Start with a Question

Source: Pixabay I was recently in a personal teacher training session regarding the use of a particular edtech tool. The purpose of the tool is to enable teachers to distribute and students to complete multimedia assignments. This is typical in my new role as an digital learning coach. The tool isn't important, but at some point during that meeting a question was posed: What if the teacher doesn't accept late work? Is it possible for the student to access this assignment beyond the due date? So, this would mean a student would get a zero for anything he failed to submit on time, even if he completed it a day, an hour, or a few minutes late. My immediate reaction in the moment was to respond with yet another question: Why wouldn't a teacher accept late work? Then the student doesn't get to learn from it. So, we chatted briefly about how different educators have different grading policies, and then moved on to continue exploring the edtech tool. But I can...

Public education is changing.  But change is slow when new programs, ideas, or teaching methods don't fit into existing structures. Last spring I proposed a Student Help Desk program for our high school.  My hope was for students to have the opportunity to create tutorials that would help teachers and students integrate BYOD more smoothly and successfully at our school.  See, I don't believe in tech for tech's sake.  But our students are already bringing incredibly powerful smartphones and tablets to school, so why not teach them to leverage that power to enhance their academic experience?  BYOD can help students: collaborate ( Google Drive , Prezi , Padlet , messaging apps) create multimedia projects ( Animoto , Videolicious , Educreations , ChatterPix ) stay organized ( Evernote , Google Drive ) test their learning ( Socrative , SurveyMonkey , Quizlet ) This is how professionals are getting things done, so why shouldn't our students be working this w...

About 100 of the 8th graders from Parker Middle School went on a climbing field trip today.  I know it was a good day for them because... They pushed themselves harder than they'd planned to.  They cheered for each other unconditionally.  They were exhausted, hungry, and proud at the end of the day. Couldn't have picked a better way to spend a hot Friday just before the end of the school year. Tech Check: I used some copyrighted music in the video so the restrictions require that it must be viewed on a PC and that it can't be viewed on smartphones or mobile devices. Click here if you're interested and  check out metro ROCK .  They did a fantastic job motivating the kids, keeping them moving, and teaching them about balancing safety and risk-taking.

For a couple days only half of the 8th grade (about 100 students) were here at Parker Middle School while the rest traveled on a school trip.  Four subject area teachers had to come up with a way to keep them busy, happy, and learning. Challenge accepted. First we looked into the educational movies that are playing at the nearby IMAX at Jordan's.  We found Galapagos .  It is only 40 minutes and can be watched in glorious 3D!  Here's the trailer. Then we discovered the Teacher Resource Packet also available online. Before we knew it, we were English, Spanish, and History teachers guiding 8th graders through concepts like tides, currents, geology, and natural selection. Day 1 : In preparation for the film our students learned about natural selection, island formation through volcanic eruptions, and scientific poetry.  In my class they were tracking the survival of animals with various adaptations (paper dots of differ...

Problem : Slightly less than half of our 8th grade middle school team students are out of the country on a French trip to Quebec.  What do 3 teachers and 2 paraeducators do for two WHOLE school days with 66 adolescents who resent being in school while their friends are on an adventure in another country? Solution : Time Travel... Yup. One of my missions as I spend one year teaching 8th grade, with the opportunity to work with a team of teachers who specialize in different subject areas, is creating as much interdisciplinary work as possible.  So, since the two subject area teachers remaining at school during the 2 day experiment were the science teacher and me, I saw an opening. I teach medieval world history , including imperial China . She teaches earth science , including the movement of tectonic plates and earthquakes . Hold on to your hats, people, I have an idea! You see, in imperial China people believed the the emperor had the right to rule because of the ...

I have had the opportunity this year to work on a team of teachers of different expertise.  Half of the students on our team take French and the other half take Spanish.  I was looking for a way for our students to do an interdisciplinary project between their world language class and my social studies class, but I needed to coordinate it with several other teachers (French, Spanish, Special Education, Language Learning Disabled, and 2 paraeducators) and almost 120 students.  We decided on ARCHITECTURE. Some of the most important landmarks in France and Spain are incredible works of architecture from the medieval era, which is the time period I teach in social studies. For the French students we decided on Notre Dame Cathedral For the Spanish students we decided on the Real Alcazar. We started by asking students to research the history of the structure itself.  Why was it built?  Who built it?  When and why were changes made the...