Are Teachers Taught How to Manage Classes?

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) report, “Training Our Future Teachers: Classroom Management,” says that teacher education isn’t doing its job when it comes to classroom management. Instead of tackling how to run a smooth and efficient classroom and create a good learning environment, teachers go through programs that emphasize instruction. While learning how to instruct is necessary, if a teacher can’t handle a class, he or she will never make it to the instruction. Notably missing from most teacher education programs were “strategies that impose consistent consequences for misbehavior, foster student engagement, and—most markedly—use praise and other means to reinforce positive behavior.” Other important techniques teachers should include in the management toolbox include: establishing rules, expectations, and routines.

With the addition of technology tools and resources into the curriculum, it seems even more necessary to help teachers learn about proven techniques in order to avoid disruptive behaviors in the classroom.

Did You Code During Coding Week?

As of Wednesday morning, December 11, 2013, almost seven million students, teachers, and administrators had taken part in Computer Science Week’s Hour of Code. If you were too busy with Christmas activities during the week, you can still go to the site and check out the 215,563,747 (and growing by the second) lines of code written by students. Some many unique coding opportunities went on during the week—teaching a robot to play a xylophone, coding BeeBots in Kindergarten, programming with graph paper, developing games, writing songs, creating apps, and practicing with LightBot, Scratch, Python and other programing languages. The hope is that after an introduction to programing/coding, more students will take an interest in continuing on in their field.

Online Tribute to Nelson Mandela

Information on the Nelson Mandela Memorial is available at mashable.com, where you can also see many world leaders who paid tribute to Mandela.

World Languages in Our Schools

Schools are looking not only to expand offerings in foreign languages, but also in helping students learn more about the cultures of the people who speak these languages. As we become a global community and as technologies bring us closer together, it’s important for students to learn the languages of other cultures and to better understand these cultures. Today’s students can learn languages online, practice speaking/writing skills with native speakers/writers through the Internet, and learn about cultures through global social media, blogs, video conferences, video, and other technology communication tools. Teaching global languages today differs from teaching of the past because a great emphasis is placed on communication and culture—skills which our students will need to make their way in a global economy.

Computer Science Resources Recommended by eSchool News

During Computer Science Week or Hour of the Code Week, whichever you want to call it, loads of great ideas were published to help teachers bring computer science understanding into their classrooms. A good example is an article, by Laura Devaney of eSchool News, who compiled a list of ten resources and facts to help with programming. They include Daisy the Dinosaur (free app), Cargo-Bot (puzzle game), MIT Inventor (build apps), Hackety Hack (learn computer science), Codecademy (learn to code site), Computing in the Core (facts), Computer Science Unplugged (learn computer science without a computer), w3schools (examples, quizzes, tutorials, etc), recruiting girls to computing classes (suggestions), and Dot Diva (suggestions for girls). Devaney offers links to the ten resources in her article.

Follett Challenge Competition—$200,000 in Prizes

The Follett Challenge recognizes educators who use and design innovative teaching and learning programs that help students master 21^st century skills and abilities.  Individual school prizes range from $5000 to $30000. According to the rules, entries must show how a school or district has created a 21^st century curriculum. An application and a 3-5 minute video describing the project must be submitted by February 28, 2014.  Winners will be announced in April and May.

Create Beautiful eBooks

Drop your manuscript into Vellum and it will open as a book divided into chapters. While in Vellum, you can edit your book or start writing a new one. Books may be shared with family and friends and uploaded to online stores. There’s a free download to try the software; if you wish to purchase, the cost is $49.99 for a single book, $99.99 for three books, and $149.00 for five books. The product was developed by Pixar veterans, so one wonders if Vellum may evolve to include interactive capabilities appropriate for exciting eTexts? In the meantime, it looks like a very nice solution for students and educators who want to create good-looking eBooks.

Best Learning Games of 2013

Larry Ferazzo, of Edublogs, lists what he considers the best learning games of 2013. They include World Geography Games, Inca Investigation, The China Games, Plan It Green Live, Broken Picture Telephone, Jay Is Games, Earth Picker, Lifesaver, Room Escape Maker, GR8CTZ—Great Cities of the World, and LocateStreet. This is the second of the 2013 lists. The first list features Wonderground, Pursued, GeoGuessr, Depression Quest, The Republica Times, Breakaway, Quandary, and Review Game Zone. The Edublog includes links to the recommended games. You’ll also find links to the best games of previous years.

No More Cursive?

There’s a debate about whether students should continue to learn how to write in cursive. With use of computers and digital devices, the need to learn keyboarding is evident. —But, should students learn both keyboarding and cursive? Cursive instruction is not required in Common Core Standards, but questions remain about problems that may arise if students aren’t taught how to read and use cursive. For example, on standardized testing such as that required by Advanced Placement, students are better able to complete written questions if they use cursive. —And, how about reading documents written in cursive in the past and signing documents?

Password Mindreader

We all have troubles with remembering and creating our passwords. There’s a Coordinator of Technologies who says that all of her passwords are the same, but that she changes them monthly. I remember a student telling me that she never bothered to remember her passwords or save them in any way. Instead, she just clicked, “Forgot Password”, and either had it sent to her or created a new one.

So many of the passwords we create are not the most secure. Student passwords are not only often shared but also are easy to figure out. Microsoft has come to the rescue with a new digital tool called Telepathwords. It’s online for anyone to use making it a great resource for teaching about safe passwords. Telepathwords works by having the user start to put in a password, and then, it guesses what you’ll add next.