Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Storybird for Christmas
I've been playing with a new web tool called Storybird. It's a service that lets kids (or you!) write stories that are prompted by pictures. If you are at all interested in nonlinguistic representation, Storybird is a great starting point. Kids are able to choose a bank of pictures, then choose individual pictures from that set to tell a story. The stories are embeddable so teachers and kids can put them on blogs, wikis, websites, practically anywhere.
Here are some examples:
In My Momma's Arms on Storybird
Not So Long Ago on Storybird
There are additional examples of student work on John Mikulski's blog. (He's a local teacher and used these with his students.) CLICK HERE TO SEE HIS EXAMPLES
With my PREVIOUS POST on Christmas ideas, I thought I would share some of the ones we've made and hopefully inspire you to make your own. These are a great way to tell stories digitally, get anyone (but especially kids) motivated to write AND read, and are a touching and personal way to share literacy with your friends and family, especially here at holiday time!
We'll be reading ours tonight at bedtime...
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Here are some examples:
In My Momma's Arms on Storybird
Not So Long Ago on Storybird
There are additional examples of student work on John Mikulski's blog. (He's a local teacher and used these with his students.) CLICK HERE TO SEE HIS EXAMPLES
With my PREVIOUS POST on Christmas ideas, I thought I would share some of the ones we've made and hopefully inspire you to make your own. These are a great way to tell stories digitally, get anyone (but especially kids) motivated to write AND read, and are a touching and personal way to share literacy with your friends and family, especially here at holiday time!
We'll be reading ours tonight at bedtime...
...
Homework Addendum...
I'm adding a little more about homework today, as I found a gift from a student of mine from a few years ago. This student wrote the above out and framed it for me as an end of year gift. (This was a 7th grader...)
I thought it apropos in the wake of my previous homework post.
I questioned what I wrote in the earlier post as the responses rolled in both here and on Twitter; but I don't think I've changed my mind much about how I feel about the differentiation of homework practices. I agree with some of what others have written, where sometimes homework is necessary as a continuation of classwork, or as part of an ongoing project, or in preparation for classwork.
What I was discussing was more about 1) rote activities that were not much more than busywork, 2) homework counting a "too large" part of a student's grade, 3) students not being valued for what they've learned because they didn't show it in the preferred way of the teacher, and 4) the need for teachers to inject some choice into homework practices (differentiating that the way they would any other learning practice).
I don't disagree that teachers feel accountable to teach life skills and job skills and responsibility, but there has to be a better balance, particularly if kids are failing because of homework only, and especially when they can demonstrate that learning is occurring. Some kids may be motivated by grades, or motivated by the possibility of a low grade, but that doesn't mean that what works for most will work for all.
There's no easy answer here, but I think as long as we're searching for improvements and doing what's best for kids (by understanding their individual needs), then we're heading in the right direction.
Thanks to those that responded in the previous post and on Twitter. This is a discussion that is very necessary.
...
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Holiday Technology (Gifts, Fun, Resources)
I'm compiling a list of websites that offer holiday themed technology. Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section, and I'm sure I'll be adding to this as time goes on!
...
- Send a free "snail mail" gift card with THIS WEBSITE from the folks at Google!
- Create a WORDLE of your loved ones favorite song or wedding vows, print it, and frame it for a unique Christmas Gift.
- Visit Paperbackswap.com and trade your used books for "new to you" books. All you pay is shipping to ship your books to another person. When you choose books, people ship them to you for free!
- If you haven't visited ELFYOURSELF before, you'll want to go there immediately!
- MAKE YOUR OWN SNOWFLAKE with this Flash Website.
- Directions for How to MAKE YOUR OWN SNOW GLOBE!
- Find the songs that were popular when your loved ones were young and then download them with iTunes and make a custom CD as a gift!
- Watch HOLIDAY FAVORITE shows and movies on ABC Family!
- Download FREE CHRISTMAS MUSIC in Amazon.com's 25 days of Free Music!
- Tell a story online and SHARE YOUR STORY with your friends and family with Storybird.
- Create UNIQUE HOLIDAY CARDS at Animoto.com.
- (NEW 12/07/09) Download 99 Holiday Classics at Amazon for just $5! (You read that right! 99 songs for $5! Great deal!)
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Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Who's Failing Who?
Tonight in a workshop on differentiated instruction, I was talking with a teacher about her son who is a high school senior. She talked about how smart her son was but that he was failing virtually every subject at school. The reason? Homework.
The kid just doesn't do it.
I asked her how he did on tests. She said very well. I asked her if this was something new, this "not doing homework" thing. She said no, that it had been ongoing since elementary school.
I told her that her son was not a failure.
It's him that's being failed by a system that is hell bent on holding kids accountable for behaviors with grades. The doing of homework is a behavior. It is an action associated with continuing practice, but not all kids need it. I told her that this story was perfectly applicable to our purposes here tonight. The "DOING" of homework is a process oriented task that leads, usually, to a formative assessment of the understanding of the material taught.
