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This is a great model that more districts should look to replicate
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Once again Finland…Why do we have to complicate things so much for our kids.
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Good perspective from Harold Jarche
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Technology has not yet killed the reliable old TI-83. Nearly 20 years later, students are still forced to use a prohibitively expensive piece of outdated technology. It’s not because better tools aren’t available; they exist, and some of them are even free. It’s because Texas Instruments, the company that creates them, has a staggering monopoly in the field of high school mathematics. The American education system is addicted to Texas Instruments.
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Interesting model for students to lead their own learning
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From Will Richardson – Built on the idea of North Star in Massachusetts, it strips away almost all of the bureaucracy of school as we know it and just focuses on kids and learning. The more I dive in, the more sense it makes.
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“We’ve found that traditional hiring, which is based primarily on credentials, is a terrible approach for junior roles,” says Nick Sedlet, the co-founder of HireArt. “The labor market is changing much faster than colleges can keep up.”
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Free resource with passages categorized by reading level
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More good Google Classroom tips from Alice Keeler
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From Common Craft – It’s back-to-school time and we just published a video that’s perfect for helping students navigate the wild world of media. It’s all about understanding and detecting bias.
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We weighed other factors in our decision: • Standardized test scores do not predict a student’s success at our college. • SATs/ACTs are strongly biased against low-income students and students of color, at a time when diversity is critical to our mission. • We surveyed our students and learned not one of them had considered rankings when choosing to apply to colleges; instead they most cared about a college’s mission. • Some good students are bad test takers, particularly under stress, such as when a test may grant or deny college entry. Multiple-choice tests don’t reveal much about a student. • We’ve developed much better, fairer ways to assess students who will thrive at our college.
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From Ken Halla – WeVideo is an app that you can add in Google Drive or sign up for separately. As with everything else here, it is free and pretty amazing as it lets you add in sound, video, words, effects, etc. Best of all, you can use it with your students in groups as it lets them collaborate much as one can do on a document in Google Drive.
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Lack of sleep not only impairs our judgement, but also lowers immunity, leads to depression, and can even raise blood glucose levels.
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Good resources to help learners evaluate the relevance of a story or reference on the web.
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From Alice Keeler
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We’re rooting for #BAMMYAwards finalists Nancy Burke & @RoweRikW, @dlwest77 & @patrickmlarkin! https://t.co/EhmF6KNG7i
Category: Uncategorized
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (weekly)
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We Find What We Look For In Our Students – So What Do We See?
From Chris Wejr – When we look at our students with struggles, what do we see? The following video is an incredible story of how a teacher/professor became so frustrated with a student for sleeping in his class… that he actually asked him why.
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I’m 15 and all of my friends use Facebook
Interesting perspective from a 15-year old
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An interesting take on Twitter
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Eleven Ways to Improve Online Classes
Good list of ways to make online classes more engaging from John Spencer
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From Valerie Strauss – The result: teachers are assessed on the test scores of students they don’t have and/or subjects they don’t teach. Wondering whether President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan knew that their policies had led to this state of affairs, I asked both the White House and the Education Department to respond to individual versions of this question:
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OER: How to Find, Use and Share Free Teaching Tools and Resources @coolcatteacher
Interview with Sue Jones on utilizing Open Education Resources (OER)
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Improving Schools: Avoiding Student Burnout
A look at some changes we need to consider to slow down the rat race in schools.
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Is “Have a Growth Mindset” the New “Just Say No” | User Generated Education
Reading: Is “Have a Growth Mindset” the New “Just Say No” https://t.co/elpAiIflsV By @jackiegerstein
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Number Of Homeless Public School Students Hits Record High. Here’s Who’s Helping
The number of homeless students enrolled in public schools hit a record high last year. But simply changing the way agencies define homeless youth could ensure that this vulnerable population gets the services they need.
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iPad Classroom Visit Look-Fors
From Lisa Johnson
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Coding Class, Then Naptime: Computer Science For The Kindergarten Set : NPR Ed : NPR
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Ivy League Professor Gives Students the Alf Test
Interesting tactic…
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No surprise here – When students enroll in MOOCs, they almost always watch a series of video lectures. But just watching videos — without also engaging interactively — is an ineffective way to learn, according to a study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
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When did we start criminalizing innocent childhood antics?
