December, 2020

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Teachers and Burnout: What to Do When You Can’t Change the World

Education Elements

It’s December. We made it to the end of 2020 – a spectacularly stressful year, no matter who you are, what you do, or where you live. As the months ticked by, though, it became clear that the chaos of the year placed almost unbearable levels of stress on some professions, educators among them. As schools wind down for winter break in the midst of a national spike in COVID-19 numbers, it may be a good time to deconstruct and consider burnout, what it looks like, what causes it, and what we can do

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10 Google Classroom time savers for teachers

Ditch That Textbook

Google Classroom can already make us more efficient, but these tips can save you even more time and effort. If you and your students are using Google Apps in the classroom, Google Classroom can save you tons of time and effort. It helps you assign, collect, grade and return work seamlessly. But, like anything else, there […]. The post 10 Google Classroom time savers for teachers appeared first on Ditch That Textbook.

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The Why, How, and What of Blended Learning

Catlin Tucker

The events of the last nine months have launched the phrase “blended learning” into the mainstream. I worry that instead of articulating the value of a powerful blend of online and offline learning, teachers are receiving the message that they “must” adopt blended learning to meet the demands of the moment. Yes, blended learning can help teachers navigate the challenges of teaching at this moment.

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Gauging the Reality of Emerging Tech in Classrooms

EdTech Magazine

As virtual reality becomes more prevalent in K–12 educational spaces, developers continue to create content that enables students to partake in a host of realistic and fantastical simulations. Students can visit new places, create 3D artwork and conduct science experiments in ways that might not otherwise be possible. We have seen classroom applications of VR that fully utilize the technology to engage students in rich and novel immersive learning experiences.

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Can Brain Science Actually Help Make Your Training & Teaching Stick?

Speaker: Andrew Cohen, Founder & CEO of Brainscape

The instructor’s PPT slides are brilliant. You’ve splurged on the expensive interactive courseware. Student engagement is stellar. So… why are half of your students still forgetting everything they learned in just a matter of weeks? It's likely a matter of cognitive science! With so much material to "teach" these days, we often forget to incorporate key proven principles into our curricula — namely active recall, metacognition, spaced repetition, and interleaving practice.

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Finding Balance in Today's Classroom

A Principal's Reflections

Balance has always been a challenge for teachers. I vividly remember this during my early years as a teacher. Each night I came home exhausted. Maybe the 45-minute commute had a little to do with it, but the main culprit was how I used available time in the classroom. Since I was not very open to risks and convinced that the most critical aspect of my job was to get through the curriculum, my sole focus was on direct instruction.

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How to do more with less screen time

Neo LMS

One of the nicest advantages that some students enjoyed about the spring version of online learning was the relaxation of the bell schedule. However, the attempts to squeeze normalcy into an extraordinary situation removed that luxury in most cases this fall. In an effort to recover learning time that was lost in the spring – and to neutralize criticisms that distance learning is inadequate – many schools, districts, and education agencies have resolved to create plans for the 2020-2

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More Trending

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New Cohort Opportunity for Designing Powerful Learning Experiences

Digital Promise

In September, Digital Promise launched a series of events to support educators with continuing and growing maker learning opportunities that meet the needs of learners through distance learning and beyond. In this post, we share how the learnings from these events have informed our approach to a new professional learning opportunity, the Maker Learning @ Home Cohort. .

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A Conferencing Strategy for Online, Blended, or Concurrent Classes

Catlin Tucker

When I began my career in education, I believed the value I brought to the classroom was my subject area expertise cultivated as an English major at UCLA and my pedagogical expertise honed while working on my teaching credential and Masters in Education. I operated under that misguided assumption for years. I remember feeling intense pressure to have the “right answer” when students asked questions.

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Protecting Students from Cyberbullying in the Virtual Classroom

EdTech Magazine

With kids spending more time online than ever, many teachers are witnessing an increase in cyberbullying among their students in online classrooms. In a recent report, L1ght analyzed communication on millions of websites, discussion boards and gaming platforms. The results were bleak, with a 70 percent increase in hate speech and a 40 percent increase in online toxicity between students in online platforms.

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Challenges Create Opportunities

A Principal's Reflections

" Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. " - Joshua J. Marine I love working with educators. Even though I am often the facilitator of learning, I always seek out opportunities to put myself into the shoes of those doing the day-to-day work and then use this as an opportunity to reflect on my practice.

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Reimagining Chickering & Gamson's Principles Post-Pandemic: Technology's Central Role in Modern Edu

This white paper examines and proposes revisions to the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" introduced by Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson in 1987 for today's technology-driven world.

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Have Santa Call Your Kids!

Ask a Tech Teacher

DialMyCalls (an AATT sponsor) has a special Christmas offer for kids: Free Santa Calls To Your Family This Christmas. This Christmas we have a great gift for everyone! Whether you’re an existing DialMyCalls user or not, you can take advantage of our completely free phone call from Santa. Imagine the look on your child’s face when they receive a personalized phone call from Santa with his or her name on it!

