Powerpoint for teachers

The website is designed to provide tips to improve technical aspects and ideas to help you make your powerpoint engaging in a classroom setting

Brain POP at school

BrainPOP is an educational program, providing content spanning 6 main subjects including: Science, Math, English, Social Studies, Health and Technology. Within each subject, you will find hundreds of short, animated movies that speak to kids in a language and voice that they understand. Developed according to national standards (NCTM, NSES, & NCTE), BrainPOP's topics present students with an engaging, enlightening, and entertaining view of a given subject.

Visit Brain Pop

Comics across the Curriculum: Science, Math and Technology

The combination of images, words and storytelling can be used to communicate just about anything. Exploring that notion, we spoke to cartoonists, authors and educators about how comics and graphic novels can be used to help readers learn and foster an enduring curiosity about science, technology and math. (full story)

The Evolution Revolution

The Evolution Revolution

(From l.): Mary Ann Hoberman, Deborah Heiligman, Tijs Goldschmidt and Vicki Cobb.

Two hundred years after Charles Darwin began a discussion of human evolution, people are still talking. The discussion, and specifically the issue of teaching evolution to children, continued Sunday at a PEN World Voices panel held at powerHouse Books in Brooklyn. Entitled, "Evolution for Children: The Fight Goes On," the panel brought together authors Vicky Cobb, Tijs Goldschmidt, Deborah Heiligman and Mary Ann Hoberman, all of whom have been in the forefront in one way or another in the quest to keep the teaching of evolution in schools.

read more

Reading is fundamental

Reading Is Fundamental, UK is an initiative of the National Literacy Trust that helps children and young people (aged 0 to 19) to realise their potential by motivating them to read. We promote the fun of reading, the importance of book choice and the benefits to families of having books at home. Our projects provide motivational activities, opportunities for family and community involvement, and free books for children to choose and keep.

Periodic table of comic books

http://www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/index.html
"Click on an element to see a list of comic book pages involving that element," then click on thumbnails to see the whole strip. Another wonderfully sneaky way to interest kids in science.

Teacher Appreciation Week

"Often, when I am reading a good book, I stop and thank my teacher."

– Anonymous

One great teacher can make all the difference. Teachers may not always see the impact of their work on kids and families, but the testimonies we received from parents, teachers, and students themselves are proof that good teaching is a powerful thing. Read the notes of appreciation for inspiration to send an e-card to a teacher who has made a difference in your life. and more ...

Micromodules - short Internet lessons

IMSA's Free Online MicroModules teaching and learning packages are short, self-directed lessons covering a wide range of Internet topics. MicroModules address knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to locate, evaluate and use Internet resources in a learning environment. Taking only 10-60 minutes to complete, the individual modules can be used by anyone from sixth grade through adult learners. Many modules have audio/video components, making them more interesting.

Get the link here

Picking the Right School for an Education Grad Degree

Is it more important to go to a great school or a school near where you want to teach?

When California resident Joshua Arnold gained acceptance to Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, his decision to attend seemed simple—the school is first rate, and Harvard offered him a full scholarship. Harvard's mix of innovative theory and practical experience was exhilarating, but Arnold isn't sure how well it prepared him for the challenges he faces as a principal in South Central Los Angeles, knowledge he might have gained had he gone to ed school closer to home. "My program never talked about educating Latino students in the ways I needed or wanted," Arnold says. "Educating Latino students is not as much of a concern in Boston as it is in Los Angeles. In L.A. it's a really critical issue." ... read more

What Can Cognitive Psychology Do For Teachers?

What, if anything, can knowledge gleaned from cognitive psychology do for classroom teachers? I have heard the gamut of opinions on this subject, from “Anyone who is not a teacher cannot tell teachers anything of value” to “Cognitive science is going to save American education.” (The former opinion was expressed by a teacher; the latter by a college president.)

Let me make explicit what, in my view, results from cognitive psychology can and cannot do for teachers.

read on ...

