Some of the Most Unique Classroom Timers You’ve Ever Seen

Online-stopwatch.com offers fun timers for classrooms, faculty meetings, or wherever you may need them. You’ll find an egg timer, a rocket timer, a candle timer, racing timers, clocks, bombs, and more. The timers are quite easy to use, and the children will love them. The rocket, for example goes off when the time is up, flies around the screen, and ends with fireworks.

Classroom Timer Apps

If you are looking for a classroom timer that will work with the iPhone, iPad, or iPad Touch, the Classroom Timer Pro ($1.99), by Walsall Academy, is easy-to-use and good for timing classroom activities. There is a free version of this product, but the Pro version had better reviews. Glen Storey offers Silent Light—Classroom Timer and Decibel Meter ($3.99) for the iPhone and iPad. It uses the microphones on iPhones and iPads to monitor noise; you can share its screen through projectors and Apple TV.   Designed to help students with management and productivity, ClassTimer by Ventura Educational Systems ($.99) requires iOS4.2 and is compatible with iPads.

White Paper on Online Testing and Common Core Standards

T.H.E. Journal and VMware offer a White Paper targeting pending state mandates for online assessment in Kindergarten though Grade 12 schools by the 2014-2015 school year. Information will be available on how the Tyler Independent School District in Texas virtualized desktops in order to create a secure testing environment. According to the White Paper, using virtual desktops, the district was able to save money, better utilize resources, have increased security and reliability, and focus on teacher core competency. Download the report to learn more.

Common Core Pushback

What’s all the fuss over Common Core Standards? Marc Tucker, in his Education Week blog piece “Testing, the Common Core, and Consumer Resistance”, says that American teachers are used to tests that don’t match the curriculum, are cheap, don’t really assess complex skills or creativity, are too dependent on multiple choice questions, are far too frequent, and aren’t like those used in countries with top-performing students. Therefore, the rebellion against Common Core is understandable, especially if schools don’t have curricula and tests that align with the standards. Perhaps, we are not ready for Common Core? Do other parts of our educational systems need to be revamped before we can put such standards into place? Do we need to change testing by grade level and test, like some other countries, just a few times in a student’s education? Do teacher evaluations need to be linked to test results? Anti-Common Core groups such as Hoosiers against Common Core and Arizonans Against Common Core are springing up throughout the country. Indiana, for example, has decided to “pause” entrance into Common Core. We know that we need to improve our schools, but many parents and teachers are telling us that Common Core and frequent testing is not the way.

Too Much Questionable Testing?

At this time of year, I hear teachers complaining about the time it takes for testing. “Thank heavens we are finished with the testing. Now, I can get back to teaching.” “We were testing last week, so I had time to cut out puzzle pieces.”

In June, parents in New York called for more teaching, less testing. Some say that some test questions are of poor quality and some tests contain major errors. Bedford Central District in Westchester County, New York voted in a resolution against the overuse and misuse of standardized testing.  Are we becoming dependent upon assessing our students with products developed by outside agencies and are the demands of preparing for and taking tests subtracting too much time from teaching hours? Are we sending teachers the message that they do not know how to evaluate their students? Don’t we hear often that test results are not used or, at least, not used effectively? We learned that Common_Core tests will take up to ten hours; districts giving them will have twenty days to administer them.

Writing to Please Robot Readers

Some time ago we wrote about Les Perelman’s (MIT) challenge to the authors of a study that claimed machines could grade writing as well as teachers.  Mark D. Shermis, one of the authors of the study, said “mostly Perelman’s criticisms don’t add up.” Perelman, on the other side of the argument, is worried that states will go along with machine grading based on the study. The machine graders may, according to Perelman, lead teachers to teach to please the robot readers, which look for “length and loquacious wording, even if they don’t quite make sense.”

Testing Burnout Cure

We complain about the time it takes for standardized testing and to prepare students for testing.  The Edutopia article, Handling Teacher and Student Testing Burnout, suggests that our emphasis in the classroom should not be on having students pass minimum standards, but instead, maximum standards. High School principal Ben Johnson, author of Teaching Students to Dig Deeper, says that active learning including collaboration, role playing, projects, and experimentation sometimes doesn’t happen because teachers are too busy preparing students for minimum standards.  According to Johnson, deep learning is the way to send short-term memories into long-term memory. One of his teachers says that technology is the way to avoid testing burnout, for it energizes lessons, which results in “higher interest and engagement.”

What Study Techniques Really Work?

In research led by Professor John Dunlosky, Kent State, thousands of articles evaluating study techniques were examined. The result was a list of the Best and Worse ways to learn.

Okay, first the techniques to avoid: highlighting, underlining, rereading and summarizing. We are probably having our students learn all of these, but maybe that’s not such a good idea. The only good thing about these methods, according to the research, is that they get students to read the content.

Now for the Best: The top technique is spreading out studying of the material over a period of time. The opposite of this would be cramming. The second best is practice testing—frequently, and not for a grade, which can be accomplished with flashcards and using apps “like Quizlet, StudyBlue, and FlashCardMachine.”

Other study practices that are okay but not great include: mental imagery, asking “why” while reading, explaining to yourself what you are reading when you are reading, using keywords or clues to remember, and “mixing up different types of problems.”

School Absences Equal Lower Test Scores

The National Assessment of Educational Progress notes that teachers are giving more homework, and schools are adding more time in subjects such as reading, mathematics, music, and visual arts. This means that missing school and not doing homework have even greater consequences than in the past. Research shows that low performers on standardized testing often missed more school. Doris Hicks, member of the National Assessment Governing Board, said, “For those of us in schools, this reflects what we’ve been saying all along: In order to advance, in order to learn, you have to be there.”

Are We Making Our Students into Master Test Takers

Valerie Strauss, in an article in the Washington Post, warns parents to watch out for three things as their children head back to school. All involve testing. For some time now, teachers, administrators, parents, and students have worried about too much testing. We hear of students who, for example, have three teacher tests and maybe a quiz or two in one day. —And then, there is all the standardized testing, which not only takes time to give, but is also quite expensive for school districts. Maybe teachers and administrators feel they need “black and white” evidence of how students are doing, or perhaps it has just become a habit. All of this testing takes away from teaching time, especially if teachers feel the need to prepare students for tests.  Strauss tells parents that excessive testing is unhealthy, as “students begin to identify with their scores.” She reminds them to watch out for the use of test scores that do not benefit students and the “amassing of individual student scores in national and state databases.” According to Strauss, student scores are used without parent permission, and parents don’t know what is being collected or how it is being used.