Start with a Question

Podcast Use #1: Allow parents to hear, from their child's own mouth, what went on in class today. " So, what did you learn at school today? " Now parents will actually know the answer to the question before they ask at the dinner table! My F block honors freshmen started researching various topics related to slavery in the American colonies during the 17th and 18th Centuries. Here are the results of their preliminary research today. After allowing them one class period to research certain online databases and the online textbook, I asked one representative from each group to talk about an interesting fact they learned today. Using a digital voice recorder, iTunes, and Audacity (an audio file editing program) I pulled their recordings together into a podcast. I posted this on our Edline class website and emailed a notification home so parents can check it out as well! Powered by Podbean.com Podcast Use #2: Provide students with step by step audio-visual instructions fo...

Over February Break my family took a trip that we have been planning for an entire year. We rented a beautiful three bedroom, three bathroom home in the mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado . There was even a hot tub on the deck for us to enjoy while the snowflakes danced around us in the steam coming off the bubbling water. We could take a short shuttle ride to the chairlift each day, and ski right to our door each afternoon when our legs were finally too tired to carry us down the mountain any more. We had everything we needed... full kitchen, washer and dryer, even a crib for my little daughter. And yet... there was no wireless Internet connection. I can't tell you how many times my father said they words, "We could look it up if we had wireless!" He actually called the property management company and complained contending that wireless Internet access should be considered a basic amenity in resort accomodations. Finally, on the last night my brother worked a little mag...

My Personal Challenge I have been working hard to teach my students research and technology skills this year. My freshmen have learned: - to read and summarize information from several sources; - to create an annotated bibliography using Turabian format; - to look up and use images from Creative Commons without violating copyright; - to use Google Scholar to find reliable scholarly sources for research; - to create a Google account and share editing privileges with multiple classmates; - to link Google Presentations with Google Documents. My goals for the rest of the year are for my students to be able: - to properly quote and credit primary sources with endnotes; - to write a research paper with a strong supported thesis; - and to create a documentary with PhotoStory. I think they can do it! My Latest Challenge to My Students Here is their latest research project using Google Applications: They had to create a lesson, complete with visuals, a handout, and optional multimedia on an a...

Author Disclaimer A combination of President Obama's State of the Union Address, an NPR broadcast this week, and the ongoing debate in the media motivated me to write this particular post. It's a tough topic, but I'm going to attempt to tackle it with as much grace as possible. Please feel free to comment at the end and share your thoughts. The State of Education President Obama made an impassioned call for education reform in his State on the Union Address on Wednesday, January 27. Now, this year, we've broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. And the idea here is simple: Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform -- reform that raises student achievement; inspires students to excel in math and science; and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to the inner city. F...

My blog post is late this week, but I have a pretty great excuse. In the past 24 hours I fell skiing, felt a pretty horrible pain in my left foot, managed to make my way down the hill on just my right ski (only because I have been skiing for 26 out of my 29 years on this planet and I'm a decent skier), limped into the lodge to report my injury to my mom, iced/elevated/wrapped/ibuprofen..... and finally gave up and decided it wasn't going to get better. I had to go to the Emergency Room up here in North Conway, New Hampshire . So here is my question.... why did my visit to the ER take so long? The process was inefficient and frustrating for me, and I was definitely NOT the patient in the most pain. I can't imagine how awful it must have been for the guy in his early 20s who had a separated shoulder, or the woman who was pale white and clearly nauseous. Here is the process. First I went to the ER at 5pm last night. 1. Go to front desk. 2. Sit in waiting room to fill out paper...

What is Weebly? The National History Day organization runs competitions around the country in which students in both junior and senior divisions are challenged to conduct broad scholarly research and demonstrate their understanding and analysis of a topic through papers, exhibit boards, documentary movies, live performances or websites. This year NHD introduced a new free website design tool called Weebly . Since some of my sophomore honors students would be using this tool to design their NHD projects, I thought it would be wise to learn the tool myself. Since then, I have become inextricably hooked and have used Weebly in a variety of ways. Uses for Weebly... So Far! 1. Freshman Research Project Freshmen arrive at high school a bit bleary-eyed and overwhelmed. Often, but not always, high school is their first introduction to in-depth research and annotated bibliographies. Instead of introducing the research process with the traditional paper assignment, I thought I could challenge ...

My most recent assignment for my graduate class was to make an edit to Wikipedia that remained for at least one week. Although I now teach high school, I spent the last two years teaching at the 8th grade level. I attended training for and taught throughout the school year using the History Alive! curriculum. So, I thought I would see what Wikipedia had to offer regarding their programs. The only entry happened to reference the text that my district purchased to fit the new curriculum map for Social Studies 6-12; The Medieval World and Beyond , so I had experience working with it. I was disconcerted to notice that the entry was extremely biased and, although backed up with links to outside information, contained no balanced information whatsoever. A quote from the article as I found it: The book was criticized for having religious propaganda and stating Muslim myths as fact. When a reviewer on Textbook League asked an officer of TCI to tell him what the source or sources of the text...