Great integration of social studies and Internet tools
Fifth grade students at Lewis Elementary in Portland, OR, are using the free services Flickr and MapBuilder.net in their European Exploreres social studies unit.
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Ants have been able to teach
In a recent study, Ants Are First Non-Humans to Teach.
Cold, Ice, and Snow Safety
From KidsHealth.gov, Cold, Ice, and Snow Safety.
Don’t interrupt me
New research shows that meetings and interruptions have a negative effect on our well being that may “…contribute to burnout, anxiety, depression and other negative emotions“. Combine meetings with interruptions from students, parents, other teachers, and principals, and you have a recipe for grouchy teachers! A person takes 8-10 minutes to get back into a creative state following one interruption. Here are some ideas I had to help you minimize or eliminate interruptions:
- Students - Lay down rules on when a student is allowed to ask questions or contribute to a discussion. Create procedures for the student to follow to request help or use the bathroom. One idea to ask for help is to use a simple paper cup. If the cup is on the student’s desk or computer, he would like a moment of your time at your earliest convenience.
- Parents - Notify parents when you are available, and distribute your e-mail address. Let them know they are free to e-mail you at any time. Keep the lines of communication open, but tell them that you are not available to take a call during the day. Sign up for a free voicemail account at K7.net and give that number out to parents. K7 can e-mail you your voice mail.
- Teachers - A simple thing such as “If the door is closed, email me” can work wonders.
- Office - Notify the office that you check e-mail twice a day, and that it is your preferred method of communication. Along the same lines, be sure to check your e-mail twice a day!
Follow the idea for teachers above, and close the door when possible. - General Ideas - The best line of defence is a good offence. Let others know what interruptions are acceptable to you. You have e-mail, use it to eliminate as many interruptions as you can.
The key is to put you in control of your interruptions, and let you take care of them when you have time. Everything above is workable (except for emergencies).
Can Wikipedia can be saved for our schools?
Andy Carvin on his blog presents a case for Turning Wikipedia into an Asset for Schools. Instead of blindly following what’s in Wikipedia, use it to present “teachers with an excellent authentic learning activity in which students can demonstrate their skills as scholars”:
[...]Take a group of fifth grade students and break them into groups, with each group picking a topic that interests them. Any topic. Dolphins, horses, hockey, you name it.
Next, send the groups of kids to Wikipedia to look up the topic they selected. [...] The horse, for example, has an extensive entry on the website. It certainly looks accurate and informative, but is it? Unfortunately, there are no citations for any of the facts claimed about horses on the page.
[...]The group of students breaks down the content on the page into manageable chunks, each with a certain amount of facts that need to be verified. The students then spend the necessary time to fact-check the content.
Once the Wikipedia entry has been fact-checked, the teacher creates a Wikipedia login for the class. They go to the entry’s talk page and present their findings, laying out every idea that needs to be corrected. Then, they edit the actual entry to make the corrections, with all sources cited. Similarly, for all the parts of the entry they’ve verified as accurate, they list sources confirming it.
CNN.com - Study: College students lack literacy for complex tasks - Jan 20, 2006
Latest study by the Pew Charitable Trusts finds that College students lack literacy for complex tasks:
Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.
There are some bright spots:
…compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents. “But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no,” said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.
I see the problem as two fold. Students see that technology can handle most of the mundane tasks, so they don’t need to estimate when they’ll run out of gas, the onboard car computer tells them that they have 23 miles to empty. The other problem is that students think that since they can find any piece of esoteric information on the Internet, they don’t really need to be able to remember facts. This manifests itself when students are presented with a question where the answer is not on a web page.
Winter Olympics lesson plans and resources
Kathy Schrock has put together a ton of resources for using the Winter Olympics in your classroom, including the history of the Olympics, lesson plans, and activities. Check them out at her website.
*UPDATE*: Her site has moved to http://kathyschrock.net/blog/
Google Earth - Available for the Mac or PC
Google Earth, a free application, allows the user to view in 3D places around the world.
Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in — Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.
The Amazing Flash Card Machine - Online Flash Cards
Create online flashcards with The Amazing Flash Card Machine - Online Flash Cards:
Welcome to The Amazing Flash Card Machine, an interactive web application that allows the user to create interactive web-based study flash cards.
Students! Create flash cards to help you study for your next exam. Make them publicly available, and your classmates can study from the same set.
Teachers! Create flash card sets for your students. Assign each set of flash cards it’s own unique username and password giving your students access to them without having to register.
Students and communication
The ‘millennials’ usher in a new era brings up some interesting points in the education of the next generation.
For their grandparents, the bicycle was a symbol of childhood independence.
Today, for many kids and young adults, it is the Internet. “It consumes my life,” said Andrea Thomas, a senior at Miami University. “If I’m not texting my friends over the cell phone, I have my laptop with me and I’m IM’ing them. Or I’m doing research on Google. Honestly, the only reason any one of my college friends use the library is for group meetings.”
Does this just enhance the shorter attention span, or is it the root of a deeper problem? Teachers will need to learn to adapt to this new type of student, and bring in lesson plans that not only strive to be engaging, but also use different types of media. The teacher who complains about how bad their classroom behaves is the teacher that only uses the textbook and worksheets.