You don’t need to be a Dickens scholar to understand that for many teachers it is both the best of times and the worst of times.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Digital innovation is inspiring imagination. Educators from all over the world are learning how to responsibly blend technology into their teaching, while sharing resource suggestions and best practices with colleagues and their growing professional learning networks.
The freedom to choose an assortment of apps, videos and open educational resources that can augment – if not replace – traditional curriculum for any given unit or lesson plan is empowering. Learning how other teachers put these tools into their own practice via Twitter Chats, EdCamps and other collaborative environments is exhilarating.
Simplifying teacher expertise is no big deal– heck, textbooks are an old tech version of that, saving us all from the trouble of coming up with our own materials. I actually have spent some time thinking about this, resulting in my decision a few years ago to stop using the grammar textbooks my school bought…
Children of similar cognitive ability have very different chances of educational success; it still depends on their parents’ economic, socio-cultural and educational resources. This contradicts a commonly held view that these days that our education system has developed enough to give everyone a fighting chance. Source: Educational success among children of similar cognitive ability depends…
Formative assessment: you’ve heard about it, you’ve read the research, and you’ve probably tried it out in your classroom. Whether you’re a formative assessment newbie or a veteran, these techniques can help spice up how you check for understanding in the classroom. They range from the classics, like exit slips, to ideas you may have never…
We’ve been previewing Google Springboard and the new Google Sites with a small set of customers, and we’re excited to begin to extend each of these new apps to more customers through an Early Adopter Program. Source: Google Apps update alerts: Powering a more connected and collaborative enterprise Google Springboard sounds like Google Now, except…
I received a tweet asking me for suggestions on keyboarding programs for students. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t respond. I am not a fan, and when schools are saying that they are either a) in a time crunch or, b) having limited use of technology, I struggle that we use this precious amount of time…
There will be times when scrapping what happened altogether may be the best plan and just starting over or moving on and then circling back at another time, but more often then not, it’s worth it to just pause and reflect. These moments can yield a great deal of learning for everyone, including us. Source:…
