The Flipped Classroom: Introduction to Technology and Teaching Techniques by Cristine Boles, Emily Curtiss, Peter Hanson, Sarah Ingold, Shelby Johnson, David Kelly, Yukari Nakagawa, Kiley Purchio, Jennifer Bardsley (illustrator)
Let me start out with.. wow.. that is a long list of authors. I stumbled upon this book while doing some research about flipping classrooms in rural environments.
FAIL. It’s a word that among most of the population has a very negative connotation. People get defensive when the word is used, and often, rightfully so.
Now, there is a movement about FAIL. Many say that FAIL stands for First Attempt in Learning. I take issue with this in some ways. Continue reading
Poetry. Walk into any middle or high school English class, and you will hear a variety of noises emanating from the room. Some will be excited, giving noises of joy. Others, and likely in far greater numbers, will groan as if in utter pain. So, how do we combat this? Continue reading
Ask a public school administrator about a cost effective way to try to go 1:1 in a school, and the odds are a good many of them will say to buy Chromebooks. We had the privilege of being asked to come to a school to pioneer paperless classrooms. We were always known as those teachers who were out there, dancing around the room, doing whatever we could to keep kids engaged. We were also known as those who were always looking for new ways to engage students. To us, this sounded perfect. Continue reading
So, a few months ago I stumbled upon Fakebook. Fakebook is a tool put out by classtools.net that allows students to create what looks a lot like a Facebook page.
I used this while the class read The Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan. I assigned one of the three major characters to each student, and they were tasked with creating a Fakebook page for their assigned character. Continue reading
Twitter is the place to be. If you want up to date information, feedback, PD, or pretty much anything, Twitter is likely a great place to go. The problem with Twitter? How do you manage it when there are several hashtags you wish to follow? What about those amazing Twitter chats you keep hearing about?
Mediocrity. It’s one of those things that we all have an opinion on. Some of us think we have an opinion on it, only to learn that how we think we feel is not really how we feel at all once the rubber hits the road.
It’s incredibly powerful, mediocrity. Much like Olivander says of Voldemort in Harry Potter, “… terrible but great…” Think on that for a minute.
Video. Kids love clips. They can be a great way to hook students when starting a lesson. They are great for reinforcing lessons after you have taught it. They are all over YouTube and the internet. But…
We had the opportunity to go spend a day at the Ron Clark Academy. One of the teachers we got to see was Mr. Wade King. We were looking forward to seeing the staff of the school in action, as we do things in much the same way… well, we thought we did. I guess we still do, just not to the same level, we have to be concerned about neighbors and noise.
One of the techniques we saw in action was what Wade called Tennis Debate. I taught this to my kids last week and it went extremely well. Continue reading