Formative assessment is meant to drive instructional practice to ensure that the learning is sticking and if not, establish a plan for reteaching, reframing, or restructuring how the material is going to get into a kid's brain.
It is not meant to be punitive.
Grades that reflect behavioral actions or that are punitive are WRONG.
Let me say that a different way. If our collective objectives are to teach students, then what we teach and what they LEARN are the priority factors, correct? How we teach and how kids learn are as individual and unique as the way we look. If a kid needed extra time because of a reading problem, we would accommodate. If a kid needed a special adaptive technology, we would accommodate. If a kid needed additional copies of notes or specific after school support, we would accommodate.
But when a kid demonstrates, time and again, that homework just isn't their bag, why do teachers exclude that from the list of things for which we would accommodate? There are many ways to differentiate process and product besides homework, but many teachers would rather call the student irresponsible and then punish them with low grades that DO NOT REFLECT WHAT THE KID KNOWS.
Why do teachers get hung up on this? Does the kid who doesn't do homework deserve not to graduate?
Why is homework such a dominant factor in the overall grade?
I'm not saying that homework doesn't have a place. I'm just saying that some kids don't need it. It's a perfect opportunity to differentiate instructional strategies and provide opportunities for students to do things in different ways. I'm not talking about more work for some, less work for others, I'm talking about truly understanding a kid's needs to the point of blazing new trails of instructional strategies that may be outside of our own experiences and/or traditions. The way that things have always been done is a poor excuse for continuing to do them. There are other ways to hold kids accountable for their learning without punishing them with bad grades because they are a poor fit for an instructional strategy chosen by a teacher, by a professional who should know more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak.
In this holiday season, I'm reminded of a certain reindeer who was pushed out of the traditional learning path and took a different path to proficiency. What Rudolph learned in the nontraditional way served him so well that he became the most successful and famous reindeer of all. Can't we create opportunities/choices for our students like that?
Like much in education today, homework needs to be reframed. It's part of the paradigm that needs to be majorly shifted.
Ten years from now, I have a feeling, we are going to look back at many of the practices we participate in today, and be embarrassed by what we did to kids.
The kid just doesn't do it.
I asked her how he did on tests. She said very well. I asked her if this was something new, this "not doing homework" thing. She said no, that it had been ongoing since elementary school.
I told her that her son was not a failure.
It's him that's being failed by a system that is hell bent on holding kids accountable for behaviors with grades. The doing of homework is a behavior. It is an action associated with continuing practice, but not all kids need it. I told her that this story was perfectly applicable to our purposes here tonight. The "DOING" of homework is a process oriented task that leads, usually, to a formative assessment of the understanding of the material taught.
Formative assessment is meant to drive instructional practice to ensure that the learning is sticking and if not, establish a plan for reteaching, reframing, or restructuring how the material is going to get into a kid's brain.
It is not meant to be punitive.
Grades that reflect behavioral actions or that are punitive are WRONG.
Let me say that a different way. If our collective objectives are to teach students, then what we teach and what they LEARN are the priority factors, correct? How we teach and how kids learn are as individual and unique as the way we look. If a kid needed extra time because of a reading problem, we would accommodate. If a kid needed a special adaptive technology, we would accommodate. If a kid needed additional copies of notes or specific after school support, we would accommodate.
But when a kid demonstrates, time and again, that homework just isn't their bag, why do teachers exclude that from the list of things for which we would accommodate? There are many ways to differentiate process and product besides homework, but many teachers would rather call the student irresponsible and then punish them with low grades that DO NOT REFLECT WHAT THE KID KNOWS.
Why do teachers get hung up on this? Does the kid who doesn't do homework deserve not to graduate?
Why is homework such a dominant factor in the overall grade?
I'm not saying that homework doesn't have a place. I'm just saying that some kids don't need it. It's a perfect opportunity to differentiate instructional strategies and provide opportunities for students to do things in different ways. I'm not talking about more work for some, less work for others, I'm talking about truly understanding a kid's needs to the point of blazing new trails of instructional strategies that may be outside of our own experiences and/or traditions. The way that things have always been done is a poor excuse for continuing to do them. There are other ways to hold kids accountable for their learning without punishing them with bad grades because they are a poor fit for an instructional strategy chosen by a teacher, by a professional who should know more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak.
In this holiday season, I'm reminded of a certain reindeer who was pushed out of the traditional learning path and took a different path to proficiency. What Rudolph learned in the nontraditional way served him so well that he became the most successful and famous reindeer of all. Can't we create opportunities/choices for our students like that?
Like much in education today, homework needs to be reframed. It's part of the paradigm that needs to be majorly shifted.
