Design

If You Don’t Have Time to Read/Watch This….Do it Twice!

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A recent message with the subject line: “If you don’t have time to read this…read it twice.”…it goes on, “Stop. Breathe. Now, think about how you’re managing your time.”

I know that many of you, given your teaching schedules, have to be a little more creative with scheduling make time beyond Tuesday/Wednesday mornings, but strongly consider what this looks like for students too.

Act: Define exactly when and where you will reserve this time for you, and perhaps your students and then put it in your calendar.

Leverage Vocab.com

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Esther, Mary Ann and our English colleagues are using Vocab.com with students, and you can too!

To access vocab.com, make sure you are signed in to your school Google account  (Chrome works best) and go to vocab.com in any of the following three ways:

 Through Moodle’s left navigation bar

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Directly in Google Apps
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 Straight through the url vocab.com

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You can make your own vocabulary lists based on subject specific vocabulary and share them with your students. Talk to Esther, Liz or Ian if you want a brief tutorial, or read the instructions on the website itself.

Digitally Efficient Ways to Check for Understanding

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Interactive writing is one of the elements listed on Wes Fryer’s digital media creation grid I shared last week.  At ZIS Upper School some of our most efficient digital tools for interactive writing are:

  • Student digital portfolios
  • Google apps (docs, spreadsheets, presentations, etc) shared as anyone with the link can edit
  • Moodle discussion forums
  • Padlet walls

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These are all great digital tools, but in an of themselves they do not get at what’s needed most, quick, appropriate, timely feedback!  However, pair one of these digital tools with the right method for checking for understanding, and you and your students are on the road to formative assessment bliss.  I use the word bliss purposefully, because what most teachers and students want to avoid at all costs is the opposite:)

If you need some ideas check out this comprehensive list of 53 ways to check for understanding from Edutopia.

Blended Learning, Yet Another Look

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Last night your Social Studies colleagues took time to deconstruct the communication side of blended learning.

 

If you have time stop by the PBLR and take a look at their design thinking approach to the question, why does communication with students fail?

why comm fails

 

MIT MOOC: Learning Creative Learning—STARTS TODAY

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Once again, MIT Media Lab will offer a MOOC titled Learning Creative Learning.  This massive open online course is full of fantastic resources about engagement, passion driven learning and tinkering.

 

If MOOC’s aren’t for you but you would like to explore a little more about this style of learning check out this TED talk by Gever Tulley: Life lessons through tinkering   founder of tinkering school.

 

http://embed.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_action.html