Inspirational Links for 2010-11 Educational Year

This is a great blog from Making Teachers Nerdy in time to inspire teachers as they return from the summer vacation. Lots of useful links and explanations recommending how they can be used in the classroom. This site is definitely a new favorite for me.

A great write up of Alan November’s workshop on effectively using the internet from Bright Ideas.

New TED Talk – Sir Ken Robinson

Ideas to be Implemented in the New School Year

Alan November the changing role of the learner – Inspired me to consider an idea for the classroom and our class blog. Children create a podcast or screen capture video to show how to work out a problem or teach others the learning objective.

http://scribblemaps.com 

Google maps that you can draw/write on!

http://www.focuseducation.com.au/CoolStuff/coolstuff.html

Grid game to foster understanding of cooperation and improving concentration.

http://screenr.com/

Create screencasts for your twitter followers

http://www.wfp.org/hunger

World food programme

http://webquest.org/index.php

Create a webquest

http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/mi/campbell3.htm

Focus on Multiple Intelligence Lessons and centers

Applying Blooms Taxonomy

Blooms Taxonomy Questions

I have used this website to improve comprehension of a variety of learning resources including music and art as well as fiction or non-fiction writing. Students enjoy using the variety of sentence starters to create questions to test each others knowledge.

Below are examples of Grade 2 student created, flip book style comprehension, based around Blooms Taxonomy.   

Google Search Stories

http://www.youtube.com/searchstories

Quick and easy to use, this is a fun tool to introduce, or review a concept being taught. Students enjoy using it to quickly present a reflection, or understanding of their learning. Google search stories uses the google search engine to create a movie which is downloadable to you tube. Additions allow you to add a variety of music and best of all its free!!

World Statistics Meter

http://www.worldometers.info/

Useful tool to share with students to show humans at work, not very positive really. I wonder if there is a statistics meter showing good deeds performed, charity donations given, trees planted etc

A Billion for a Billion

What is UbD?

Taken from Grant Wiggins Website on Authentic Education

Understanding by Design (UbD) is a framework for improving student achievement. Emphasizing the teacher’s critical role as a designer of student learning, UbD works within the standards-driven curriculum to help teachers clarify learning goals, devise revealing assessments of student understanding, and craft effective and engaging learning activities.

Developed by nationally recognized educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), Understanding by Design is based on the following key ideas:

• A primary goal of education should be the development and deepening of student understanding.
• Students reveal their understanding most effectively when they are provided with complex, authentic opportunities to explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empathize, and self-assess. When applied to complex tasks, these “six facets” provide a conceptual lens through which teachers can better assess student understanding.
• Effective curriculum development reflects a three-stage design process called “backward design” that delays the planning of classroom activities until goals have been clarified and assessments designed. This process helps to avoid the twin problems of “textbook coverage” and “activity-oriented” teaching, in which no clear priorities and purposes are apparent.
• Student and school performance gains are achieved through regular reviews of results (achievement data and student work) followed by targeted adjustments to curriculum and instruction. Teachers become most effective when they seek feedback from students and their peers and use that feedback to adjust approaches to design and teaching.
• Teachers, schools, and districts benefit by “working smarter” through the collaborative design, sharing, and peer review of units of study

Or perhaps you prefer a slideshow format taken from the Davis School District Website

The questions I am grappling with at the moment are; 

• How can you marry UbD and Inquiry?
• What is the best way to do this?

Twitter for Schools

Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthamm/3383916444/

Many people struggle to come to grips with twitter and its use for educators. For me it all boils down to collaboration, sharing useful practices, websites, technology and asking advise from the global staff room. What better audience for teachers?

The best applications for using Twitter in schools;

Twitter How To Guide - Start at the beginning with a how to guide for teacher twitters.

Why? – Why do we need twitter as a teacher ? 

Who? Top 100 Educator Tweeters  Educators twitter Google Docs    Teacher Twitter Wiki                                            

Tiny URL -  What will your first tweet be about ? Perhaps a useful website? If so reduce the URL address to keep within your 140 character limit.

Tweetree - Tweetree puts your twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context.  Manage – A variety of apps for managing multiple twitter accounts.            

100 different apps for Twitter – Want more? Here are 100 more apps, resources and tips for teachers on Twitter.

November Learning

Alan November’s Blog site 

I have had the pleasure of attending three of Alan’s keynotes or lectures from which I gained the following useful websites for use in the classroom;

 Polleverywhere  - Live audience polling via text message

60 second recap  - Makes the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and irresistible to today’s teens.

Wolframalpha – Search engine for math. Type in any equation and get an answer with step by step solution steps!

Screenr - Ready to tweet screen casts

Jing - Record video of your computer screen with commentary

TinyURL – Minimise URL’s