Here is a cool site that has over 160 lessons using newspaper cartoons. It’s recommended for middle school and up and would be great for current events, history, critical thinking, and media literacy. Here are some of the titles:

Tooning into History: McCarthyism at 60
Cartoons that make you think, not laugh
Sarcasm, irony, satire
Hoping for answers
Drawing a bead on the climate-change debate
Interpreting the ‘Tank Man’ symbol
How about a bailout for ailing newspapers
Tooning into History: Herblock at 100
Drawing a bead on distracted drivers

I know that money is tight, but even a few dollars can help. “Add little to little and and there will be a big pile.” –Ovid
I have been blessed in my life so always give when there are people in need. Doctors Without Borders is one of my favorite charities. There are also other worthy causes such as the American Red Cross which help people in need.

In his article, Steven Anderson writes about teachers who are reluctant to integrate technology. Although there are less teachers like this today, they are still out there. He notes a number of reasons for this reluctance. One is that some teachers feel that they have to be the experts on everything including using technology. Anderson writes:

“And if someone says one more time that their teachers are scared to look dumb in front of the kids I am gonna loose it! We teach our kids to use mistakes as learning lessons. Making mistakes is human. And I have written about this before, it happens to the best of us. At some point we are going to look like a failure in front of a group of learners. But the best of us use these moments as learning moments. Expect to fail.”

He is so right that teachers need to model learning and not just teaching. Students would benefit greatly if more teachers saw themselves first as learners and learners who learn using technology.

Here is a cool site that has over 2000 games and quizzes on many topics. Here is an interactive multiplication table that can give young students practice. Or, here is one on the presidents. Can you get them all??

This wiki is made by a third grade teacher and shows how wikis can be used by teachers at any level. Very cool!

This blog posting is right on about the questions for learning in the 21st century. If a student can get the answer by using a search engine, then the question is not a good question for learning. If our teachers can develop this skill, then our students will benefit greatly.

This is an interesting (and funny) article about how a teacher continues to teach even after totally losing her voice. She says that “Teaching doesn’t require volume. Classroom management doesn’t require yelling. Being in control is about humor, it’s about having your antennae up, and it’s about being creative enough to make every moment valuable.” This is a teacher that really understands how to create a great learning environment!

This article shows how schools and parents can have differing ideas about what students should be learning. In the survey only one-third of parents thought that schools were doing a good job of preparing students for the 21st century. That contrasts with the principals’ views where over half felt schools were doing a good job.  Everyone in the educational system needs to take a critical look at what we are doing and why. The world is very different today than it was when most educators went to school and our schools need to reflect that difference.

This is such a sad story I didn’t want to blog it, but feel it is important. When a study uses the terms like “disheartened, merely content, and idealists” in a study of teacher satisfaction, it it clear that we need to change the system. The study found that “40 percent of teachers reportedly are disheartened, 37 percent are merely content, and only 23 percent of teachers are idealists.” This jives with a study that found that 40% of new teachers leave the profession after five years. So, how do we fix this? As a teacher educator I think that we need to prepare our preservice teachers for the realities of the profession. Arthur Levine’s report noted that preservice teachers need to have much more field experiences and less college classroom time. I agree completely as that is how we learn best, in the “real world.”

This is an example of kids in Kenya getting the XO Laptop from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program.

Taryn, one of my students, used this website in a webquest. It is really a great website for students to learn about weather. It is easy to understand and makes learning about weather fun! Thanks Taryn!

Here is a great video showing how a master teacher teaches social skills and how to create good discussions. The article about this video is here with more information and resources.

While walking the Shinga Trail I ran across this nice tree. I’ll have to look up what kind it is.

This is an interesting article and important to my colleagues and me. It notes that a “2006 report found that three out of five education school alumni said their training failed to prepare them to teach.” This makes me wonder what the perceptions are on a local level, so I’ve created a short survey below. Once I have some responses, I’ll post those on this blog.

Thanks!

The survey will open in a new window so just close it once you are done.

Click Here to take survey

Here is a great list of teacher blogs from Scholastic. They are all great but I really like the first one!

The ED 300 classes are currently creating videos, so I thought I’d put up a few that I’ve found. This one is pretty good!

This is a great site with videos about how technology impacts and empowers students with learning disabilities. Take a look at some (or all) of the videos under the

Videos

Launching Young Readers

heading.

Great stuff!

Down at ESU for a conference and saw this mural.

I used to blog in my website program Rapidweaver but I found a plugin that will allow me to blog from my iPhone like I’m doing here. Unfortunately I couldn’t easily move my old posts over so it will be sparse for a while.

Here is an interesting video about the evolution of a wikipedia page.

This article notes a book called “The Secret of TSL” (Total Student Load) which describes a research project showing that teacher load has a major impact on student learning. This seems to be common sense but this study quantifies the idea which may help schools make better decisions about staffing. Staff costs are the biggest costs in any school so this is an important discussiion. I knew of a school that had a budget and resources crunch at the same time the area had a population explosion. They didn’t split the grade school classes until 36 students. Can you imagine having 35 fifth graders? That’s not a class. That’s a herd….