By Mary Bigelow
Posted on 2011-05-28
A wise professor once told us, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.” My takeaway from that class was that teachers need a variety of tools, from basic strategies to more specialized ones. And adding tools to the toolkit is part of professional development.
Recently, I’ve added Twitter to my toolkit. At first, I must admit, tweeting seemed like a pleasant diversion, but I’m experiencing its potential for professional development and communication. The other evening, I “attended” an event that began with a podcast of background information on a specific topic. Then the participants (several hundred from across the country) began conversations by tweeting questions/answers, observations, comments, and suggesting websites for further information. I had another person with me during the event, so we had the best of both—social media and face-to-face interactions. How did I learn about this podcasting/tweeting event? From Facebook (another item in my toolkit)—not bad for someone who started a career in science with a slide rule.
More on Twitter as a classroom, communication, or PD tool:
Be on the alert for NSTA’s next tweetchat—join in (or just lurk) and learn.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bekkchen/441704675/sizes/m/in/photostream/
A wise professor once told us, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.” My takeaway from that class was that teachers need a variety of tools, from basic strategies to more specialized ones. And adding tools to the toolkit is part of professional development.
By Eric Brunsell
Posted on 2011-05-23
Blogs provide a great way to extend the classroom beyond your 45 minute class period. They can be used in a variety of ways to spark discussion and student research. Chris Ludwig, a high school science teacher in Colorado, wrote this blog post to show how he used blogs this year to fundamentally change the way he assigned homework.
One of the major changes that I made this year was to switch to using individual student blogs as the centerpiece of student assessment (the other major change was to implement standards-based grading). I started using student blogs for a number of reasons including:
- I was tired of grading worksheets with the same copied answers on them.
- I realized that these worksheets weren’t always helpful in learning content, and in fact, much of the time they got in the way of learning.
- Student in my classes have access to a MacBook cart whenever they are in my classroom and we have fantastically dependable wireless internet connectivity for these laptops (yay tech support!).
- Blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress are free.
- I’m increasingly wary of multiple choice anything as real assessment and wanted students to write more.
- I wanted students to have a permanent, online record of their achievement throughout the year, not some pile of papers shoved in a binder (or trash can).
- I wanted students to have an audience for their work that would include each other, their families, the community, and the world.
Ludwig continues,
So how did we use the blogs? They became the go-to location to post assignments for me to read and grade. For a week or two, though, I operated a lot like I did last year, posting assignments on Edmodo and using its great assignment features to have students turn things in online, as well as posting them to their blogs. I realized that this was a duplication of effort and soon instead of sending out “assignments” in Edmodo, I just sent files and links as “notes.” This meant that these resources no longer came with a due date and that I was not using Edmodo to see who turned in which assignments.
Read the full post here.
Blogs provide a great way to extend the classroom beyond your 45 minute class period. They can be used in a variety of ways to spark discussion and student research. Chris Ludwig, a high school science teacher in Colorado, wrote this blog post to show how he used blogs this year to fundamentally change the way he assigned homework.
By Mary Bigelow
Posted on 2011-05-23
“I know what I mean but I can’t ‘splain it.” I used to hear that from my middle school students in physical science, especially on essay questions. Sometimes the concepts are indeed hard to ‘splain in words. Visuals and observations of real events can make the concepts more real for students.
“I know what I mean but I can’t ‘splain it.” I used to hear that from my middle school students in physical science, especially on essay questions. Sometimes the concepts are indeed hard to ‘splain in words. Visuals and observations of real events can make the concepts more real for students.
By Peggy Ashbrook
Posted on 2011-05-21