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Protecting or Ignoring? | The Principal of Change
From George Couros – There is this notion that ignoring social media in schools is a way of protecting our kids from the dangers of the web.
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A Toxic Work World – NYTimes.com
But this model of winning at all costs reinforces a distinctive American pathology of not making room for caregiving. The result: We hemorrhage talent and hollow out our society.
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#IStandWithAhmed and the Criminalization of the American Schoolyard – Pacific Standard
Sad story from Texas – One evening, he built a clock from circuit boards and wiring, which he stashed in a pencil case. On Tuesday, he showed his creation to his teachers. His engineering instructor praised the design; the English teacher thought it was a bomb. Mohamed was handcuffed by police officers and interrogated for hours.
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Ed-Tech Might Make Things Worse… So Now What?
From Audrey Watters – “The OECD released a “first-of-its-kind” report earlier this week on computers and education, eliciting – as all of its PISA-related reports tend to do – precisely the responses you’d suspect: a lot of “schools are doing it wrong.”
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What Would Accountability Without Standardized Tests Look Like?
test-based accountability is failing on its most important mandate—eliminating the achievement gap between different groups of students.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (September 20, 2015)
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Great Huff Post from Dean Shareski – Sadly, it seems many of our leaders have also missed out on the learning revolution that is taking place all around them. The second thing that has to change is our definition of “doing better”. We should be asking how technology is changing teaching and learning. Questions like “What can this technolgy do that couldn’t be done without it? Thes questions lead to fundamentally different ideas about what classrooms can and should look like.
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700 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices | Open Culture
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Virginia Community Colleges Building Degrees with No Textbook Costs | Community Idea Stations
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Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) at SEDL
The effective implementation of a new program is a highly personal developmental process. The diagnostic dimensions of CBAM are three components for assessing and guiding this process:
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Skill-Building Approaches to Anxiety-Fueled Work Avoidance
Great article from Jess Minehan – Behavior is a way of communicating, and a symptom of an underlying problem. In my experience, when you dig into the roots of work avoidance, you find skill deficits in initiation, persistence, self-monitoring and/or help-seeking behavior. These are the cornerstone skills necessary to overcome the stress, anxiety and perceived or actual difficulty associated with a task.”
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Grading and Returning Assignments in Google Classroom
From Ken Halla – The video takes you through all of the grading steps and options (for Google Classroom).
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#ReadyForSuccess: Department of ED Highlights District’s Strategic Use of OER | EdCentral
Great example of a district using Open Education Resources
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It’s Not About “All of the Time”, but About Having Access
From George Couros – Discussing initiatives such as BYOD or 1-to-1 technology initiatives, there is often a lot of fear about “balance”. First of all, the notion of “balance” is something that I truly believe should not be determined for anyone other than yourself. What is “balance” to one, might look significantly different to someone else.
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Gaps in Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data
From the New York Times – Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because such information is difficult and expensive to gather. Colleges are good at tracking down rich alumni to hit up for donations, but people who make little or no money are harder and less lucrative to find.
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Learning Calculus Without Direct Instruction
From Dan Meyer – Clarifying, because I’m frequently misinterpreted: I don’t think learning calculus without direct instruction is logistically possible over anything close to a school year, or that it’s philosophically desirable even if it were possible.
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Survey: Social Media Is Failing To Find Traction In The Classroom –
A University of Phoenix® College of Education survey conducted online by Harris Poll in April among 1,002 U.S. K-12 teachers finds only 13 percent of today’s K-12 teachers have integrated social media into classroom learning, with an overwhelming majority (87 percent) reporting they have not embraced social platforms. Additionally, more teachers are citing a reluctance to incorporate social media into classroom learning than in 2013 (62 percent vs. 55 percent).
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The ban “gave permission” to listen focusedly with the real others in the room, rather than having to share and exhibit their presence to virtual others online.
