I just finished reading Checking for Understanding by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher. It is one of the most practical books I have read in a while. In it I found techniques that I could immediately apply in my classroom. Assessment is a huge challenge for me. I see most of my students 45 minutes…
photo courtesy of K. Sawyer on Flickr Just last week I had the first serious observation I’ve had in a long time. I was observed during the first time my 3rd graders used the computers all year (no pressure!). I was nervous because this is my first year in the school, but I was also…
This past Friday was a half day at my school for Professional Development. As a nice surprise, our CEO took the entire staff to see Waiting for Superman at a movie theater downtown. It was a very thoughtful (and exciting) outing. As I sat in the theater before the movie started, I realized that I…
My 6th graders just completed their Digital Citizenship websites using iWeb. I am very proud of them as this is the first project we have completed together and it is the first project they have completed using Macs. As I have no server yet, I had the students hand their work into my favorite site,…
As most of you know, I am at a new school this year with a new twist on my former position. I still teach technology but now I have time to plan my lessons around what students are learning in the classroom. I did write a technology curriculum, but will only need to fall back…
A recent Newsweek article, Take This Blog and Shove It!, makes the argument that crowdsourcing and interactivity on the web is dying. It calls Wikipedia’s drop in contributors a ‘tipping point’ in the history of the web, stating that “Even the Internet is no match for sloth.” Quoting a recent Pew study that the number…
I recently began reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. I first saw him on The Colbert Report and was intrigued by his interview. I have only read the prologue, but already I am hooked. Even when I was away from my computer, I yearned to check email,…
This weekend I attended ntcamp, an unconference for both veteran and new teachers aimed at providing conversation for new teachers to learn from veteran teachers. I sat in on a session facilitated by Jason Bedell about grades that proved to be a thought provoking one. He created a collaborative document that holds a lot of…
Maybe it’s because it’s summertime or maybe it’s the general atmosphere of education these days, but the online education community has been a flutter with talk of what needs to change in education. What I’m wondering is how much of this is new or different than years past. I am fairly young, so my memory…
One of the most practical and powerful books I’ve ever read as a teacher that has directly affected my practice is The Power of Our Words by Paula Denton. In it, Denton describes, using specific examples, how what we say and the words we choose with students can transform our teaching and our classroom. It…