In my most recent Edutopia post I challenged my readers to make a list of at least 5 things they’ve done better this year. Here are mine: 1) Assessment I have taken a lot of time this year to work on my methods and purposes for assessment. While I am still stuck with a numerical gradebook…
The Barnes Foundation Yesterday my mother and I visited the Barnes Foundation, a wonderful museum outside of Philadelphia. Unlike a traditional museum, this house-school-museum was curated by Dr. Barnes, its founder and remains in its original design according to the rules set forth by him in his will and through his Foundation. In addition, rather…
I just finished this fabulous book by Ken Washburn that really has me thinking about instructional design. The Architecture of Learning has also made me more concerned about the direction that education is headed in this country. My main takeaway is embodied in this quote: Instructional design differs from lesson planning. I have been lesson…
My 6th graders are in the middle of building wikis about a topic of their choice. It has been a journey of learning how to evaluate sites, how to locate information, how to bookmark sites using Diigo and take notes with the highlighting feature. They have learned how to create a wiki and plan out…
As my 4th graders begin their research projects we have been discussing and experimenting with keywords. Today they put together a list of questions about their topic (a famous African American) to prepare for starting their research. I gave them a choice of how they listed the questions. I modeled the list method and the…
I have been fighting filtering battles ever since I first entered a computer lab as a technology teacher almost 4 years ago. Today I got my vindication. I am lucky that my new school does not block YouTube. My 6th graders are doing research projects that will culminate in them creating a Google Site about…
My last post, Research: One of the Hardest Things You’ll Ever Do, was a reflection on a lesson with my 6th graders about evaluating sites. I shared it with my network on Twitter and was met with some dialogue about my choice of “Is it a blog?” as an evaluation question. Here is some of…
My 6th graders are about to embark on a journey for the next few weeks. While it may seem like an exaggeration, I tell them that “research is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.” Even as an adult, I find this statement is only a slight exaggeration. They will be completing their first…
photo courtesy of FreeFoto.com I recently read an article entitled, “Education’s Status Quo to Parents: How Dare You Use the Parent Trigger and Make Decisions!” on the blog Dropout Nation. I won’t get into the details of the article, which was about the uproar over a private company helping parents in California use the “Parent…
This past month my 6th graders have been working on videos in iMovie using photos and video I took of them completing a Science lesson. They handed them in last week after grading themselves using the rubric for the assignment. I then watched each one and graded it, stapling my rubric under theirs. As I…