FIT kids act

Students from Eagan High School in Eagan, Minnesota, discuss the FIT Kids Act and changes to current P.E. standards. View

When Love Hurts, Schools Can Help

Chris Brown’s arrest for assaulting Rihanna may have placed a national spotlight on dating violence, but with one in five high school girls reporting that they’re physically or sexually hurt by their partner, chances are that one may be a student of yours. Health teacher Ann Burke of North Kingstown, RI, created the Lindsay Ann Burke Memorial Fund to educate 7th through 12th graders about dating violence after her daughter was murdered a few years ago by her ex-boyfriend.

Did you have any hint that this would happen to Lindsay?

I had an idea. No one else did. Everyone else said it wouldn’t go that far. Even though she hadn’t admitted to it, in my gut I thought something like this could happen. I was frantic. A lot of mothers have that gut feeling. But it’s not like I knew immediately. Lindsay, like us, had never been educated in domestic violence or dating violence. We didn’t know anyone who had experienced it. But I saw things that didn’t seem right, some red flags, and I started asking around. more » » »

European study shows when teachers like science, students do too

Did you ever blame your teacher for hating science? If you answered yes, you're not alone. New research shows that the shrinking number of students in Europe who choose to study science is influenced by how schools and teachers shape their attitudes. .. more

Tech Giants Offer Help to Schools Seeking Stimulus Money

Tech Giants Offer Help to Schools Seeking Stimulus Money
Anthony Salcito understands the economic challenges K–12 schools face today. That's why the general manager of U.S. education for Microsoft says the $115 billion in federal stimulus money earmarked for education has spurred the tech giant into action. “We’re focused on how we can partner with schools on using these funds,” says Salcito. “We can help articulate the roadmap and connect the dots.”

Other tech firms, including Apple, have also begun contacting schools, with some of them offering to set up seminars and webcasts to walk educators through the process of how to capture some of the money—and, of course, suggest ways to use it. more » » »

Carrying water

(LP/MP):

Students explore a variety of ways water is collected where there is no infrastructure to deliver it to people's homes.

http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/3340

U.K. Mulls Blogging, Tweeting, Podcasting in Primary School Curriculum

Blogging, tweeting, and podcasting are all good and fun, but what about including them in the school curriculum? Folks in the U.K. are considering an overhaul of their elementary school curriculum—and a draft proposal requires kids to master these Web technologies, reports the Guardian.

The proposed curriculum—which would also give teachers more freedom to decide what students concentrate on in classes—marks the biggest change to the U.K.’s primary school education in a decade, and “strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11,” the Guardian says. more » » »

Discovery Conference Welcomes Educators Both in Person and Online

Discovery Conference Welcomes Educators Both in Person and Online
Educators looking to freshen their lesson plans this year might want to check out Spring Into Action, Discovery Education’s fourth annual virtual conference to help teachers incorporate digital content into classwork.

Set for Saturday, April 25, the conference features both webcasts and 13 in-person events across the country highlighted by a virtual lecture, “Building School 2.0,” by Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy, a Philadelphia high school. more » » »

Industry makes pitch that smartphones belong in the classroom

The cellphone industry has a suggestion for improving the math skills of American students: spend more time on cellphones in the classroom.

http://adjix.com/4k67

Myers and Co launch 2nd chances

Author Walter Dean Myers has joined forces with AdLit.org, the National Education Association and the National Council of Teachers of English for a new initiative called “Second Chances,” which is reaching out to parents, teachers and others who have an influence on the lives of children and teens.

check out the AdLit Web site.

Education Secretary Duncan Supports LGBT Anti-Bullying Efforts in Schools

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he’s committed to making schools safe for all students, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender expression.

To back up his words, Duncan recently met with Eliza Byard, executive director of the nonprofit Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and a delegation of students and teachers to talk about the importance of anti-bullying efforts to the administration’s education reform agenda. more » » »

The Semantic Web in Education

What happens when the read-write web gets smart enough to help us organize and evaluate the information it provides?

