A few weeks back, EdSurge published a podcast interview with education consultant and commentator Alan November, and Director of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District Mike Dorsey, after chatting with the two education experts at ISTE. The interview got quite a number of listens, likely because November said that the…
When the visual and performing arts, the musical and recording arts, and the theatrical and graphical arts are seen as mere luxuries or add-ons within the walls of a school, powerful forces are thereby prevented from transforming routine schooling into a renaissance of learning.But who has the time or the funding to allow that to…
This is part 4 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. We’re getting close to inbox zero, and today’s tip deals with emails from students. I’ve talked about this in the past, and the directions haven’t changed. Student Email Footer Unfortunately, Google’s search criteria fails if you have students in the same domain as teachers (everyone…
Play is what happens when we accept these limitations, narrow our focus, and, consequently, have fun. Which is also how to live a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no different than treating ordinary circumstances — like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints — as sources for meaning and joy….
The secret to VLACS’ success may be that it does things differently from most virtual schools. It puts a focus on building strong student-teacher relationships. It breaks up traditional courses into specific skills and abilities, called “competencies,” that students master through a personalized blend of traditional lesson plans, offline projects and real-world experiences. Source: Inside the…
This is part 3 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. This is probably my favorite hack. What if I told you there was a way to only receive school email in your inbox, and all non-school email went into an Outside Email folder? And that you could do this with a 100% success rate? Well,…
I feel like my teachers always emphasized the importance of group work but kind of threw us to the wolves to figure out how to do it, especially when we are all supposed to be equal players with no manager to oversee the final product. Can you recommend any resources for how to do effective,…
Today’s enthusiasm for project-based learning (PBL) fits into the paradigm-shifting category, helpfully emphasizing that we learn best by doing. As a complete educational philosophy or strategy, however, it falls short on many fronts. Source: Project-based learning needs more learning Wow, I don’t think the author understands what Project Based Learning is. I mean, I find very little…
This is part 2 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. As we learned yesterday, we want to reduce our cognitive load of dealing with emails by getting them out of the inbox and into a system where we don’t have to remember what we need to do, but can easily find what we need to…
To get that valuable time and space to collaborate with fellow educators—in their city, state, country or across the world—some teachers are taking to online networks and DIY-ing their own face-to-face meet-ups. Through grassroots “unconferences” like Edcamps, online forums like #edchat and informal Facebook groups, teachers are taking professional learning into their own hands. Source: 7 Ways…