Preparing Students for Online Classrooms

Using an online learning platform is sometimes intimidating for teachers but we often assume that students are ready for technology. We hear that students of today are the technological generation and excel at the use of technology. But, the reality is that the extent of technology use by many students may be social media, texting friends and online gaming. They may have more apps installed than teachers but when it comes to the skills needed in an educational setting many students are lacking and do not understand the use of educational apps. Surprisingly, they are also not very good at…

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Build Your Own Website with WordPress

Are you ready to take your online presence to a new level? Then it may be time to build your own website with WordPress as your platform. Creating your own website gives you the flexibility to organize your content in a way that you want and in a way that will make the most sense to your users. Your website can start simple with basic content and expand to become as complex with as many features as you would like when and if you are ready. Is a website something that anyone with minimal computer skills can create themselves without…

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Using Technology in the Classroom to Facilitate Student Learning

The use of  technology is everywhere in society today and yet there is often a resistance to using technology in the classroom on a day to day basis. Research shows that technology used correctly is an effective way to increase student learning and that students tend to be more engaged when technology is included as part of a classroom lesson. Students are more interested in lessons when they are able to use technology to personalize learning and are far more likely to retain information. So why are we so reluctant to include technology in our classrooms or even switch to…

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Creating Effective Online Lessons

Moving to an online learning platform can be intimidating and disconcerting but by applying a few simple guidelines, can be made much less unsettling. Most of us did not set out to be a good online teacher or even an online teacher at all! We have spent many years in classrooms and have developed a certain comfort level . We are not comfortable or experienced with online platforms and have not yet decided what is good or bad or even if online classrooms are needed.  Most of us don't know how to teach online and may not even know how…

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Discussion Prompts

One of the best ways to increase student engagement in the classroom is to use discussion prompts to encourage student collaboration and interactive learning. Discussion prompts are anything that an educator uses to engage the student's senses to create thoughts or questions. Examples of discussion prompts could be: video clips, audio clips, photographs, quotes, statements, graphics, problems, newspaper articles, advertisements or even words. These prompts are usually displayed without comment and after giving students time to think about them, are used for group or class discussion. Let's take a look at the process for using thinking prompts.Like all instructional techniques,…

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Just Questions

The process that teachers use to question students happens in classrooms every day but the way questioning is done can have a huge effect on the correct determination of student understanding of the current topic of study. Good application of questioning style and type in the hands of an effective educator can demonstrate student knowledge to the teacher that can help them determine when and how to proceed as well as when additional intervention may be necessary. Effective questions, whether written or oral, can supply formative student learning data that will become much more than just questions.Good questions should be…

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Using Student Data

We talk about student data. We encourage the use of student data in planning effective lessons. We seek to center our conversations and collaborations with other educators around student data; but,, what do we really mean when we use the words "student data"? Is the context in which we use these words really what we intend and is our understanding of student data really what it should be? Let's talk about data and what effective student data is and is not. While end-of-year and end-of-course exams mandated by the state certainly create student data, the data created is mostly summative…

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We Don’t Fix Teachers

How many times do we say to ourselves or our colleagues, "I'll fix that"? When something is not going the way we want, the desire is to "fix" it. Sometimes we allow the "fix it" mentality to begin to apply to ourselves or co-workers. We start to think that it is the teacher that needs fixing. The truth is that we don't need to fix teachers because they are not broken! In fact, nothing is "broken". It only needs adjusting and refining.When faced with new ways of doing things as educators, we often feel that if we are changing what…

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The Best Laid Plans

As teachers, we plan, we assess, we adjust and we do it all again; but sometimes even our best lesson plans, that seem to work so well on paper, just don't work with students. What do we do when we create a great lesson but students don't become engaged and don't participate in a meaningful way? What do we do when an entire class doesn't seem to be involved in our lesson? I believe this is the time we go back to the basics.As I write this, we have just returned from a week-long Thanksgiving break, and as might be…

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Sharing with Google Docs

This post will be a little different from my usual posts in that I'm going to share an effective teaching strategy, using technology, that I often share with teachers in coaching cycles and often employ myself in team collaboration meetings--shared Google Docs.Google Docs is a free word processing application available to anyone with a Google account (free to anyone who wants to sign up) and is part of a suite of applications available to Google users. The power of Google Docs for students, and teachers alike, comes from its sharing capabilities. A doc can be created and shared with other…

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