Science IS Interesting!

I've started listening to a NPR Podcast about "making science more interesting" and it's an enjoyable listen so I encourage you teachers to listen to it. Though I've not finished the entire podcast I'm left with a couple of thoughts at this point.

0. I like the statement that "a teacher's passion for a subject" is really what comes through to students and that (more than anything) is what will engage students.

1. It seems like more and more it's EXPECTED that teachers HAVE TO make their lessons interesting or they fail somehow as teachers.

Here's the link - have a listen and then please throw in your comments to this post.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200909253

Useful Webtools for Teachers

Here's a list of useful webtools for teachers. All of them are free of charge. (Some require you to create an account and log in, but the basic tools on these sites are free.) I know many of you already have lesson plans in place, while others may be looking for extra material to direct towards our students. I encourage you to investigate them and use as you see fit.

Library of Congress: Check out the teacher page. This one is completely free! A related site is on flickr (teacher override required) with historical photographs with no known copyrights making it a great source for students and teachers.

For Language Arts and History: shmoop It looks real cool and not just for you, but also with your students. Description: Oh, just look at the website for a good description... no point in me restating what they are all about.

With all those netbooks out there in out LA classes how about a web-based quiz program and instant grading system? Have the results emailed to you instantly. Give ClassMarker a try. Upgrades cost $24.95/year, but the entry-level quiz taker should be fine for most of us.

Concerned with plagiarism? Are kids just copying and pasting text from Google then calling it their own? Use the DOCCOP, a powerful engine that will flag plagiarized student work. Easy to use and totally free!

Lastly, just for students take a gander at these 15 tools. I like #10 etherpad, could be real cool with our netbooks! I've not tested if all of these are filtered from school, but you're only one click away from discovering that so just give it a try and pass them along to our students.

WEB Leadership - Name Tag Scavenger Hunt

Yesterday we met with our 8th grade WEB leaders for the first time since the start of school. We gathered in our official WEB leader room and quickly assigned them the task of finding all of their 6th grade "webbies" in the cafe during lunch. It was sort of a scavenger hunt in that the WEB leaders had to connect and obtain a name tag from each of their 6th graders.

We specifically gave few instructions to the WEB leaders and wanted to see how they would perform in this quick task. Who among them would rise to the task? How would they connect with the 6th grade students and create a feeling of belonging in our school?

Meanwhile the 6th graders had no idea what was about to happen during lunch. All they knew was that they had to wear their special name tags that they made earlier and that "someone" might be contacting them in the lunch room.

So the race was on, and the excited 8th graders quickly started tracking down their "webbies". What strategies would they use to find them? How were they to connect with each student in this sea of students, lunch-time enthusiasm and the excitement of the scavenger hunt?

With little time on their hands the 8th grade WEB leaders rose to the task. During a debrief with the WEB leaders we learned that they connected with the "webbies" and got smiles, laughter and good eye contact. They felt that the exercise was fun and that in many cases they "connected" with their 6th grade WEB students. Sure, we had a few glitches and the process was hard to complete in such short timeframe.


We did have fun and there was a general feeling of connection in the lunch room. We hope this and future WEB projects continue with this theme of connection and belonging in our school.

Netbook Launch

Tomorrow (Thursday August 27th) is the launch day for our Inspired Learning project with 6th graders. We will hand out netbooks to each 6th grade student in two of our Language Arts classes. The project has involved a great deal of work this summer for everyone involved and this will be a big moment.

From the enormous support by our district IT people down to each teacher readying their lesson plans we've created something very exciting that I'm proud to be a part of.

I'll be commenting tomorrow about how it goes. Stay tuned!

Twitter - What if?

I know we are no where near doing this at Euclid. There's a lot of unknowns with this new communication method. I'm not real comfortable with the privacy issues around Twitter yet myself and since it's blocked at work I'd have to do all my twittering from elsewhere (or my iPhone). So instead of being super abrasive and pushing the envelope I though I'd just sort of mention it and leave you all with something to consider - for when the time is right.


Still, I thought I could stir things up a bit by just mentioning that Twitter is starting to be used at schools (quite a few in Texas where they tend to "set the tone" for a lot of curriculum for the rest of the nation). The link below will take you to a discussion about Twitter in public schools - enough said. Have a look and let me know what you think. Are we ready for this at LPS?

http://macmomma.blogspot.com/2009/07/twitter-in-schools-what-does-it-really.html

Creating a Voice

I'm up at TIE - Copper Mountain - this week and having a great time. There's a lot of learning going on, tons of smart people that care about learning, and it's a wonderful experience to be attending this conference.

Back in April I posted about leadership at all levels with our school walls and came to the conclusion that every student can and should be a leader. Now I've hit upon a bit of a snag in this idea and it's what I want to discuss in this blog post.

The problem I'm having with this fine idea is HOW to you get kids to create their voice? How do we as educators get a student to be a self-leader?How do you get them to care about their education and life-long learning?

Maybe I'm missing something? Perhaps our students are already "there" and just waiting for an opportunity to prove themselves to us? It actually wouldn't surprise me and it might be an approach to address this question of mine - just let them show us basically. What tools (tech tools?) can enable this style of learning for our students?

So rather than asking more questions I'm hoping a few of you who are reading this post will comment back and let me know what you think...

Day 1 with Netbooks

Our district is rolling out a plan to introduce Netbooks to all 5th, 6th and 9th grade Language Arts students in the fall. Today we started a week long course that introduces the Netbooks we will be using to our staff. It was wonderful that we will be able to use these tools next fall and that our district has given our staff the Netbook to use for the summer.

What better way to get the adults up to speed?

I'm anxious to see how this will evolve over this week as we learn together how to use the Netbooks. Stay tuned.