By Jason Ohler

The mantra of the information age has been “The more information the better!” But what happens when we search the web and get so much information that we can’t sort through it, let alone evaluate it? Enter the semantic web, or Web 3.0. Among other things, the semantic web makes information more meaningful to people by making it more understandable to machines.

... more

Educational cyber-playground

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/

“Provides information about U.S. K-12 public, private, and charter schools in all 50 states. Find Content for Music, Teachers, Internet, Technology, Literacy, Arts and Linguistics. For students, teachers, parents, and policy makers.”

Teaching Twitter could become a class act

• Saved

British school students may soon be learning about William Shakespeare and Ashton Kutcher.

British schoolchildren may soon be studying the tweets of Ashton Kutcher along with the sonnets of Shakespeare.

A leaked Government report due to be released shortly, recommends that British primary school teachers be given much more flexibility in deciding what lessons to teach.

And while it emphasises the continued necessity of teaching traditional subjects such as spelling, history and arithmetic, it also recommends that students be taught about online media and instructed about web-based skills including how to use a spell checker.

more

Magic studio

http://www.magicstudio.co.uk/

“Magic Studio enables you to build and share interactive learning resources quickly and easily, with no specialist skills required. It's an online service so you don't have to install any complicated software - you can access your account from anywhere with a broadband connection. This means you can prepare content when and where it's convenient and have the flexibility to deliver learning wherever it's needed, both in and outside the classroom.”

Transgender youth face extreme harassment at school, report says

Transgender youth are physically and verbally harassed and face extremely high levels of harassment in school, even more than lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGBT) students, says a new study released by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students.

At the same time, however, transgender youth are more likely to speak out about LGBT issues in the classroom, says “Harsh Realities: The Experiences of Transgender Youth in Our Nation’s Schools,” the first comprehensive study on transgender students. more » » »

The Textbook Problem

Is It Possible to Teach World History in High School? The other day I browsed through a tenth grade world history textbook. It was full of lush color. It offered many angles of entry into history -...
more » » »

Free Access to Digital Textbooks and Bestsellers from Bookshare

Free Access to Digital Textbooks and Bestsellers from Bookshare
Bookshare, the world’s largest accessible digital library for persons with print and learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, is providing free membership to qualified U.S. schools and students thanks to an award from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education (OSEP). more » » »

How Teachers Can Get More Respect, Part 1

Most teachers feel that their profession does not get the respect it deserves. In 2000 a survey of teachers conducted by Scholastic reported that 79% felt that respect for the profession is a problem in teacher retention. I don’t think much has changed since 2000.

read on ...

Quiz Builder

Quiz Builder
The big melt
Global warming affects the polar regions. Use the introduction to the International Polar Year to select the appropriate answers

What Does Obama's Education Agenda Mean For Us?

Taking School Seriously

President Obama outlined his view of K-12 public education yesterday, www.latimes.com/classified/jobs/news/la-me-obama-education-2009mar11,0,817684.story

Most of the ne...

more » » »

accessED

education.au - accessED

http://educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/pid/573

accessED is a tool that allows you to test your website, intranet or learning management system content for conformance to W3C accessibility guidelines. More information and links to the toolbar can be found through the education.au website.

Comics, Power and Society:

Q and A with Louis Schubert and Arthur Nishimura

At the City College of San Francisco, two professors have employed their enthusiasm for comics in an innovative approach to teaching. In their course Comics, Power and Society, Arthur Nishimura and Louis Schubert use a variety of comics and graphic novels as a creative and engaging way to introduce students to the social sciences. We were fortunate to get an interview with Schubert and Nishimura about how they use graphic novels and comics in this course. (full story)

Book - You can't say you can't play

You Can't Say You Can't Play

by Vivian Gussin Paley

I picked up this book at my daughters' school parent lending library- a school that works hard to implement policies like 'you can't say you can't play' (YCSYCP) and it often works. It certainly works inter-age but problems remain between age-mates. I, too, was a rejected child many times and hate to see any child rejected.

