Educators Growing in Idaho with Professional Learning Networks

Idaho Google Summit

EdCamp Idaho

It's happening! Teachers, Instructional Coaches, Content Supervisors, Technology Managers, Teacher Librarians and more are collaborating formally and informally all over Idaho! Check out two upcoming opportunities to meet with other educators; learn about rich and powerful tools, strategies, and discover research that will help you to facilitate student centered learning in your classroom. 

If you just can't wait and want to start communicating with Idaho Educators and educators beyond our state's borders, check out the weekly Twitter Chat at #IDedchat on Wednesdays from 7-8 p.m. MST. Check out last week's chat that featured Idaho Core State Standards: Storify provided by @averyteach

If you know about other local or nearby events, please share the information in the comments section, below.  

School, Bells, Action!

When you get a chance, walk down the hallways of a school and peer into the classrooms. What do you see? Are students all facing the same way? Is the classroom set up in the same way that a movie theater is?

What happens when the bell rings and it is time for recess? Do the students race to get out of their classroom? Why?

How can teachers provide students a learning space that allows both physical and mental action? Take a look at this learning space from Clark Hall at Gahanna Lincoln High School in Columbus, Ohio.

We can create our learning spaces to allow for movement, activity, and student engagement both physically and mentally.

Check out the following resources for further research and ideas about creating classrooms that allow for student action:

Rationales, Strategies, & Resources for Movement in the Classroom

Learning Spaces Toolkit

Pillars of Digital Leadership Series: Rethinking Learning Spaces and Environments

Using Tech Tours for a Meaningful Homework Experience

My 5th graders had a favorite poem that they liked to recite, most of the students had learned this in second grade and they still had it memorized:

Homework! Oh, Homework!
I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you
away in the sink,
if only a bomb
would explode you to bits.
Homework! Oh, homework!
You're giving me fits.
I'd rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework,
my teacher assigns.
Homework! Oh, homework!
you're last on my list,
I simply can't see
why you even exist,
if you just disappeared
it would tickle me pink.
Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!
— "Homework! Oh, Homework!" by Jack Prelutsky

I made sure to share the "Why?" for homework with my students. I included some research such as this:
Brain research studies conducted by Hermann Ebbinghaus on memory produced the forgetting curve
that showed that approximately 70% of learned material that has no previous association
or meaning for the student is forgotten within three days. (Wolfe, 2001)

We talked about the importance of sharing our learning with others, and talked about how our families could be an awesome audience for this! This is when we came up with the idea of "Tech Tours." Students would take their families on a tour, each night, to a variety of online resources that they had contributed to such as IXL Math, Discovery Education Student Center, Kidblog, and our class Edmodo page. I helped students out by writing up some guiding questions for families to use when taking these "Tech Tours."  It was important to remind families and the learners that these were spaces that we were in the process of learning, rather than places to be assessed for final grades.

Homework can be meaningful when students are sharing about something that they have discovered, created, or experienced when learning.

Wolfe, P. (2001) Brain Matters. Association for Curriculum and Development.

Alexandria, VA.

A Space and a Place for Creating Interactive Lessons: Ed.Ted.Com!

TED Talks have been part of my Professional Learning Resources for sometime, however, I recently found an extension of TED that can be a powerful tool in any classroom! Check out ed.ted.com for creating interactive lessons and presentations!

Here's a quick sample lesson for Digital Citizenship, http://ed.ted.com/on/qyAkbpnM. If you arrive at ed.ted.com with your resources and ideas ready to go, you should be able to craft a lesson in about five minutes! The template style and prompts help to make this user friendly. 

When finished with your lesson, you are offered many ways to share: 

I love how this Web 2.0 tool will allow anyone with Internet access, and the ed.ted.com link, to view and participate with the lessons!