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Digizip | Technology for Education
Good resource for reviewing tech tools
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Constant Social Media Presence May Jeopardize Teens’ Mental Health
Teens who feel a round-the-clock compulsion to participate on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter may pay a price in lost sleep. They may also face a higher risk for depression and anxiety, new research suggests.
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Peer Reviewed Study on #Edcamp Now Open Source
some great evidence about the efficacy of Edcamps published in Professional Development in Education.
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Michael’s Space: A High School Teacher Reflects on Setting Up His Classroom | The First 900 Days
My classroom! My Space: A High School Teacher Reflects on Setting Up His Classroom http://t.co/dpQ6ihokew via @MTANewMembers #sschat #edchat
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5 Authentic Roles For Twitter In Your School
From Teach Thought – 5 Authentic Roles For Twitter In Your School Find resources Develop Student Thinking Help Teachers Engage With A Global Professional Learning Network (See also 20 Ways To Improve Your PLN) Monitor Emerging Trends Find Professional Development
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Toward Better Growth Measures | Getting Smart
From Tom Vander Ark – The other day I woke up thinking about growth measures. I know that seems weird but better growth measures are key to the future of personalized learning and the end of heavyweight year end tests. I reached out to Matt Chapman, the CEO of NWEA, another guy obsessed with student growth.
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Kids Do Well if They Can Ross Greene #1 – YouTube
Dr. Ross Greene – Kids do well if they can…
BPS Blog Update (Volume 1) – Check out our Flipboard Digital Magazine!
https://cdn.flipboard.com/web/buttons/js/flbuttons.min.js Now that we are 10 days into the 2015/2016 school year, I thought it was a perfect time for the first BPS Blog update. Before sharing the first 10 posts on the BPS Blog, I wanted to share our new FlipBoard Digital Magazine of the posts which you can see below. By the way, Flipboard is a great tool for you to check out and utilize for your own use or with students. Here is a link to a quick tutorial on getting started with Flipboard.
170 posts to go…
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (September 13, 2015)
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Making Sure College Is Worth The Cost : NPR Ed : NPR
Good discussion about the college selection process via NPR – The bigger question might be: What, exactly do expensive private colleges have to offer in exchange for their high tab?
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Does the new iPad Pro have anything to offer schools?
Good question regarding the iPad Pro and schools.
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Great advice from Cale Birk – As busy as we are, I believe that we need to ensure that we do three things when it comes to getting and utilizing feedback: We need to ensure that after any meeting, day, or event that we feel is important, we set aside a block of time to reflect on the process. We need to ensure that we are hungry for authentic feedback from what IDEO calls “extremes and mainstreams”, people who we might not think to ask for feedback along with those that seem obvious. We need to take this feedback, and apply it by making a prototype that we can test out with actual users (even using something like the High Tech High Tuning Protocol) with time built in prior to our next use so we can make any necessary adjustments.
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Why those annoying ‘helicopter parents’ aren’t so bad after all –
From Alfie Kohn
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Great YouTube Video on dealing with challenging students from Dr. Stuart Ablon
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From Malden High School English Teacher Abbey Dick – once-weekly meditation on teaching secondary English
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These Three Areas May Be the Root of Student Disengagement
More thoughts on student engagement from Pernille Ripp
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Some Ideas for Re-Engaging Students
Some good thoughts on engagement from Pernille Ripp
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Convert Your PDF’s to Google Docs
How to convert a PDF to a Google Doc
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Some good tips on using Canva from Kate and Lisa at EdTechTeacher
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Some ideas for using Periscope in the classroom from Holly Clark
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The Connecting Creativity series is a learning quest designed with concept and content convergence in mind, supported by meaningful technology integration. Each Connecting Creativity concept is designed so teachers can repurpose the idea to meet the needs of their students and the needs of their curriculum goals.
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Free Apps and Sites that Support Literacy
Good list of apps and sites to support literacy from Monica Evon.
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US History Teachers Blog: Effective Classroom Methodology
From Ken Halla – As I begin a new school year – my 25th, (my student have their first day on Tuesday) I always like to reflect on what setup (beyond the physical part) is best for my students. Good resource to share with new teachers
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5 Pieces of Advice for New Teachers – Video
From Keith Hughes
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Updated rankings. Lots of changes toward the bott
Updated #FantasyFootball rankings. Lots of changes toward the bottom of RBs, WRs and Ks. http://t.co/4RALCUSb4K
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (September 6, 2015)
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Inspiring a Vision for Learning
Johnny Bevacqua highlights the process he went through in his school community to create a common vision.
