Get Organized with Edshelf

Keep track of your favorite apps, sites, and software tools by organizing them with Edshelf.  On the site, you can browse featured collections of tools for use in education or you can search for individual tools. If you click on a tool, you’ll find reviews written by parents and educators, price information, age and grade levels, and information about how to acquire the tool. Collections include groups of tools (apps, sites, software, etc.) that have been compiled by other teachers and parents. For example, some of the collections are: First Grade Apps, ESL Resources, Game-Based Learning, Story Creators/Publishers, and Fun Tools. You can create your own collections and share them with others if you want, add your ratings to the tools already rated, follow collections you like, or just browse for great ideas and information. Membership in edshelf is free. 

Educreate: Free Video Tool for iPad

With Educreations, you can make your own video lessons that students can access through Web browsers or the Educreations iPad App. You develop your lessons with the use of an online whiteboard. The App works with any iPad, but not with other notebook-type devices. To get ideas about what is possible to create, browse Educreations’ public directory or the showcased lessons. Signing up for the free App enables you to join a community of educators interested in creating and sharing, if they wish, the best of their resources.

Socrative: A Free Student Response System

Socrative means easy-to-use and engaging interactive learning. This free student response system takes only three minutes to set up and twenty seconds to load for your classes. It runs on any device with an Internet connection. Using the program, you can challenge students with multiple choice, true/false, self-paced quick quizzes, space race (quiz as a game), and exit tickets (end-of-class pulse check). You can see how your students do with the questions by checking the screen on your digital device or through email.  To better understand how the system works, watch the video and/or work through the hands-on demo.

Skills for College Readiness

There’s lots of talk about students not being adequately prepared for college. Most of this centers on the academic subjects, since colleges often have to offer remedial work in subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics to some of their students.  Dan Jones, president of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors, believes that students also need skills that will help them survive in college.  Dealing with setbacks and managing their time are examples of “soft skills” all college students need. The Ed Week article, ‘Soft Skills’ Pushed as Part of College Readiness by Caralee J. Adams, notes that “Resiliency and grit, along with the ability to communicate and advocate, are all crucial life skills.” Many experts blame the lack of students’ “Soft Skills” on parents and teachers who are “jumping through hoops for kids.”  Helicopter Parents don’t want their children to struggle, and therefore, their children don’t know how to handle obstacles, responsibilities, and deadlines. Adams gives examples of what some schools are doing to help students, parents, and teachers combat this problem.  The key for parents and teachers is to be “supportive without overdoing it.”

Online Learning & Testing: Are Student Cheating?

If a student takes an online course, how are we to know if the student is completing the coursework and taking the tests?  How are we to know if the student is using Google to find the answers? These questions have emerged as more and more colleges are offering open online courses. Although, the problem is currently being discussed at the college level, it makes sense to target it at high school and middle school levels as well. It’s never been easy for teachers to know whether students have done their own reports, projects, papers, and homework. But, with the rise of the Internet and online learning and testing, the problem has grown.

Solutions to the problem have come in the form of testing centers and online proctors. ProctorU, a startup company, engages proctors to “use webcams and screen-sharing software to observe students anywhere as they take a test or complete an online assignment. The proctors make sure they don’t cheat.”  Pearson has set up testing centers in over 100 countries for students taking online courses. Somehow, neither of these solutions seems practical for middle and high schools. Maybe the answer needs to be trust?

Confusion: One-to-One with Technology and Students

It sounds good to go one-to-one with our students and tech devices. The problem is: how? Schools and districts are taking different approaches to the problems involved with this transition. Some are going the BYOD route, some are integrating devices such as iPads one or two grades at a time, some have taken the whole school route with laptops or devices, and many continue to use classroom sets of laptops/devices and computer labs, which are usually available to teachers on a scheduled or signup basis.

Besides the problem of how to work toward a one-to-one structure, difficulties emerge with funding of laptops/devices, professional development, teacher and parent acceptance, and curricular resources. While some may look to laptops/devices to lighten the student backpack load simply by replacing traditional textbooks with etexts that are similar to traditional texts, others look to a change to dynamic interactive resources and greater teacher and student selection of materials for learning. The path away from traditional texts often happens when teacher advocates champion new methods of instruction. Those who aren’t advocates note that their methods get results needed on standardized testing, college testing, and Advanced Placement testing. Surely, these problems will sort themselves out as time goes by, but considering the fast pace of technology development, will schools continue to be left in a state of confusion about what to do and how to do it?

I Don’t Want to Feel Dumb

Do you follow Camilla, NASA’s rubber chicken on Facebook? More than twenty thousand people do. The chicken wore her own spacesuit complete with radiation badges when she flew into the stratosphere to help students in Bishop, California learn about radiation storms. The students prepared her for her flight, sent her off clinging to a helium balloon, and analyzed the results after she parachuted back to earth. The students referred to Camilla as “one cool chick”.

On November 14, 2012, Camilla was in Australia to run the “Solar Eclipse Marathon” and will continue to work with students around the world. She may travel to the International Space Station, where she and her fellow astronauts will hold chats from space with students. Students find it easy to discuss science with Camilla because, while they might be hesitant to “talk science” with an astronaut or science expert, Camilla bridges the gap. NASA sees Camilla as a way to encourage girls to get interested in pursuing science studies. Tune in online to the adventures of Camilla such as when she got stuck in a space toilet.

Does “I’m Bored” Mean “I’m Stressed Out”?

How many times over the years have we heard these words from parents, “My child isn’t doing well because he (or she) is bored?” Associate Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto, John D. Eastwood, and his colleagues say that most “boredom” is caused by problems within people, not by the outside environment. Although students may claim they are bored and can’t concentrate because the material or teacher isn’t interesting, the actual problem might be that the material is too challenging for the student, the classroom or homework area is distracting (such as a television playing in the next room at home), the student may have an attention deficit disorder, the student may be experiencing emotional problems, etc.  Eastwood and other researchers and educators not connected with the study note that “over-stimulating” is not what “bored” students need. So—it’s not completely your fault if some of your students are staring off into space while you are teaching.  It is, however, important that you work with students and parents to try to find the cause of the boredom.

Places to Find Educational Documentaries

Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero lists ten sites that are excellent places for finding documentaries. The list of videos includes: “Documentary Heaven, Food for the Brain” with thousands of documentaries on many subjects; “Chockadoc”, which has an educational category for rating the documentaries; “Top Documentary Films”, where you can search through many documentaries and read user comments; and seven more. Keep in mind, when using documentary sites, that all the videos may not be appropriate for your students, and that the sites often contain pop-up advertisements.

Free Trial of Science Literacy Program

Science A-Z , a leveled elementary program, features differentiated science instruction with three levels at each grade range: Grades K-2, 3-4, and 5-6. The lessons can be used to supplement school science students and prepare students for No Child Left Behind science testing. It includes printable and projectable materials for life science, earth science, physical science, and process science. Resources available through Science a-z are: game packs, investigation packs, process activities, videos, science fair materials, scientist and inventor cards, science diagrams, and science debates. The cost per classroom ranges from $49.95 to $79.95 depending on the type of license. You can download free samples and/or get a 7-day free trial in order to investigate what’s available in this program.