... more

Flawed Assumptions Undergird the Program at the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills

Posted: 01 Mar 2009 09:42 PM PST

At the forefront is the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (hereafter, P21), a group that seeks to serve as a catalyst for educators, business leaders, and government seeking to change the curricula, teaching methods, and assessments used in K-12 schools. Ten states have joined the effort, agreeing to design new standards, assessments, and professional development programs in line with the P21 goals.

read more ...

Free Microsoft curriculum encourages students to be good 'digital citizens'

"Students interact with music, movies, software, and other digital content every day—but many don’t fully understand the rules surrounding the appropriate use of these materials, or why this should even matter. To help teach students about intellectual property rights and encourage them to become good “digitalcitizens,” software giant Microsoft Corp. has unveiled a free curriculum that offers cross-curricular classroom activities aligned with national standards."

http://digitalcitizenshiped.com/

WI Schools Ban Facebook, IM Fraternizing Between Staff, Students

A student calling her teacher to check in about a field trip? Not a problem. The two friending one another on Facebook is another story. Per new policy, the School District of Elmbrook in Brookfield, WI, has banned all chatter between Elmbrook staff and students on instant messaging or social networking applications not sponsored by the district. The policy, approved by the school board on February 10, stipulated a range of “practices considered irresponsible,” including personal communication between staff and students via social networking and IM. more » » »

Code of silence: students who alert teachers of student behavious

Students who feel connected to their peers and teachers are more inclined to alert a teacher or principal if they hear a fellow student “wants to do something dangerous,” according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association. http://adjix.com/4wx9

Bullying among young children

Bullying Among Young Children - A Guide for Parents - PDF


Bullying Among Young Children - A Guide for Teachers and Carers - PDF


The guides provide useful advice to parents, teachers and other carers on recognising changes in moods and behaviours that are associated with bullying. They also provide strategies to help children who bully and those who are bullied.

Quote for the day

"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."
-- Marilyn vos Savant

Resources for teachers

Teachnology - providing free and easy to use resources for teachers dedicated to improving the education of today's generation of students.

FREE access to 28,500 lesson plans, Teaching tips and themes, 7,500 free printable worksheets, games and donload, read-to-use rubrics, reviews sites, printable genertors and webquests.

Teachnology

AASL Releases 'Standards for the 21st-Century Learner in Action'

For those of you wondering how the American Association of School Librarians' (AASL) new learning standards are being incorporated into school library programs, the wait is over.

AASL has just released Standards for the 21st-Century Learner in Action, which takes an in-depth look at Standards for the 21st-Century Learner and examines how the skills in it relate to each other.

Accompanied by colorful pages and graphics, the publication provides benchmarks along with examples that show how to put the learning standards into action at different grade levels.

A glossary is also provided to define key concepts found throughout the book.

more » » »

John Butler - fun page

http://www.johnbutlerart.com/pages/fun.asp

Children's illustrator and writer John Butler provides two interactive stories for very young children: Whose nose and toes? and Whose baby am I? Children move the mouse to find the matching animal. The simple easy to read text is displayed alongside.

Disrupting the educational status quo

[Via Durff's blog]

"How do we move to a student centric system?" asked Michael Horn : http://maestro.sevenstaracademy.org/aventacontent/Video/2009-01-14%2016.03%20Coming%20Changes%20in%20Education_%20Implications%20for%20Christian%20School%20Leaders.wmv

A Vision of Students today - a Michael Wesch update

What went wrong?


How did institutions designed for learning become so widely hated by people who love learning?


