Skip to main content

Recent Articles

Two articles came across my desk recently that I thought I would share. The first, is an article about student blogging from 21st Century Connections. It speaks to some of the concerns that staff have had about student blogging being too "schoolish" and offers up a way to engage students and allow them to drive the discussion. What I also liked about the article was the concept of not just getting students to write thoughtfully, but also to use blogs to get students to read critically.

The second article was an interview Daniel Pink conducted with Thomas Friedman on education in a "flat" world. In the interview they discuss the need for a liberal arts education, and both left and right brained instruction. Will Richardson had an interesting video post on the brain from Jill Bolte Taylor that has some good left and right brain information.

Comments

Tim K. said…
The first article is very interesting -- and humbling. As much as I try to avoid it, I fall into the "assigning blogging" camp rather than the "teaching blogging" one. My concern, as always, is time -- I think maybe what I'll do next year is to try and include the first six steps of the process listed there as part of our discussions of the films we watch. Maybe students won't establish and start writing in their blogs until second quarter.
Unknown said…
Tim,
I appreciate your comments. I think we all rushed in this year to get kids going, and we need to be more intentional. Let's hope that this makes it less "schoolish" too!

Popular posts from this blog

Nos Chemins vers la paix: Award Winning Video!

Valley View Middle School French Imersion teacher, Heather Palmer created this award winning video, Nos Chemins vers la paix , for the Tel.A.Vision " Vision For America " Contest. Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com Powered by One True Media , Tel.A.Vision.tv allows students to create videos that share their vision for the future. Heather wanted to use this video to promote the Wiki she and her students created for "6 Billion Paths to Peace." On the wiki, Palmer states: Our project was inspired by the program " Six Billion Paths to Peace ", an initiative of the Shinnyo-en foundation. We like the challenge the program offers us: commit to making a difference in this moment, in this day, in this lifetime! Palmer received her award last week at the National Service Learning Conference, in Nashville, TN. Way to go, Heather! NOTE: A few weeks ago while looking at the copyright free music available on the site, I notice a cover of the "Spinal ...

Redefining Awesome...Connected Learning

Last September, Will Richardson challenged our faculty to " Redefine Awesome " in what learning looked like in our district. The last few weeks, have seen some great connected learning opportunities happening at Valley View Middle School that get at what Will was talking about.  Project Lead the Way Tim Berendt, a teacher in our Project Lead the Way program, began using Twitter this year as a way for his students to share the work they are doing with the outside world, and also as a tool for formative assessment.  Students tweet out what they hope to accomplish at the beginning of the class period, and then tweet what they completed at the end. In many cases, students have received feedback and encouragement from people outside the district, such as this exchange from Autodesk, the company that makes the software the students use!  Berndt did a great job at the start reminding students to follow our Web 2.0 Code of Ethics , and how they could use hashtags to label ...