Teaching

Granny J offered on january 15, 2008, that she reads to her mother and her mother recites portions of what she had memorized previously. For the past couple of years, as Mom's short-term memory has slowly eroded, I've found that she really enjoys having me read poetry from her past. Often she will recite bits and pieces along with me; she is definitely of...

I'm catching up, finally, with some posts that sat too long on hold. I hope you findd them as useful as I have for sharpening my thinking about learning, science, and schooling. John Staddon offers an interesting critique that I missed about Mary Borgan's book What Ever Happened to the Faculty? Drift and Decision in Higher Education. Burgan ... thinks that the faculty in...

William G. Quirk applauds a welcomed step away from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) constructivist model of Math Reform. He and other mathematicians disagree with NCTM's fuzzy math K12 standards, and give kudos to NCTM's step toward return to expecting K8 students to have memorized certain math facts and to handle traditional paper - pencil math. Important News! After...

Bill Ferriter, a class act 6th grade teacher in NC, describes how he plans to use VoiceThread in a new class project. What I like the best about Voicethread is that it allows teachers to seamlessly integrate digital collaboration into the curriculum. Because the skills necessary to use Voicethread are minimal, there is almost no tech-barrier to overcome by teachers or students---and because the...

Barnett Berry of the Center for Teaching Quality offered another thoughtful essay about values of teacher performance pay.He explains why he thinks public policy makers should give priority to recommendations for merit pay by an aggregate of “best” U.S. teachers. (For those who do not know, that’s top drawer, informed thinking.) These teachers received their elevated recognition from various private and government organizations. Too...

STEVE LOHR reports that a wave of offshore tutoring exists, mainly through India. Concerns about the quality of K-12 education in America and the increased emphasis on standardized tests is driving the tutoring business in general,(and its globalization). Have you checked out TutorVista as well as other online tutoring services yet? Mobile learners may find these services useful for on-demand assistance. Two year old...

Alfred Thompson describes what he calls a Tablet PC School that works. Thompson has reasonable background to make such judgments. A good read for science teachers as well as others learning about mobile schools and mobile learning.

The Arizona Virtual Academy (AZVA) and K¹² are helping thousands of Arizona students in grades K-11 discover what they have in them, at their own pace, tuition free. Bricks and mortar K12 teachers, home schoolers, and mobile PC learners may find tips for increasing student learning rates by monitoring this and other online academies.

Jim Vanides has started creating and posting short Tablet PC tips as video clips on his blog. Educators who ask, “So, what can you do with a Tablet PC?” might find the movies helpful... Tip #1 shows how to use a tablet to annotate power point slides (which we can ALL model to our customers!). Tip #2 shows the advantages of MS Journal over...

Loren released InkGrams . The first step to using InkGram is to sign in to your own Flickr account. This is accomplished when you press the "Ready to Draw" button below ... Try it, Teachers, in order to leave inkposts for your students. Let him know how it works for you. Draw on! Thanks, LC!