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Our favorite teacher memes for 2020

Neo LMS

Dear fellow teachers, Last year I wrote an open letter that was meant to be fun and supportive at the same time, and to make you welcome the new year with a positive attitude. Read more: Our favorite teacher memes for 2019. But 2020 happened to all of us all over the world, and we realized how things could change in the blink of an eye. We are still teachers, still doing what we know best, but in very different conditions.

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What You Should Know About Being A Black Male Educator

Digital Promise

According to a 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Education, only two percent of teachers are African American men, yet African American students make up at least 16 percent of the country’s student population. To make matters more tenuous, teachers of color leave the teaching profession at higher rates than white teachers. This reality has serious implications for the country’s educational landscape overall, as well as for the growing number of students of color.

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30 apps that work with Google Classroom

Ditch That Textbook

Assignments in Google Classroom are better with apps! Use these apps that work with Google Classroom to level up your activities. Google Classroom looks kind of bare at first glance. A stream. Assignments. Grades. It might make you want to say, "Where's the flash? Doesn't this thing have an app store like my iPhone does?"But […]. The post 30 apps that work with Google Classroom appeared first on Ditch That Textbook.

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Behind the Bell: The Underlying Impact of Tardiness in K-12 Schools

Managing a K-12 campus with constant pressure to meet performance metrics is challenging. And tardiness can significantly limit a school from reaching these goals. Learn more about why chronic lateness matters, and key strategies to address the following impacts: Data errors caused by manual processes Low attendance and graduation rates that affect a school’s reputation Classroom disruption, which leads to poor academic performance High staff attrition and “The Teacher Exodus” Unmet LCAP goals t

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ISTE20 Live: Fostering Empathy and Equity in the Remote Classroom

EdTech Magazine

The 4-year-old in the photo is wearing a tan suit with a complementary tie. His broad smile shows a full set of teeth. And now, the man who was that child says the photograph still makes him smile as well. “The suit, the smile, it lights up my face every time I see it,” said Quentin J. Lee, principal of Childersburg Middle School in Alabama. “Behind that smile, you don’t see the guy who’s never met his father, you don’t see somebody who actually failed the eighth grade.

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Top Posts of 2020

A Principal's Reflections

The year began like any other. From a blogging perspective, I kicked it off with a post on what could be as a means to pump up educators as they continued to move towards embracing innovative strategies and ideas. In my opinion, January always represents an excellent opportunity to try something new. Personalized learning quickly became a focus area based on impressive outcomes from some of the schools I had been working within in an on-going and job-embedded fashion.

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Education Predictions for an Unpredictable 2021

Education Elements

I got started with this tradition of predictions in 2010 after reading Disrupting Class, a book by Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn. In their book, they predicted that by 2019, 50% of all high school courses will be online in some blended learning model. That was a pretty bold prediction in 2008 when the book was published, but their model for cycles of innovation seems pretty accurate now that we have hindsight.

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9 Tips for Planning Difficult Conversations in the Classroom

Waterford

As an educator, it’s both normal and important to guide your students through challenging discussions in class. Your students are affected by social, political, and other topics both in and outside of school. Although they can be difficult at times, conversations about these topics can help students come to a deeper understanding of and respect for those with perspectives different from their own.

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The Battle of the Authoring Tools: A 10-Point Comparison for Picking the Right One

Speaker: Chris Paxton McMillin, President of D3 Training Solutions

There are plenty of great authoring tools for developing eLearning, but the one you select could directly impact your course's outcomes. Depending upon your learners’ needs and your organization’s performance goals, you could be overlooking considerations that impact the both effectiveness of your courses and how long it takes to finish them. From general capabilities to specific workflow structures, some aspects are critical when it comes to learning objectives and deadlines.

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Staying Committed to Equity in 2021: It’s In the Details

Digital Promise

December invites us to step back to reflect on the events, learnings, and open questions of 2020. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and the resulting protests, sparked an overdue reckoning on race across the nation. Conversations about equity and racial justice within education and organizational commitments to anti-racism were ubiquitous this spring, but that momentum has stalled for many white allies.

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Like No Other School Year

Dangerously Irrelevant

As you may remember, I conducted 43 interviews for my Coronavirus Chronicles series in Spring and Summer 2020. I was interested in learning how schools were responding during the first months of the pandemic. I am pleased to note that I wrote up some ‘findings’ from those interviews as a chapter in Pamela Gaudet’s edited book, Like No Other School Year: 2020, COVID019, and the Growth of Online Learning , and also shared a few takeaways from my summer class on crisis leadership.

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How K–12 Schools Are Expanding Tech Support Along with Remote Learning

EdTech Magazine

Since the shift to remote and hybrid learning, many parents have found themselves playing the role of tech support — a job they aren’t always prepared for. At the same time, school help desk teams are already stretched thin trying to support student and teacher IT needs during distance learning. Some 64 percent of K–12 parents surveyed said they received little or no tech support last year, PC Magazine reports.

