data, and a business executive needs to be able to write clear memos. But should schools solely focus on the mechanical facets of writing? (Haley Lee at The Atlantic)

Addressing student boredom

One glance, and any teacher knows the score: That student, halfway down the row, staring blankly at his tapping pen, fidgeting, sneaking glances at the wall clock roughly every 30 seconds, is practically screaming, "I'm bored!"

While boredom is a perennial student complaint, emerging research shows it is more than students' not feeling entertained, but rather a "flavor of stress" that can interfere with their ability to learn and even their health. An international group of researchers argues this month in Perspectives on Psychological Science that the experience of boredom directly connects to a student's inability to focus attention. (Sara. D. Sparks at Education Week)

Resources for teaching English language learners

Our ELL Best Practices collection includes a variety of resources that will help you ensure your school environment is welcoming to English language learners (ELLs) and their families.

ELL Best Practices Guide This ELL Best Practices guide helps you create acomprehensive communication plan that puts LEP parents on equal footing withEnglish-speaking parents and shows you how to steer clear of discriminationduring student registration. (from Teaching Tolerance)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Mark up webpages with Markup

Express thoughts quickly and easily on any webpage. Share ideas with coworkers and friends. Since Markup works in your browser, so there’s nothing to download and install. Just drag the Get Markup icon into your bookmarks bar. When you want to make notes on a webpage, click your bookmarklet to load the Markup toolbar. Publish when you’re ready to share your thoughts. (from the Markup website)

To learn more and to get the Markup bookmark tool, click the above hyperlinked text.

Code matters

The computer world is based on using APIs. Zynga uses the Facebook APIs to embed its games on FaceBook. Any iPhone or iPad app uses the iOS API to let you move stuff by swiping the screen. WordPress is built on a series of APIs that lets just about anybody build a web site in minutes.
However, even the best of these APIs are hard to use because the documentation, supposedly written in English, is terrible. Most engineers can't write a single coherent sentence, never mind string together a paragraph. (Bernard Meisler at The Atlantic)

Student feedback in the classroom

One place to begin is the way in which our secondary schools include students in both classroom and school-based decision-making processes. It continues to astonish and distress me that instructional, curricula and policy decision-making usually excludes the direct voices of students, their experiences, perceptions and preferences. (Mark Phillips at Edutopia)

Exit exams and the Common Core

With many states crafting assessments based on the common-core standards—and an increasing emphasis on college and career readiness—some are rethinking the kind of tests high school students must pass to graduate, or whether to use such exit exams at all.
Twenty-five states, enrolling a total of 34.1 million students, make exit exams a graduation requirement, according to a study released last month by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based think tank. That represents 69 percent of the nation's K-12 enrollment. And that's grown over the past decade: In 2003, 19 states representing 52 percent of U.S. enrollment had such exit exams. (Andrew Usifuja at Education Week)

Using pictures to teach ELL students

The Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) is one of our favorites. In it, students first brainstorm twenty words related to a picture, then put those words into categories and add new ones that fit those categories. Next they complete a "cloze" (or fill-in-the-blank) activity with sentences about the picture which they then put into categories of their own. They convert those sentence categories into paragraphs, and, finally, arrange the paragraphs into essays. Lastly, a title is chosen. (Larry Ferlazzo at Edutopia)

Formal testing of prekindergartners

Teachers at Orlando Day Nursery in Florida have always evaluated how well their 4-year-old prekindergartners—most of them poor and African-American—could recognize letters, isolate sounds in words, understand stories read to them, and show other hallmarks of early literacy.
Just as important, though, have been the teachers' formal observations of social and emotional development: Could children follow instructions, for example, and make friends and cooperate in a group? (Lesli A. Maxwell at Education Week)

Writing about things

"What is a concrete noun?" a student might ask.
"It's something you can drop on your foot," I always answer. "It's that simple."
"So if I am writing about markets, productivity and wealth, I am going to...."
"Yes indeed -- you are going to write about things you can drop on your foot, and people, too. Green peppers, ears of corn, windshield wipers, or a grimy mechanic changing your car's oil. No matter how abstract your topic, how intangible, your first step is to find things you can drop on your foot."
From a teacher's perspective, the lovely thing about this technique of writing with things you can drop on your foot is that both the skilled and the unskilled can do it. Both kinds of students find the assignment intriguing. Students led into writing this way at the start of a course--writing about abstract ideas in terms of concrete objects--find it strange at first, but they are pleased that the task is actually doable. They start to write with good examples, though they don't think of them as examples, but as objects.(John Maguire at The Atlantic)

The 'Tech-Powered Teacher'

Best known for our collection of education videos, Khan Academy covers every subject from algebra to art history for grades K-12. A significant piece of Khan Academy, however, is the interactive exercises that allow students to practice math and get feedback at their own pace, while giving teachers data on student progress. Over the past few years, our team has had the privilege of working directly with some of the teachers who use Khan Academy with their students. As we talk with teachers and observe them in their classrooms, one theme becomes absolutely clear: More than anything, teachers want all of their students to reach their potential. Teachers have high expectations for their students, and they work hard to help them succeed. But teachers are in a tough position. (Salman Khan at Education Week)

Supreme Court to hear affirmative action case

The future of affirmative action in education—not just for colleges but potentially for K-12 schools as well—may be on the line when the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a race-conscious admissions plan from the University of Texas next month.
That seems apparent to the scores of education groups that have lined up behind the university with friend-of-the-court briefs calling on the justices to uphold the plan and continue to recognize the need for racial diversity in the nation’s schools and classrooms. (Mark Walsh at Education Week)