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Feedback Should be More Work for the Recipient
Great thoughts on feedback from Bill Ferriter
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Cool New Things in Google Drive | Transform Learning ~ written by Samantha Morra
A good overview of some of the new functions available in Google Drive from Sam Morra
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3 Lasting Lessons For Teachers From Grant Wiggins
Great article from Jay Mctighe on most important takeaways from the work of Grant Wiggins.
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The website finds interesting and real tweets at your language level easy, medium, or difficult. It uses the word lists from Cambridge University’s English Vocabulary Profile project which lists more than 15,000 of the most common English words, ranked by difficulty level.
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Google Classroom Meet Google Extension
New Chrome extension, Share to Classroom, is great for that BYOD classroom or 1:1 classroom. It allows teachers to push out a webpage to everyone so that learning can begin and headaches can end.
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TeachersFirst: The web resource by teachers, for teachers
A collection of lessons, units, and web resources designed to save teachers time by delivering just what they need in a practical, user-friendly, and ad-free format.
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graphite | The best apps, games, websites, and digital curricula rated for learning
Great site for teachers to get reviews on Digital Resources and find tech-infused lesson plans.
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The Principal of Change | Stories of learning and leading
Great blog to follow for classroom teachers and administrators
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Moving from Digital Citizenship to Leadership
Great post from Jennifer Casa Todd
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Micro-Credentials: The Future of Professional Learning
From Tom Vander Ark Like students, educators deserve a clear map of what they need to know and be able to do, multiple ways to learn, and options for demonstrating mastery. In most cases we think progress will be marked with a stackable series of micro-credentials. No more random courses for continuing ed credits, just highly relevant job-linked learning.
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Unplug: Raising Kids In a Technology Addicted World:
A book to add to the reading list. About kids and technology.
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Good technology tips for parents
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What is content curation? Why does it matter to teachers?
From John Spencer – The term “curate” has become a buzzword in education. I’ve seen it referenced in TEDx Talks and tossed around in Twitter chats. A few years ago, the term “curation” would have conjured up images of art galleries but now I associate it with conversations about the future of education.
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Good ideas from Edutopia on Back to School Night and engaging families during the year.
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Relax, Turn Off Your Phone, and Go to Sleep
From Harvard Biz – The students who were more anxious about being apart from their phones used their phones more during a typical day, and woke up to check their phones more often at night. The latter two results — more daily smartphone use and more nighttime awakenings — led directly to sleep problems
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Lots of great resources here on @rubenp’s blog -http://t.co/M9NaY3Im8h #FLITEplan
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iTunes U – A good overview of how to use iTunes U in the classroom.
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From Forbes – The answer is, we have to take our professional and personal development into our own hands, this must happen inside of our companies and outside of them. We can no longer rely on educational institutions or corporations to give us all the tools and all the training we need to be successful.
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The Case for Teaching Ignorance
Great idea for an elective course.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (August 30, 2015)
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Nonacademic Skills Are Key To Success. But What Should We Call Them? : NPR Ed : NPR
From NPR – More and more people in education agree on the importance of learning stuff other than academics. But no one agrees on what to call that “stuff”.
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Morning Meetings, Check-Ins, and Social-Emotional Learning
It’s not enough to simply fill students’ brains with facts. A successful education demands that their character be developed as well. That’s where social and emotional learning comes in. SEL is the process of helping students develop the skills to manage their emotions, resolve conflict nonviolently, and make responsible decisions.
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School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-The Responsive Classroom
From Johns Hopkins
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Pinterest board on Responsive Classroom Morning meeting
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“Come and Play, Everything’s A-OK” in the Responsive Classroom
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This is a great video to share with all teachers regarding students who seem disengaged in their class. We ned to get to know these students and not just take it personally.
