A colleague shared this information with me and I can’t help but pass it on to you. Lewis and Clark Were Here is the title of an expedition by Maureen Oliver and Tony Fernandez in which they will be following the Lewis and Clark trail from the Pacific Northwest to St. Louis. They anticipate that their foot journey slated to begin in May will be completed in November. Thus I would estimate the South Dakota Portion of their trek to be in the fall. They will be documenting their trip with video, via facebook, their website (linked above) and twitter.  This may be a great way for students to remain engaged with learning over the summer and perhaps a great field trip for those of you close to the Missouri River. I would bet Maureen and Tony would be more than willing to chat with students for a little while about their expedition and the similarities and differences between them and the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Do you feel connected to the students you work with, your teenagers or any millennial that you come in contact with? The Pew Research Center has developed a How Millennial Are You quiz, the 14 question quiz is simple but quickly shows you a difference in generations. Looking at the questions parallels how the world is flat and how technology invades the lives of millennials. Take two minutes, check it out and see how your millennial results compare to your coworkers, students and teenagers!

• Educational Leadership:Multiple Measures:Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards

  tags: digitalwhiteboard, Marzano, studentachievement

  • Using interactive whiteboards was associated with a 16 percentile point gain in student achievement.

  • statistically significant relationship with student achievement.

    • The first is the learner-response device

    • the second feature is the use of graphics and other visuals to represent information

    • and the third feature is the interactive whiteboard reinforcer—applications that teachers can use to signal that an answer is correct or to present information in an unusual context

  • Teachers should think through how they intend to organize information

    • Digital flipcharts should contain visuals, but those visuals should clearly focus on the important information.

    • Teachers should discuss the correct answer along with the incorrect answers, making sure to elicit opinions from as many students as possible.

  • Interactive whiteboards have great potential as a tool to enhance pedagogical practices in the classroom and ultimately improve student achievement. However, simply assuming that using this or any other technological tool can automatically enhance student achievement would be a mistake. As is the case with all powerful tools, teachers must use interactive whiteboards thoughtfully, in accordance with what we know about good classroom practice.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Our director gave a speech recently that reminded me of one critical quality today’s learners appear to be missing that the learners of not so long ago mostly shared–a willingness to jump through the hoops. 

When I was in school, and even while I was teaching, most students had figured out that to succeed you would have to sit through some boring lectures, fill out some mundane worksheets, color in the countries on the blank geography map, etc.  A few rebellious ones would refuse or check out or eventually drop out, but most of us just took it as the only way to graduate and get a decent job.

Today’s kids have access to a plethora of information and spend most of their time engaged–whether through video games or online activities or through after school sports or dance or music.  All of this meaningful, connected activity translates into less willingness to put up with non-engaging classroom activities.  And as a colleague pointed out, they’re not refusing out of spite, or to be disrepectful, or even to rebel…they just don’t see why they should, and they are more likely to ask the age old question, “Why do we have to do this?” 

If we don’t have a solid reason that will result in deeper understanding for learners, maybe the new answer is “You shouldn’t.  Let’s do something else.”  This blog entry from Glenn Wiebe sums it up.  As educators, let’s do everything we can to prevent the twinge he feels from happening to other parents…or from becoming a long term heartache.

While reading another blog this morning I came across a great post from a teacher who is using Wikipedia in the classroom. Oh no we may say, “Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source “and trust me I was that teacher especially after some students told me that Greek Orthodoxy was based off the ancient Greek gods at least according to Wikipedia. But the assignment I found is a great source of comparing sources and can be a first step into a research paper.

Mr. Byrne’s students were asked to compare a Wikipedia articles to three different topics discussed in their textbook, The Sand Creek Massacre, The Battle of Little Big Horn and The Fort Laramie Treaties. Then they were to find primary resources to go along with the articles. For a full briefing of what Mr. Byrne was having his students complete check out his blog complete with the outline he used for his class and encourages others to use.

This is a great assignment because Mr. Byrne moves his students from the Knowledge and Comprehension of the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy Model and pushes them to Analysis and Synthesis. Truly a 21st century lesson.