The video seemed to represent what so many were already feeling, and it became the focal point for many theories. While some simply blamed the problems on the students themselves, others recognized a broader pattern. Most blamed technology, though for very different reasons. Some simply suggested that new technologies are too distracting and superficial and that they should be banned from the classroom. Others suggested that students are now “wired” differently. Created in the image of these technologies, luddites imagine students to be distracted and superficial while techno-optimists see a new generation of hyper-thinkers bored with old school ways.

LBJ & Gene Simmons of Kiss? (Ten Teachers Who Made a Mark in Another Field)

Everyone is concerned about the number of teachers leaving the profession. These ten individuals left teaching and went on to achieve greatness in their chosen fields. For some, you might think it possible that they would have done still more good remaining in the classroom. For others (#1, #9) most would agree that it’s just as well that students learned from someone else.

... more

Video - The Road to Meaning

The process of reading is very like that of driving a car. As readers, it is our charge to "navigate" our way to meaning as we enter nonfiction texts and tasks. For students the, road to meaning in informational text is one paved with challenge and complexity. This presentation explores what great "drivers" need to do before, during, and after reading to successfully arrive at their final destination...UNDERSTANDING THE BIG IDEA!

Quotation for the week

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Abraham Flexner

More quotations about education and teaching ...

Graphic Novels Come Out From Under the Desk at Fordham University

On January 31st, FordhamUniversity’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) hosted Graphica in Education: Graphic Novels come out from under the Desk, a conference to discuss a pedagogical approach to the use of graphic novels and graphica in K-12 classrooms.

...more

Impatience with Bad Teaching

I am sick to death of all the people who come here and say they’re going to make this school better but nothing happens. It’s a disgrace.”

That’s what a young woman said to me the other day as I sat with her in her art class.

... more

Lincoln - resources

In this bicentennial year for Abraham Lincoln, we have a chance to examine the man, his life and his place in history.

Share the resources, the activities and lesson plans with children and students and encourage them to evaluate Lincoln.

Visit the booklist and let the kids learn about who Lincoln was, his ideas, his influences and his life. There is values education here as well as history lessons, and research skills development.

The Digital Library for Earth System Education

The Digital Library for Earth System Education Provides Individualized Reports for Teachers on the Effectiveness of Educational Resources in Their Own Classrooms

Abstract

We have developed and tested a system in which teachers and their students who have used an educational resource in the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) both submit on-line reviews of that resource using DLESE's Community Review System.

We aggregate the students' reviews and generate an individualized report for the instructor on how his or her own students view the resource. The report for science teachers is formatted to show how well, on several dimensions, the resource worked.

The report for science education professors is formatted to highlight how well students reflect on their own learning processes and identify what makes an educational resource effective.

Read the whole article

10 Digital Writing Opportunities You Probably Know and 10 You Probably Don’t

http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2008/12/12/10-digital-writing-opportunities-you-probably-know-and-10-you-probably-dont/

ways that technology could support the process of writing and drive the eventual outcomes in the classroom - interesting reading and some tools

The Presidential Inauguration - booklists, the speech, teacher resources and activities

This is such a significant event in history, and in the social arena for Americans and for the world
Download the Inaugural speech here
Find lesson plans and teacher resources here
Use the booklists of kids books - Inauguration Booklist, and The Road to the White House Booklist

Comics in the Classroom

Long ghettoized in the U.S. as puerile, comics are now showing up in grade school classes and college courses

read more

A Science of Education Requires Explicit Goals for Education

In the world of education, science is in fashion.

When people debate policy you don’t often hear them say “everyone knows that thus and so is true” but you frequently hear them say “the data indicate . . .”

Although Americans are boosters of the scientific method, we are missing an essential component of a coherent scientific research program of education — a definition of our goals for schooling. Without that, science applied to education will be inefficient at best, and more likely will be misleading because education research will be guided not by the goals set for the field but more likely by expedience.

If that happens — and it may already be happening — we all get a warped view of what schooling is and of which outcomes of education are important.

more...

New year

I have just completed a page of resources for "New Year". There are lesson plans, crafts and material for other cultures' new years.

You can access it here.