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Podcasting – Simple Podcasting Workflows – OwnerFUEL –
From Chris Brogan
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Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette | Pew Research Center
‘Always on’ mobile connectivity poses new challenges for users about when to be present with those nearby or engaged with others on their screens
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Ed Tech Evaluation Plan: More problems than I initially thought -e-Literate
By Phil HillMore Posts (356) Late last week I described the new plan from the US Department of Education (ED) and their Office of Educational Technology (OET) to “call for better methods for evaluating educational apps”. Essentially the ED is … Continue reading →
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There’s an app for that. Well, maybe.
The Department of Education plans to evaluate ed-tech’s effectiveness.
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Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) created an instructional design platform that provides free online tools and resources for creating literacy-rich assignments and courses across content areas. LDC CoreTools is a guided online experience that supports teachers in planning and creating curricula, allowing them to effectively collaborate with colleagues across their school or across the nation.
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Wait Time: “What’s in It for Me?”
Great article to share with new teachers on Wait time from Ed Leadership. Love the author’s recommendation to change the name from wait time to think time.
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15 Bloggers choose their Top 10 Tools for Learning
A few new tools to check out here.
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21st Century Learning with Explain Everything
From Courtney Pepe – A great tool for assessment in the 21st Century is the app Explain Everything (iOS, Android, Windows, & ChromeOS). Explain Everything is a unique, interactive screencasting whiteboard app that can be used as a tool for ongoing assessment.
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How to Make Your Questions Essential
From Grant Wiggins – Essential questions rarely arise in a first draft. Here’s how to construct good ones.
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Manage Your Personal Calendar In Sync With Your Team Calendar
Good overview to share with people of how to make the most of Google calendar
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How not to flip your lid over college applications
It is unclear exactly what fuels this hysteria and ignites a sense of panic among students. Media hype, peer culture, parental pressure, and sinking admit rates (at a handful of the most selective colleges) surely share the blame for this atmosphere of unease. We must ask ourselves as educators and parents how to best combat this anguish. How do we keep students healthy?
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National Cyber Security Awareness Month
Good resources to share with staff and students
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A good list of Leadership beliefs from Scott McLeod
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How Romance Scammers Port Video Files Over Skype (Video)
A look at how scammers use web-based pictures and video to fraudulently use someone else’s image in a phony online profile.
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Rediscovering @CK12Foundation Flexbooks And More!
From Steve Anderson: I can remember many an afternoon spent in high school science and math classrooms talking about CK-12 Flexbooks. These were online, high-quality, completely customizable textbooks that, in addition to having some really great content were completely free to use and change. Teachers jumped at the chance to integrate them because they could supplement other content into their text and take advantage of them being digital by adapting them on the fly.
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6 Ideas for Creating Math Centers
From Beth Holland and Suzy Brooks – Whether you have a single computer, an interactive whiteboard, a cart of Chromebooks, or a handful of iPads in your classroom, the learning center approach can be used to encourage students to engage with math concepts. In addition to Suzy, I would like to credit the fantastic work of Kristen Wideen and Meghan Zigmond for most of these ideas.
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Google Apps update alerts: Head back to school with new features in Google Classroom
From the Google Apps team: As teachers gear up for the new school year, we’re adding a number of new features in Google Classroom to help them save time, engage with students, and keep everyone organized. Most of these features are rolling out this week, with others coming soon.
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My Tweeted Times – top stories by , ,
My Tweeted Times http://t.co/zAtNjnrMw1 – top stories by @DanaAriss, @MatthewOldridge, @patrickmlarkin
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Giving Effective Feedback is a Work For/Work On Process [Activity]
Quality feedback should always lead to action on the part of the learner. Providing feedback without providing time to act is essentially wasting time and intellectual energy (William, 2011).
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Is It Time for Your Social Media Strategy to Move Beyond the Puppy Stage? – edSocialMedia
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Copyright and Creative Commons Explained
From Richard Byrne – The following two videos from Common Craft provide excellent overviews of these topics.
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Taking Notes: Is The Pen Still Mightier Than the Keyboard?
