Here are this past week’s blog posts, pretty cool stuff!
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Writing is Innovation – Reading By Example
As an idea, innovation is getting tossed around a lot in education lately. Anytime I see something accepted en masse, I get suspicious. I find it helpful to go back to the meaning and origin of these concepts.
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Classroom Management and Parent Engagement: 8 #EduGoalsMOOC Resources – Teacher Reboot Camp
Today, the Goal-Minded Teacher (#EduGoalsMOOC) free open online course Twitter chat took place about the topics, Classroom Management and Parent Engagement. We invited two incredible leaders in education to be our guest experts for the chat, Dr.
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PORTS – Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students
PORTS is a free distance learning program that uses the power of interactive videoconferencing to help K-12 schools teach common core state standards in the context of California State Parks. Fully developed units of study to prepare and assess lear…
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Bringing State Parks into our Classroom with PORTS – Mari Venturino
Parks Online Resources for Students and Teachers, or PORTS, is a phenomenal and engaging program for K-12 students and their teachers. It’s offered through the California State parks, and is open to all classrooms! Yes, even y’all outside California!
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Plans coming together for recycling wastewater from town of Kingston | Watching Our Water Ways
All the pieces are falling into place for an upgrade of Kingston’s sewage-treatment plant to produce high-quality reclaimed water for irrigation, stream restoration and groundwater recharge.
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What do inquiry teachers believe? – What Ed Said
1. What is your ‘image of the child’? How do you view the learners in your class? Do you believe children are inherently intelligent, curious and creative? Do you recognise their rights and their capabilities? Do you trust them to learn? 2.
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Most drivers in the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles rely on Google Maps, Waze or their in-car GPS system to navigate the city, but just a few decades ago, drivers relied on a different type of North star, one that lived in almost every backseat …
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Reflecting on Maker Experiences with Reflection Cards | User Generated Education
I’ve discussed the importance of reflection in my Framework for Maker Education; and specifically discussed reflecting on the maker experiences in several of my blog posts: One of my friends and colleagues, Lucie DdeLaBruere, interviewed me and rece…
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Rube Goldberg Machine Contest April 20-22, 2018 in Chicago – GeekMom
Creating a machine to complete a simple task in the most complex way possible? Sounds like childhood. If your kid is particularly adept at this, the 30th Anniversary of the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is coming up April 20-22, 2018 in Chicago.
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3 Uniquely Powerful Ways To Praise Your Students – Smart Classroom Management
Here at SCM, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of making your praise worthy. That is, praise that is based on true accomplishment.
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You may have already heard about the study unveiled yesterday concluding that fake news spread more quickly than real news in social media. The Atlantic article, The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News, provides a good summary.
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Genetic Crosses with 2 Traits |
Beginning biology students can really struggle with dihybrid crosses and setting up Punnet squares that have two traits. Most introductory biology texts suggest using the 4×4 square and the “FOIL” method of determining the gametes that are placed …
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SearchReSearch: Excellent research tool — the Wayback Machine browser extension
A blog about search, search skills, teaching search, learning how to search, learning how to use Google effectively, learning how to do research. It also covers a good deal of sensemaking and information foraging.
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The Adventure Blog: Researcher Says He Has Solved Amelia Earhart Mystery
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A forensic scientist says that he has solved the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart after more than 80 years of speculation.
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Getting Started with Minecraft: Education Edition – NCCE’s Tech Savvy Teacher Blog
Minecraft: Education Edition is an open-world game that promotes creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving in an immersive environment where the only limit is your imagination.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Photos for Class Now Offers More Free Images for Students
Photos for Class is one of my favorite sites for students to use to find free images to use their projects. The most outstanding feature of Photos for Class is that it automatically adds attribution information to the footer of the images that stude…
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Seven Ways to Boost Collaboration in P.B.L. – John Spencer
Over the last month, we have been taking a deep dive into project-based learning. One of the most frequent questions I hear about PBL is “how do we get all of the members to participate in group projects?” Both elementary and secondary education tea…
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Free Technology for Teachers: It’s Time to Change the Clocks – Here’s Why
It’s that time of year again when most of us in North America have to move our clocks forward by one hour. That’s right, Daylight Saving Time starts on Sunday! That means that on Monday morning you may have some students may come to class complainin…
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Leave the Chaos Behind with Transitions – History Gal
As a teacher, I take a lot of things into consideration when I plan out my lessons. I make sure the activity aligns to standards and will be engaging. I plan out the prep for the lesson and I have a back-up plan if the lesson is finished quicker tha…
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Find Public Domain Videos on Flickr
Flickr is known for hosting millions of images, but it also hosts lots of videos. The advanced search tools within Flickr make it easy to find videos that have Creative Commons licenses or have a public domain designation. With just one click those …
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Free Technology for Teachers: 8 Changes to Google Docs & Slides Menus
If you’re a regular Google Docs and Google Slides user you may have already noticed some changes to your menus and toolbars. If you haven’t seen anything change, you will see some changes soon. Yesterday, Google announced eight changes to the Docs a…
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Tch NextGen Science Squad in Action LIVE at NSTA 2018
Connected educators teach longer and have greater satisfaction in what is easily one of the best and most challenging professions.