Ten years from now, I have a feeling, we are going to look back at many of the practices we participate in today, and be embarrassed by what we did to kids.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
New Web Stuff 12/02/2009
Differentiation 101 - A Basic Guide to Differentiated Instruction
Differentiation 101 - A Basic Guide to Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated Instruction | Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age
audio version of books in the public domain
The Spoken Alexandria Project - Free Audio from Telltale Weekly
Free Classic AudioBooks. Digital narration for the 21st Century
Free Audiobooks, audio books, MP3 Books
Buy Audio Books on CD & Tape | Download Free MP3 Audio Books
Audio Books, Podcasts and Video You Can Learn From
OCLC - Content and collections
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Differentiated Instruction
A few of the workshops I'm doing over the course of the next few weeks involve differentiated instructional practices. I'm doing them as a "coaching" model where I work with just a couple of teachers at a time and look at a particular area that they want to improve, develop a plan and help them implement it, then reflect on how it worked.
During the course of my time with these teachers, I'll be sharing a couple of resources for developing our plans using technology. They may or may not come up with every teacher, but I thought I would share some of the resources here, with you!
I'll add more as we uncover what teachers need during my sessions. We will be discussing what we can differentiate and why we do it. Additionally, any new websites I save will be in my Delicious account and tagged with "differentiation."
...
During the course of my time with these teachers, I'll be sharing a couple of resources for developing our plans using technology. They may or may not come up with every teacher, but I thought I would share some of the resources here, with you!
- Differentiated Instructional Resources from Lee's Summit
- The Differentiator - Easily write behavioral objectives, or just use Bloom's Lingo to help transform lessons you already teach.
- Strategies for Differentiating Instruction from Enhancelearning.ca
- List of Differentiated Instruction Websites from Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age
- Differentiation Wiki
- Web Tools to help every kind of learner!
I'll add more as we uncover what teachers need during my sessions. We will be discussing what we can differentiate and why we do it. Additionally, any new websites I save will be in my Delicious account and tagged with "differentiation."
...
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
New Web Stuff 11/26/2009
16 bitchin' commands and shortcuts for Twitter | Blog | Econsultancy
Top 10 Apps for Scheduling a Meeting Online - ReadWriteEnterprise
The Educator's PLN - The personal learning network for educators
BeFunky.com - Photo effects with one click, Turn your photos into artwork.
Download Youtube Video. Just add 'Kiss'! Keep It Super Simple. - KissYouTube
quietube | Video without the distractions | Youtube, iPlayer, Viddler, Vimeo and more
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
NYSCATE 2009 Virtual Field Trip
I created a "Delicious" Field Trip of a lot of the neat new webby things I discovered at NYSCATE this year. Several of these new tools may warrant their own blog post soon, but I didn't want to wait to share them. It was great to meet a bunch of folks from my own Personal Learning Network and it's making me excited for ASCD in March, when I get to see everybody again! Since many of you in education are on vacation for the rest of this week, here's something to explore besides all the Black Friday bargains:
http://delicious.com/mikefisher821/NYSCATE09
If you are interested in learning more about creating tagged field trips, there is information HERE and HERE.
http://delicious.com/mikefisher821/NYSCATE09
If you are interested in learning more about creating tagged field trips, there is information HERE and HERE.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
New Web Stuff 11/22/2009
National Center on Response to Intervention (RTI) @import
Joomla - the dynamic portal engine and content management system
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
New Bloom's Visual for Technology Tools
Sorry it's been awhile since I've blogged properly. I've let Diigo blog for me these last couple of weeks as I've hit a busy stride. I've created several new wikis and am building a couple of new workshops for the late Fall, early Spring. Additionally, I've been reviewing a couple of professional development books that are going to knock your socks off when they are published next summer!
That said, the reason for this post is an updated version of the Visual Bloom's for Technology Tools. (Next section from my wiki at http://visualblooms.wikispaces.com) :
I want the visual representation to be more fluid than the above, where web tools can live on different levels and change levels, depending on their usage. I'm sure we could make a case for each of the tools to live in each realm of the hierarchy but in the interest of time and space, I created the following. The arrows are meant to indicate the fluidity with which the tools can travel through the different levels. The middle line is meant to separate the higher cognitive levels from the lower ones, but only with the understanding that it would be for that particular tool on a particular level, and does not consider the multiple ways that the tool could possibly be used. Again, this is meant to be a discussion starter as we evolve the representation of web tools with visuals that are meant to help us understand the interconnectedness of technology resources.
This is based on the 2009 "25 Tools" list which is available here: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/25Tools/index.html
Additionally, here's a sampling of the new content I've been creating over the course of the last two weeks! http://aquariumofniagara.wikispaces.com/http://brainorama.wikispaces.com/http://delicious.com/mikefisher821http://innovativocab.wikispaces.com/http://www.flickr.com/photos/grade6kms/
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
New Web Stuff 11/11/2009
Intervention Central: Your Site for Response To Intervention Resources
Welcome to Intervention Central, the web site for educators looking for tips on how to help children to be more successful learners!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
New Web Stuff 11/08/2009
Invoice Like A Pro: Examples and Best Practices - Smashing Magazine
A SmartBoard mini-movie is a simple (most involve only a click of the mouse), interactive animation that teachers can download and add to their galleries. From there, the movies can be inserted into their SMART Notebook presentations. Each mini-movie is a dynamic Flash file, similar to the same files that are already included in SMART Notebook's resources.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
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