Well, it has been a while since I have posted TDF to the community. Such is life on spring break and the craziness of conducting a 3 three hour workshop and a concurrent session at a conference. Now I am in the middle of trying to get caught up. However, this morning seemed like a great time to do a little PD and I wanted to share what our community of bloggers has been writing over the past two weeks.
Gordon Rode
Failure: “Many years ago, as a young physics teacher, I took great pains (and enjoyment) in designing all physics tests for my students after a particular lesson. I was not much for using the tests that come with the textbooks, but would rather cut and paste (literally) different test questions from different sources to make my test. Knowing that the 15 to 20 students in my class had grasped the knowledge to all different levels, the goal was to design a test that…”MORE.
Chris Bigenho
Lack of Risk Puts Nation at Risk: This is a post I wrote several months ago but is in the same vein as the one above and connects nicely with the article referenced by Gordon. “Lately, I have been frustrated by the lack of risk taking I see in the U.S. education. I am not talking about financial risk or personal risk; there are plenty of examples there. I am talking about intellectual risk taking. Our educational system has done a wonderful job of preparing students for more school. School leads to school which leads to…”MORE
Patrick Woessner
Citizenship in Digital Age: Last week I shared a few weekend reading suggestions, including the 2010 State of K-12 Cyberethics, Cybersafety and Cybersecurity Curriculum in the U.S. Survey. The results illustrate that across the nation, students aren’t receiving adequate instruction to use digital technology and navigate cyberspace in a safe, secure and responsible manner. Web filters, acceptable use policies, and student information sessions alone are simply not…MORE
Patrick Woessner
Spanish Blogs: Speaking and writing in the target language are two fundamental goals of the World Languages Department. To that end, our 5th grade Spanish students maintain a class blog (hosted by MICDS and powered by WordPress MU) where they can showcase their language skills. For their first exercise, each student posted a letter that included an audio recording created using Audacity. These posts will, over time, become a portfolio of the students’ progression in Spanish…MORE [COMMENT: Very cool idea here and easy to duplicate at your school]
Jonathan Martin
New Technology High School & 21st c. Skills-The Video: Often I write here about my appreciation and enthusiasm for New Tech High Schools and the way they effectively educate students via a problem-based learning methodology and with an excellent use of technology integration. In my continuing effort to feature more videos on my blog, here is a nice video overview of…MORE
Jonathan Martin
The Significance of Sleep-time for our Secondary Students: Every study done shows a similar connection between sleep and school grades—from a study of second- and third-graders in Chappaqua to a study of eighth-graders in Chicago. The correlations really spike in high school, because…MORE
Vinnie Vrotny
Technology, Cognitive Tools to Change a School’s Ecology: Pat Bassett, the president of NAIS, refered people to an article recently published in the Journal of Technology Learning and Assessment, “The End of Techno-critique.” (http://escholarship.bc.edu/jtla/vol9/6/) This article presents research into the criticism of…MORE
Hiram Cuevas
Celebrating Our Faculty’s Accomplishments: A few months ago, our tech department launched a new technology blog-St. Christopher’s Tech Central Got Tech?! Now a blog itself is not a new concept but rather than having posts written by the techies, we’ve been soliciting teachers to share their successes. In addition to those posts, we post information about training opportunities, tech tips, and controversial articles…MORE
Anthony McGrann
Home Learning: There is research out there that shows that the time a child spends reading outside school hours increases a child’s performance in school. The same with time spent practicing skills. In fact you can find research to support…MORE
Bernadette Roche
The Mini Computer in Our Student’s Pockets: Do you realize how many computers you use in your daily life? Count them up – your computer at home? Your computer at work? A laptop? A child computer or two? But which computer do you use most often? For most adults and teenagers, it’s the computer that is occasionally used to make…MORE [COMMENT: What a wonderful list of applications for phones.]
Stephen Downes
Three Models of Knowledge Production: While Stephen is not an independent school blogger, he maintains a wonderful blog and this post seemed like a great addition to this list. “Harold Jarche weighs in with a much improved version of the model describing personal knowledge management, which now has these as intermediate stages between gathering and distributing…”MORE
NAIS Annual Conference 2010 Community 