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Our Rightward March into Oblivion on Guns — A Teacher’s Evolving Mind
I’m a gun owner. I bought my first gun in 2011, when I became a homeowner, after reading about one-too-many black folks being mistaken for burglars and killed by police in their own homes. I own a 12-gauge shotgun and a .40 S&W carbine.
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos used a picture available on Shutterstock as an example of bad teaching practice in U.S. schools today — and teachers are accusing her of misrepresenting their classrooms.
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3 Thoughts for Improving Attendance in Schools – The Principal of Change
Sitting with a group of administrators recently, they were discussing some of the issues facing their school and “attendance” was one of them. As I listened, I tweeted this out to try to clarify my thinking:
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Raising Resilient and Fierce Women – Teacher Reboot Camp
I am a new mommy of an incredibly curious, brave, and happy 14 month year-old daughter. I wish I could continue to keep her experiencing the world this way.
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Timelinely is a new free tool that easily lets you create an interactive experience for any YouTube video. You just copy-and-paste the url of the video and then can easily pick moments in the video where you want to write added comments, annotated w…
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Nitrogen and plankton: Do they hold the missing keys to the food web? | Watching Our Water Ways
In a way, some of Puget Sound’s most serious ecological problems have been hiding in plain sight. I have been learning a lot lately about plankton, an incredibly diverse collection of microscopic organisms that drift through the water, forming the b…
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The Real Reason Your Translation App Will Never Replace Language Learning | EdSurge News
Of all the classroom subjects technology is poised to change, perhaps none stoke the imagination quite like language learning. As wearable tech and machine translation become increasingly sophisticated, many see them as the future.
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‘Jessica Jones’ Season Two Streams Today on Netflix – GeekDad
The second season of Marvel’s acclaimed series Jessica Jones releases on Netflix today. Has it been a while since you watched the first season Let us get you caught up before you jump into the new episodes.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Soon You’ll Have More Information About Who Views Your Google Docs
Version History, previously called Revision History, in Google Docs has always let you see when someone made a change to a document with him or her. But Version History doesn’t tell you if someone just went in and looked at the shared document.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Use ViewPure to Share a Portion of a Video With Password Protection
Over the weekend I shared information about ViewPure’s curated playlists for teachers and students. Another feature of ViewPure that you should note is the option to share just a portion of a video and to password protect it when you share it.
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10 Coloring Pages for Women’s History Month
Hey gang! I just want to share with you a few coloring pages I curated online & made into PDF’s & JPEGS for my kiddos! I love adding new coloring pages to our Makerspace, especially during special months and with themes.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Three Places to Find Public Domain Video Clips
This afternoon I received an email from a reader who was trying to help one of her colleagues with a classroom video project. They wanted to know if it was possible to download YouTube videos or to make a screencast of a YouTube video to then use in…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Edublogs Publishes a Guide to Mobile Blogging
Edublogs, one of the two services that I recommend for classroom blogging, has published a free guide to blogging on mobile phones. Edublogs recently deprecated their free mobile apps and now recommends three other ways to post to your Edublogs blog…
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20 ways to use Pear Deck to engage students | Ditch That Textbook
Instead of doing the traditional lecture, engage students actively with Pear Deck. Ask questions. Students answer. Everyone wins. The standard lecture has plenty of detractors, and rightfully so.
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Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero: RoomRecess
RoomRecess is one of my all time favorite sites for finding a wide variety of educational online games. This is a great place for finding games in subjects such as: Math, Reading, Keyboarding, and more. These games are designed for students K-5 and …
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Game Based Learning in Action with Matthew Farber
Game-based learning might not be what you think. On today’s show Matthew Farber, author of Game-Based Learning In Action: How an Expert Affinity Group Teaches with Games, talks about how to use games in the classroom effectively.
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What is Your Least Favorite Gamification Element? – Gamified UK – #Gamification Expert
Rate this item: No votes yet. Please wait… I often get asked what my favorite gamification element or elements are, but no one ever asks what ones I dislike! So I thought I would ask you guys the question and offer my own answer.
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March 22nd Is World Water Day – Here Are Related Resources | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
The United Nations designated March 22nd as World Water Day.
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5 Ways I’ve Redesigned My Rubric And You Should Too – Teched Up Teacher
In Fair Haven Innovates, students from 4th to 8th grade follow the same design process. They use our design process to solve problems, create solutions, and turn these solutions into real products that they can sell to turn a real profit.
