Sat.Feb 13, 2016 - Fri.Feb 19, 2016

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New Podcast from MindShift: Stories Teachers Share

Catlin Tucker

In the last ten years, the narrative about teaching and education has struck me as extremely negative. I hear about schools failing students and bad teachers hiding behind tenure. As an educator pushing for innovative change in this space, I recognize that education must evolve to prepare students for an unknown future. However, the wonderful work teachers are doing every day is often lost in the conversation about education.

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A Conversation about Keyboarding, Methods, Pedagogy, and More

Ask a Tech Teacher

Dr. Bill Morgan and I have engaged in several months of spirited conversation about keyboarding, pre-keyboarding, and how it can best serve students. Bill is the brilliant creator of Keyboarding Arts and the giant floor keyboard for classrooms. His experience teaching keyboarding often informs me in my art as I adapt to the ever-changing needs of the students in my classes.

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6 Ways Awesome Administrators Help New Teachers Face the First Year with a Smile

The CoolCatTeacher

Leadership and Support of the New Teaching Professional From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter. The first year is the toughest. Pretty much every teacher will tell you that. It is when the students will try you. The first year is often when colleagues are the most unsupportive. You don’t know everybody’s names.

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Natural Verus Unnatural Learning

User Generated Education

There is a huge disconnect between how people learn naturally and how students are taught in public education. Mark Twain once quipped, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”. In school, students are expected to. Sit in uncomfortable desks and chairs, and expected to pay attention for long periods of time. Learn out of textbooks specifically designed for the institution of education – books that almost no one buys in real life.

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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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How Affective Data Could Change Learning Outcomes

EdTech Magazine

By Eric Patnoudes Reading and responding to students’ emotions could help boost engagement levels and academic performance.

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Four Ways Teachers Can Stay Connected With Their Student’s Parents Using Technology

Ask a Tech Teacher

I was chatting with Mary over at the Dial My Calls site (click to see my review of Dial My Calls ) and she had some great suggestions for how teachers can use technology to stay in touch with parents: A lot of emphasis has been given to getting parents involved in their child’s education, but with a teacher’s already full schedule and parents who are already stretched thin, this is not always easy to accomplish.

More Trending

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Future-Focused Leadership

A Principal's Reflections

The following is a guest post by Dr. Bill Daggett , Founder and Chairman of the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE) and Dr. Guy Sconzo , Superintendent of Humble ISD in Humble, TX. In my last guest post , I outlined the ways in which the Every Student Succeeds Act, recently signed into law, gives us a unique chance to create the indicators of achievement that will mean and matter to us—indicators catered to the unique DNA of our states, districts, and schools.

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Learning Targets and Student-Led Conferences More Pathways to Communication

Battelle for Kids

Volume 3, Issue 2, Number 7. Driving Question: How does a 21st century classroom communicate student outcomes? Learning targets and student-led conferences are proving to be a powerful vehicle for informing our school community at Katherine Smith Elementary about what and how our students are learning. At the same time, they showed us another opportunity to develop our students' speaking and writing communication.

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7 Innovative Writing Methods for Students

Ask a Tech Teacher

Knowledge is meant to be shared. That’s what writing is about–taking what you know and putting it out there for all to see. When students hear the word “writing”, most think paper-and-pencil, maybe word processing, but that’s the vehicle, not the goal. According to state and national standards (even international), writing is expected to “provide evidence in support of opinions”, “examine complex ideas and information clearly and accurately”,

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Make Every Monday #MatteringMonday and Help Kids Learn

The CoolCatTeacher

Start the School Week of With What Matters: Kids From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter. Mondays are hard for (almost) everyone. What if we started the week with reminding students how much they and their work matters? Let’s challenge every teacher we know to begin celebrating Mattering Mondays. We know that we need students to be more engaged.

Learning 189
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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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Chromebooks: Things we Love, Things We Love Not So Much

The Journal

Reportedly some 30,000 Chromebooks come online in K-12 each day. There are positive and negative aspects to that, though, as far as we can tell, the Chromebook invasion is mostly a good thing for education.

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Communication With Parents: More Than A Grade

Battelle for Kids

Volume 3, Issue 2, Number 9. Driving Question: What if I do more than share grades with parents? I recently met with two parents and their son. It was a conference to discuss how he was doing in class and what they could do at home to help. If that kind of interpersonal communication is the "Gold Standard" of analog communications, we have to concede it's not the only way we can communicate with families, nor is it the most sustainable.

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5 Tech Tools That Motivate Every Reader

Ask a Tech Teacher

I love having guest posts on Ask a Tech Teacher because I always learn a lot. In this case, efriend and fellow educator, Jessica Sanders from WhooosReading.org , shares her favorite tools for kick-starting readers. I think you’ll like her choices: Not every student is motivated to read—as you, as an educator, know better than anyone else. Luckily, technology not only comes as second nature to the digital citizens in your classroom, but engages readers of every level, motivating them to rea

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Riveting Ways to Engage Girls in STEM, Achieve High Test Scores

The CoolCatTeacher

How to reach every learner every day from a teacher who is doing it From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter. Physics can be taught with a total project based learning approach and have high test scores. Teacher Ben Owens demonstrates this every day. High poverty and high needs students don’t stop him. He expects 100% engagement from every student every day (and gets it.

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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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Personalizing the learning experience

Neo LMS

Each student has an individual way of learning and their own pace when it comes to addressing different subjects. Wouldn't it be wonderful if teachers could meet all individual learning needs for each student? It definitely would! A personalized learning approach would come with a shift of perspective, changing the focus from the educational system to the students, giving the latter more control over their learning experience and connecting learning with their interests, talents and passions.