A recent study published in Psychological Science confronts the issue head-on. Researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer asked students to take notes on a 20-minute video lecture using either longhand or a computer that had been disabled for any other use. They wanted to remove the distractions that have given note-taking on computers lower marks for memory and comprehension. “Even if you are using computers exactly as they’re supposed to be used, might that still be hurting learning?”
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Support for Teachers in a Competency Education School
From Getting Smart Blog – As a growing body of schools and districts recognize the need for deeper, blended, competency-based learning environments for students, how must the role of teachers evolve to create and sustain them?
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Catching Cheating Using Google Drive
From Ken Halla – Now that Google Classroom is finally getting better than using Google Drive, I will tell you how to catch cheating in Google Classroom later in the fall, but for now if your students turn in assignments using Google Drive below is a very quick video showing how to catch copying in your class and between sections of different teachers.
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Google Classroom: Add Other Documents to Class Folder
From Alice Keeler – I added collaborative notes documents to Google Classroom as “Students can edit file.” I did not want to push out a copy of the document to each student since the students are working in groups. This means that the collaborative document does NOT show up in the Google Classroom class folder for the student.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (August 23, 2015)
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What a Student Learned From a Short Experiment in Self-Directed Learning | MindShift | KQED News
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Updated Comparison of Backchannel & Informal Assessment Tools
From Richard Byrne – my chart comparing tools for backchannels and informal assessment.
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A Quick Letter to Ed-Tech Salespeople – Reinventing K-12 Learning – Education Week
Amen, @patrickmlarkin! | A Quick Letter to #EdTech Salespeople http://t.co/jqucgpp1oA via @educationweek cc: @edtech_stories #edtechchat
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How playing pro basketball made me a better entrep
How playing pro basketball made me a better entrepreneur @JFleeg http://t.co/1Qea6IId2y
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Patrick Larkin on Twitter: “@Kevreadenn Clearly he has no relationship with educators.”
To tell the truth our “lounge” is usually empty, we’re working with kids, staff. https://t.co/bZS2lC7s78
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They were extinct days after installation. https://t.co/jyB2QcQlJk
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How do Americans use Twitter for news? | Pew Research Center
How do Americans use @Twitter for news? A fine-grained look at news topics, news media accounts followed, and more http://t.co/8urkj6yR0h
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Hosted by @campbell_brown. Their 1% class contempt for hard working teachers is toxic. Both Wall Street backed. https://t.co/rw1Kng3S8E
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My favorite part of this tool, is that it was made by a student. #1to1techat #edchat #educoach https://t.co/5J3yjnEjRk
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Successful Parent Teacher Communication Tips
Some great tips on home school communication from Vicki Davis
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Create Personalized Teacher Newsletters for Each Student
From Alice Keeler – One reason a parent might not read the classroom newsletter is that it is not about their child. Here is a solution for creating weekly newsletters for parents that are individualized for their child.
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The Learning Nation: What Are The EXPERIENCES You Create?
Great question from Cale Birk – “How can we make the EXPERIENCE that our __________ (students/parents) have when they ___________ (walk into our building/register at our school/go to our website, etc) SO POSITIVE that they want to communicate this experience with others?”.
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The Learning Design Opportunity of Our Time
From Tom Vander Ark – If you’re interested in human development, the opportunity to learn almost anything has never been better.
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Building a Table of Contents in Google Sheets | The Gooru
From Google Gooru
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FROM THE ONION 😉
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Google Couldn’t Survive with One Strategy
From Harvard Biz – Page’s distinction brings to life the idea of strategic ambidexterity: a company’s ability of exploring new practices, products and business models while exploiting existing ones at the same time—a capability which is both remarkably valuable and equally hard in practice.
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In response to a tweet asking how to print a folder of student work in Google Drive I wrote a script that will list all the files in a folder in your Google Drive and create a PDF.
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Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! & More: How to Optimize Emails for Different Email Clients
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Happy 9th birthday! (a few thoughts on blogging and online learning)
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A report confronting the truths about teacher Professional Development
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Micro-credentials are exactly that, but smaller, bite size, awarded for the demonstration of very specific competencies. And what comes with a micro-credential is not a certificate or a diploma, but a badge. This is familiar to many readers, I realize, but for those it is not, think Boy Scout or Girl Scout Merit Badges. In today’s digital environment, you can create an account to host your badges, such as Mozilla’s Open Badges platform (http://openbadges.org/), Credly (https://credly.com/), or Achievery, (http://achievery.com/ ) and export them to LinkedIn, Twitter, or elsewhere.