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Music and Memory – A Winning Pair in Social Studies – History Gal
Have you ever gone through the channels on your car radio and happened upon an oldie but goodie you haven’t heard in years? Suddenly, you remember where you were, who you were with, and what you were doing the last time you heard that song.
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When you have a moment, read the comments back and forth on the tweet. The most important aspect of what he tweeted is not that all educators agree, but that we are all in on the conversation, for our students and ourselves.
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The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1980 as a Cabinet level agency. Its predecessor was the Office of Education, located in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Cabinet Secretaries take an oath to uphold the Constitution.
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Talking to Your Kids about Sex and Pornography | Tip of the Iceberg
One of the biggest challenges parents face is how to approach potentially sensitive topics with their children. What age should they be? What should I say? How much detail do I go into? As we know with parenting, there are so many different approach…
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Free Rice, the venerable online vocabulary game that is operated by the United Nations World Food Programme (and has been on The Best “Cause-Related” Online Learning Games forever) now lets teachers create virtual classroom and track student progres…
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Video: “How Much Damage Can An Earthquake Do?” | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
I’m adding this new video from Life Noggin to The Best Sites For Learning About Earthquakes.
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Teachingcivics.org supports educators with an ever-growing repository of current, professionally vetted, and unbiased civics, law-related education, and government lesson plans and materials.
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Using STEM in the Social Studies: Taking action | History Tech
Scott Noet and Kim Gilman (my good buddy from Shawnee, Kansas) met as Goethe TOP Fellows several years ago. And now they’re partnering up to share some of their best ideas about how to move students from analysis to action using STEM activities.
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What Happened to Virtual Dissections? |
Many of us may have used virtual dissection platforms to supplement classroom activities or provide make-up work for students who missed lab days. Unfortunately, many of the platforms for virtual dissections were created using flash animation.
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Amusing Monday: Water bears live in fire and ice, maybe in your driveway | Watching Our Water Ways
Plump little microscopic creatures, commonly called “water bears” or “moss piglets,” have gained a reputation as the most indestructible animals on Earth, with some species living in the cold Arctic and others living in flaming hot volcanoes.
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Blogging On The Go, Mobile Apps, and a Change – The Edublogger
Blogging from your phone or tablet can be useful, for sure. We love seeing students documenting trips and projects as they happen and being able to upload that content immediately to their blogs. Teachers are able to moderate comments or keep tabs o…
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Free Technology for Teachers: Quit Social Media – Do Deep Work
Last night I watched Dr. Cal Newport’s TEDx Talk titled Quit Social Media. In this thought-provoking talk Dr. Newport presents the case for quitting social media. He presents the case from the standpoint that social media fragments our attention and…
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Free Technology for Teachers: My Top 5 Choices for Making Multimedia Quizzes
Over the years I have tried and written reviews of dozens of tools that teachers can use to create multimedia quizzes. But at the end of the day there is just a handful of tools that I consistently think of when it is time to make a quiz myself. Tho…
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Free Technology for Teachers: How to Include Podcast Episodes In Your Blog Posts
The folks at Edublogs were kind enough to share my list of ten classroom podcast ideas with participants in their Better Blogging With Students course as well as with all of their Twitter followers.
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February (Even though it’s March) History and Games Links | Gaming the Past
Here’s the list for February. A lot of games, including the controversial Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the uncommonly focused Nantucket (19th century whaling), and the potentially very classroom-useful Neolithic: First City States. Some excellent essa…
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Learn Lead Grow: Create Amazing Presentations with Google Slides Toolbox Add-On
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Control Alt Achieve: 3 Ways Google Drive and MS Office Can Live Together in Harmony
These are the timeless struggles of humanity. So you are using Google Drive and its productivity tools such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides. But you still have Microsoft Office files from years and years before.
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OMG Becky. PD is Getting So Much Better!! | Cult of Pedagogy
Holy cow. As I put this together, the responses are still trickling in. I started down this path thinking that lots of districts were still stuck in a one-size-fits-all, sit-and-get, whole-school PD model, where the entire staff is herded into one r…
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In the Classroom: Teachers Sharing Our Work | Science, Education, and Science Education
I tweeted a few weeks ago, mentioning my frustration that a well known site on which you can save your favorite images had become nothing more than a re-direct to a site on which teachers sell their work.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Making Maple Syrup – A Science and Math Lesson
The days are getting warmer here in Maine, the sun is shining a bit longer each day, and the snow is starting to melt. That means that two of a Mainer’s favorite seasons are starting; mud season and maple syrup season.
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These days it is not enough just to keep students safe in the physical world. Parents and educators must also be aware of ways to keep students safe online.