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Feedback is Needed More Than Ever

A Principal's Reflections

I think we can all agree that this school year has been unlike any other and not for the best of reasons. The pandemic has upended the entire education system as schools have moved to remote, then hybrid, and back to remote in some cases with no end in sight. Even with the promising news of two potential vaccines, rising COVID-19 cases have resulted in a constant state of flux.

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The Roses and Thorns of an LMS Strategy: How to Flourish with the Right LMS

Speaker: Amanda Davis, Chief Experience Officer and Liam O'Malley, VP of Association Solutions

The "new normal" is now a little less new, a little more normal. Does that mean your current LMS strategy is in need of a refresh? Is your organization or association leaning into the always-evolving eLearning environment to ensure you have the tools and content to remain relevant through all this change? There are many complex decision-making processes within your learning & development strategy and LMS lifecycle management, including: Selection.

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How Responsiveness Led Us Through 2020 - and the Past Decade

Education Elements

Whoa. 2020. I became a mom this year. My daughter Emily Ruth was born on April 1, 2020. My husband and I knew immediately that she was going to be a mix of wicked and wise, given the birthday she chose: April Fools Day - so perfect for 2020. She was born 2 weeks into the first COVID lockdown, and 4 days after my labor had started (she was in no rush to enter into these circumstances).

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Thanks to Teachers, Learning Loss This Year Was Not As Bad As Projected, NWEA Finds

Edsurge

When it comes to learning loss during COVID-19, the question is not whether it has happened, but how much. A new report out from NWEA, a non-profit assessment organization, offers insight into just how steep the so-called COVID slide has been so far. The good news is that students learned a lot more doing remote learning than education groups projected they would.

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Where Did Education Fail Us?

The Jose Vilson

In my final reflection for the semester of my doctoral studies (don’t ask me how it’s going), I considered what it meant to get an education. Over and again in this space, I’ve considered how there’s a big difference between schooling and education. Schooling is a set of processes characterized by the desire to show students a given set of ideas and materials.

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Books I read in November 2020

Dangerously Irrelevant

Books I finished reading (or rereading) in November 2020… Law of Innocence , Michael Connelly [legal thriller]. Half Moon Bay , Jonathan Kellerman & Jesse Kellerman [thriller]. Interference , Brad Parks [thriller]. A Girl From Nowhere , James Maxwell [sci fi]. A World of Secrets , James Maxwell [sci fi]. Hope you’re reading something fun too!

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Building the Foundation for a Modern K-12 Classroom

K-12 looks different these days. But one thing remains the same: you need a reliable learning platform that serves as the foundation for teaching and learning––for all students, in a variety of learning experiences. Discover how the Instructure Learning Platform supports today's K-12 classroom through: A central, consistent, connected hub of the digital learning environment.

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How Virtual Education Supports Seamless Learning Opportunities

EdTech Magazine

When Tropical Storm Zeta rolled through Georgia in October 2020, many residents woke to power outages, downed trees and other signs of storm damage. Despite the disruption — and the storm — Gwinnett County Public Schools stayed in session, with the district leveraging its remote learning capability to continue instruction. Looking ahead, school system officials in Gwinnett say virtual learning could make the old-fashioned snow day obsolete.

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Ten Reasons Why Teachers Must Be Magic… A Very Special Letter From Santa!

21st Century Educational Technology and Learning

Welcome to a very magical entry… one that has been a traditional post each holiday season. It is a time of year that I wish to express my gratitude to those wonderful educators that have welcomed me at their schools, webinars, and conferences and also join me at this blog and on twitter through out the year. This past year the magic has really come alive.

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Station Rotation Virtually with @MsBDuncan

Teacher Tech

I created this virtual station rotation after completing #DitchSummit20 over Christmas break. Many wonderful eduleaders shared keen advice on student engagement tools, strategies and pedagogy that can work in a hybrid, concurrent, or full virtual classroom. The post Station Rotation Virtually with @MsBDuncan appeared first on Teacher Tech.

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The Case for ‘Edtech Minimalism’ in an Age of Distance Learning

Edsurge

We live in a world where we tend to believe that “more is more.” But when it comes to education and technology, this prevailing hypothesis is proving itself to be flawed. From increased anxiety and depression related to unhealthy usage of social media , to our students’ decreased attention spans , it’s time to take a “less is more” approach. That may seem counterintuitive.

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Transform Your Classroom with Apple

Speaker: Aaron Webb, Jamf

Apple empowers educators and students by design. Whether using Macs, iPads, or Apple TV, Apple devices encourage creativity and can simplify teaching with apps to make the classroom more flexible, collaborative and personalized for each student. To unleash the full potential of the technology and create the best learning environment, you need to understand the tools and resources available, and develop an education-focused, comprehensive plan, from equipment purchase to deployment, management an