I have been trying to keep up on the happenings at NECC. There are so many sources of information. As I am reading the blogs, new post keep appearing I could do this all day and night it seems. Two of the posts got my attention, Kevin Clark’s REMC Ramblings and Wesley Fryer’s Speed of Creativity. The general tone of these posts is that there are lots of tools, so now what do you do with them and what is…
I am currently taking a course on using Moodle, developing a professional development course to run on Moodle and helping a variety of teachers create their own Moodle courses. I am excited about the possibilities of extending the classroom experience with Moodle, as well as, developing a 100% online class. As I build my course I find myself thinking about the curriculum and its presentation very differently then when I taught face-2-face. In all educational experiences, learning takes place as…
Unlike the personal blog where you only need to look after yourself, the classroom blog is a bit more complicated. As educators we are charged with keeping our students safe. School districts must comply with the Children’s Internet Safety Act and in doing such must come up with tons of policies. So how do you prepare your students with 21st communication skills and comply with all the rules and regs. This is where I have doing a lot of reading…
So how do you give more swings at the bat? Most of my teaching experience has been at the middle school level with some high school teaching mixed in for good measure. I have had little experience as a teacher in the elementary level. So I will offer some ideas at the MS and HS level if you have some suggestions at the elementary level, I would love for you to share them. If we had all the time in…
I recently had a conversation with a good friend and colleague of mine; he is a very smart man and knows his stuff. We were discussing how to meet the needs of the varied children in the classroom. We both believe that all children learn, and that they come to the classroom with different skills and experiences, and they have different rates of growth. He has a good metaphor for this “some children just need more swings at the bat.”…
In my last entry I commented that what they [students] needed were options. As teachers we need lots of options as well. We can not create all the options. We need to collaborate, share and communicate. We need to do this together. We need to be members of the learning community. We can not work in isolation. We need to model how knowledge is created, a sharing and building of ideas in community. Whether we talk face-to-face or through the…
We are under a mandate to make sure ALL our students achieve high academic standards. What this means in most places is doing more of the same. We increase class time, cut out electives, and have some kids double up on Math and English. If it wasn’t working the first time why should more of the same be any better? I am oversimplifying. I know individual teachers who are striving to offer a more differentiated learning experience, schools who are…