Learning 154
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How Google Apps Help Develop Online Learning Communities

EdTech Magazine

By Matt Renwick Principal Matt Renwick offers a few proven tools for facilitating better digital collaboration. .

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Dear Otto: Can We Eliminate Blogs–Teachers Hate Them!

Ask a Tech Teacher

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please contact me at askatechteacher at gmail dot com and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names. Here’s a great question I got from Christy: HI! I love your site – holy buckets of information!

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How to Teach Students Discussion Forums

The CoolCatTeacher

An Essential 21st Century Literacy From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter. Discussion forums and threaded conversation are a basic digital literacy. I teach these using Reddit and the Wikispaces discussion forum. When students and teachers know how to communicate effectively in discussion forums , they make themselves able to join forums correctly.

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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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Personalizing the learning experience

Neo LMS

Each student has an individual way of learning and their own pace when it comes to addressing different subjects. Wouldn't it be wonderful if teachers could meet all individual learning needs for each student? It definitely would! A personalized learning approach would come with a shift of perspective, changing the focus from the educational system to the students, giving the latter more control over their learning experience and connecting learning with their interests, talents and passions.

Learning 150
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Google Sunsetting Play for Education Program

EdTech Magazine

By D. Frank Smith Google signals the departure of Play for Education, the company's educational lens into the Google Play storefront.

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Project-based learning in Northwest Iowa

Dangerously Irrelevant

Many schools in Iowa are trying to find small chunks of time that allow students to engage in some inquiry- or project-based learning. These might be class-level projects, teacher-led exploratories, or student-led ‘genius hours.’ Several districts in Northwest Iowa are going beyond these smaller experiments, however. They’re carving out a couple of weeks for a ‘J Term’ in January after winter break, or a May Term at the end of the year, or even a mid-semester ‘MidMester Academy.

Learning 144
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How to Schedule a Time to Meet with Other Classes

The CoolCatTeacher

The two types of calendars every collaborative project needs From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter. Want to see students excited? Want to see them run to class? I’ll never forget the time we skyped with Govinda and his students in Nepal. The fifth graders had an optional meeting at 7 am where they could come to school to meet the other kids half a world away.

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Enhancing HyFlex Education through the PowerTeaching Framework

This whitepaper explores integrating the PowerTeaching pedagogical approach within a HyFlex (Hybrid Flexible) educational model, focusing on employing cooperative learning strategies and efficient classroom management techniques.

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Learner Empowerment

User Generated Education

A major theme during the Educon 2.8 conference in Philadelphia during the last week of January, 2016, was learner empowerment. Here is a Storify of tweets about empowerment from the conference: https://storify.com/jackiegerstein/what-conditions-are-necessary-for-empowerment-in-s. Highlighted Tweets include. The conference and Twitter discussions motivated me to write this post on learner empowerment.

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6 Texas Educational IT Professionals Tackle K–12 Tech Challenges in Roundtable

EdTech Magazine

By Jenny Allen CDW•G gathered a group of Texas leaders at TCEA to talk about the hurdles of technology in the classroom.

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Summits

Dangerously Irrelevant

Summit. (noun) A day-long ’sit and get’ event designed to draw political and media attention to the powers-that-be at the top. Usually comprised of speeches, panel presentations, and non-interactive breakout sessions. Iowa antonyms : EdCampIowa, ISLI, StuCamp, EdCampDesMoines, school district unconferences, Iowa 1:1 Institute. Summits are a great way to reinforce the passive, transmission-oriented model of learning.

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Sticky note inspiration: What kids REALLY need

Ditch That Textbook

Think back to what got you into education in the first place. A specific content area or a bent toward a certain age level might have helped you find your place in the education world. But I’ll bet it didn’t get you into education all together. Was it a desire to help mold the citizens [.].

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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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Two Students Take the Lead with Technology

Digital Promise

The Verizon Innovative Learning Schools (VILS) initiative gives students an opportunity to take ownership of their own learning. These schools are using technology to enhance learning in exciting new ways. Classroom lessons are changing and becoming more innovative and personalized. Teachers are empowering students to think about what they want to learn and what interests them.

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4 Tips for Deploying Hyperconverged Systems

EdTech Magazine

By Brien M. Posey Hyperconverged systems simplify server virtualization, and these best practices help simplify deployment. .

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Learning Targets and Student-Led Conferences Part II

Battelle for Kids

Volume 3, Issue 2, Number 8. Driving Question: How does a 21st century classroom communicate student outcomes? In yesterday's post, we shared about learning targets. Today it is student led conferences incorporating learning targets. Learning Targets were part of the solution for communicating with students, but what about our parents? It was then that we decided to do Student Led Conferences (SLCs).

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Solving Interesting Problems

Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts

What interesting problems have you posed to students recently? What interesting problems have students asked you? Yesterday I was listening to Tim Ferriss interview Seth Godin on his 4 Hour Work Week podcast: ‘How Seth Godin Manages His Life — Rules, Principles, and Obsessions’ When I got to this quote, I noted the time on the show and went back to it later to share here: “We need to teach students two things: 1.HOW TO LEAD. 2.HOW TO SOLVE INTERESTING PROBL

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LIVE DEMO: Using PowerPoint to Create Compelling Presentations for Virtual Training

Speaker: Richard Goring, Director at BrightCarbon

Have you ever caught an employee sleeping during training? Compelling content is paramount, but trying to do so with the same tools you've always used is complicated, right? Wrong! Powerpoint has excellent features that, with a bit of creativity, can help you improve your presentations and keep your people engaged without going over budget. By utilizing newer components that enable interactive sequences, navigable content to respond to your audience, and pop quizzes for informal knowledge checks