If you haven’t been to www.thinkfinity.org recently, you might want to check out one of its content partner sites. ReadWriteThink has gone through a site redesign and I think you will love it. If you search the lessons, you will notice a new little feature where you can now select the state standards for that lesson!! So now each lesson in ReadWriteThink can be quickly aligned to SD Standards. They have a lot of other new features as well, so please visit the website and check it out. I would love to hear your comments about the features you find exciting and useful. Please comment.

What is BoostUp?

from the site: www.boostup.org

“A boost is encouragement. It could be a text, an email, or even a pat on the back. Boostup is a chance for high school students to get to graduation. Boostup has been helping to decrease dropout rates by giving potential graduates the support they need to finish high school. Because one out of every three high school students in America isn’t graduating — in fact, every school day 7,000 students are dropping out. That’s 1/3 of all public high school students and almost 1/2 of all African American, Hispanic, and Native American teens. By senior year, 40% of all freshmen leave school, which is a staggering total of one million kids a year…That’s where boost comes in. A little (or big) boost goes a long way to keep students in school and on track to graduation. It can be a supportive conversation, text message, email, or a helping hand. There are a lot of teens who could use one right now. Find out how you can boost a student today.”

How great is it to be able to help someone with just kind words! I sent a boostup; how about you?

I discovered Memorize.com today and I find that it is quite useful. The site allows you to memorize thousands of items either through matching answers, multiple choice questions or answering the question in your head, having them reveal the answer and then self correct. Thousands of categories that individuals have already created to assist in memorizing some being, states & capitals, countries & capitals, elements from the periodic tables, foreign languages etc. If flash cards aren’t your learning style when you scroll to the bottom of Memorize’s homepage you will see their interactive diagram section which is perfect for map activities.  

I took my last post about Digital Dialect and created some German/English flash cards focused on fruits and vegetables. A great aspect of memorize is that I didn’t have to set up an account to create my flash cards! After I created my account it did assign my computer a username the site remembers but I only had to enter in the cryptic Human Verification Message we’re all accustomed to when creating accounts, no personal information was needed. You can click on the username they assign you and create a personalized one if you so desired. Once you’ve created your flash cards there is a share feature on the right hand side of the page.

You can also copy and paste the hyperlink to an email, share via Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, or several other networking sites. If you have students that continually make note cards for learning they may love this site and if their phone has internet access they will access to their flashcards at all times. Definitely a handy tool!

With Thomas Friedman declaring that the “World is Flat” again there is always talk about foreign languages in school. Some districts have even opened up language immersion schools so that students truly learn a language. But for many schools foreign language is a still taught in a block of time and may be hard for older students to grasp quickly. However, Digital Dialects may be a great solution for students. The site has 59 languages to explore complete with a variety of learning games for each. Most games are focused at beginning learners but some games are available for advanced students. Audio is included with many of the games so learners can continually hear the correct pronunciation and grow in their learning. Lesser known languages such as Maori, native to New Zealand, only has 4 games whereas French has 19 games. Areas of focus include but are not limited to time, days of the week, basic vocabulary, counting, the alphabet and colors. I believe these would be a great supplement to any foreign language class and will assist students in their homework and basic grasp of the language they’re studying.

Are you looking for thousands of FREE books and magazines? Google has your not so new but revised answer. Simply go to books.google.com and you will have “pages” of books at your fingertips. Some books are only for preview but thousands of others are available to be read from your computer, downloaded and can be embedded on your webpage.
The site homepage contains several categories let’s say you want to find The Scarlett Letter simply click on literature on your new page several book covers will appear but to ensure you can read the entire book click full view only and The Scarlett Letter and other literature books will appear in their entirety. The Classics, no longer under copyright, are with free EPUB download include complete books and issues of LIFE Magazine are available in their entirety.
So now when copies of your classics are getting worn and pages are missing you may be able to send your students online to read the book for free. If you’re students are self selecting projects and one wants to analyze how marketing has changed or not changed in the past 70 years they can flip back through old magazines for a firsthand look at what was done. Or if you’re looking for some research and know which book a sentence is in but you don’t know the page number simply type in the sentence and Google books will give you the answer. This is definitely a great resource for teachers, students and anyone who loves to read.