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Simple Rules: An Important Step in School Transformation? | The Future of K-12 Education
Here is a concrete example that many schools are struggling with: We want to find time in the daily schedule for… (take your pick: mindfulness, balance, reflection, global programs, capstones, new courses, more sleep for students, teacher collaboration, etc). But there are a limited number of minutes in the day. And everyone has their own pet need or bit of turf to protect. How do we decide what to add, what to keep, and what to let go?
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7 Questions to End Your Week With
Wisdom, after all, is not about knowing all the answers every minute; it’s about asking the right questions. In the long run, the simple questions you ask yourself on a regular basis will determine the type of person you become.
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The No. 1 Predictor Of Career Success According To Network Science
“What’s often missed is the paradoxical interplay of two of his seemingly opposite qualities; maniacal focus and insatiable curiosity. These weren’t just two random strengths. They may have been his most important as they helped lead to everything else.
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Infographic | 11 Tips for Work/Life Balance
Arianna Huffington’s thoughts on re-energizing, re-centering and getting more rest in her latest book. Based on many discussions we compiled this list of tips to find the elusive work/life balance we all strive for.
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Class Twitter Account: How Your Students Can Tweet | Teacher Tech
From Alice Keeler – I have had several teachers how they can have their students tweet without having a Twitter account. I highly encourage teachers to have a class twitter account and a class hashtag. Here is how to use the class Twitter account.
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Managing a Twitter Chat | Teacher Tech
From Alice Keeler – This post is for people who run a Twitter Chat or are thinking of starting one up. I thought I would share the process I went through to organize and manage the weekly Twitter Chat #profchat.
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Trick for Creating a Class Twitter
Alice Keeler answers FAQ’s about starting a class Twitter account.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (August 16, 2015)
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Great list to share with new teachers
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From the New York Times – Colleges helping students deal with these questions: What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? And how do I use my time here at college to build on the answers to these tough questions?
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Despite what you decide to do about smartphone use at school, it’s time for K-12 schools to start thinking about adding social media training for students. Some school districts already have mandatory classes based on approved curriculums and there are lots of great resources out there to help put something together.
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From Bo Adams – What if “students” created the courses – at least some of the courses – offered at school? What if those courses were the kind that many people would describe as “the most rigorous” a school offers? This is innovation.
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Great guidelines for school districts in developing social media policies from Scott McLeod
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Gppd list of things to ask for school communities looking to change grading practices
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The entire process started with one simple question: “Is this room designed for me or for my students?” It was on this question that I based every decision I made when it came to designing the room.
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Chris Milk uses cutting edge technology to produce astonishing films that delight and enchant.
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“@educationweek: What makes a good school board member? A great read! : http://t.co/lvYAPbofpr #ewopinion”
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From Harvard Business Review – How should we react when an employee is not performing well or makes a mistake?
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From Richard Byrne – As we head into the fall many students will be preparing to take the SAT or ACT. PrepFactory is a free service for high school students can use to prepare for those tests.
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From Richard Byrne – If you can get students blogging early in the year, you can build momentum for the rest of the school year. Here are five things that you could have students blog about in the first week of school.
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From Larry Ferlazzo – The BBC’s “Skillwise” site has a great collection of English games that would be accessible to Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.
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Good reminder of what questions promote higher level thinking.
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Woohoo! MT @TechGoesHome: Free wireless routers! #Comcast upgrades its #InternetEssentials plan http://t.co/0Wh18GFDq6 via @USATODAY
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John Smoltz’s Advice to Young Pitchers http://t.co/GrC1TuYGci
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I cannot wait for school to start…kids are going to crush this! #GlobalGSP https://t.co/s3jznU9HGa cc: @gcouros http://t.co/jcaEnG6QnW
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Teachers need to help their Principals out with this. @carlisleshelley @RyanMulvanny https://t.co/uhiDPaxn85
My Un-Learning Journey 
