Joel Zehring

I just finished talking with a student teacher who is wrapping up her “take-over” time in second grade. Now that she’s off active duty for a few weeks, she’s checking out other classrooms before finishing out the semester. Of course, I welcomed her to visit, with one request.

Give me feedback on my class, my lesson, my interaction with my students, and anything else you observe.

Constructive feedback based on empirical observation is hard to come by in elementary education. I’m going to request it from whomever I can. Plus, this teacher-in-training may have some insights and suggestions that are new to me. The trenches of teaching aren’t always conducive to researching new practices.

As a bonus, the student teacher gets to experience a little bit of real professional learning community. Instead of being talked down to, she gets to flex her collaboration muscles and contribute to my students’ learning by helping me to run a better class.

Students love good video games for two reasons:

• They present contextualized, actionable problems.
• They deliver immediate, logical feedback based on player actions.

I wish I could say the same for the typical public school class. Too often, students wait  days or even weeks  to get feedback on assignments that are standards-based but devoid of any context or over-arching story.

Two questions:

• How can I incorporate these core characteristics of good video games into my classroom?
• Are there any educational video games that incorporate these core characteristics? Do these games allow teachers to track student progress simply and authentically?

Scot McCleod had some insightful points about the value of video games in this post: Video games and learning: Individualization, simulation, and complexity.

I’m really enjoying the Sansa Clip 1 GB MP3 players I purchased for my classroom last year. I think my students are enjoying them, as well. My students have used them to record interviews, practice their fluency in reading, and listen to audiobooks, among other projects. I’ve used the recording feature to record Spelling tests and voice notes for later review.

Hit the link to listen to an audio sample of the Clip’s recording abilities.

Sansa Clip 1 GB Review

Students need to be engaged from the first moment they arrive to school. In fact, the first moments of the school day are some of the richest opportunities for learning.

Morning worksheets have been my chosen (or default) method of daily engagement, if I can call the activities engaging. Often the activities are boring and unimaginative. Typical canned morning work books and daily oral language activities are little more than fill in the blank and multiple-choice exercises. These activities seem to shift students’ mental gears from bright eyed and excited to docile and subdued. The worksheets are even worse to grade.

I appreciate a calm, controlled classroom as much as the next teacher, but certainly there’s a better way. I want to engage students in morning work that ramps them up to engaging and creative experiences throughout the rest of the day.

So I want to engage students in listing things every morning. Lots of things. Numerical things and visual things and emotional things, noises and smells, verbs and synonyms, geographic locations and animals that eat plants. The goal of the first lists will be numerical size: how many unique ideas can you generate? Can you think of more ideas today than you did yesterday? Later, lists will focus on generating more complex ideas, like solutions to an open-ended problem, or drawings to illustrate a recent science or mathematical concept.

This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also writes for OnlineColleges.net, an online college resource.

After preparing lessons, teaching students, and grading papers, many teachers find that there is very little time for anything else. That’s where the web can help. The Internet is flush with websites specifically designed to help people be more productive. Here are 25 sites that would be useful to teachers.

Dumb Little Man – This well-organized website offers all sorts of tips to help people live happier, more productive lives. New tips are added each week.

Lifehack – One of the most popular blogs on the web, Stepcase Lifehack is entirely devoted to providing tips and tricks to help people get more done on a daily basis.

Lifehacker – Lifehacker also offers tips and downloads for getting things done. New tips are posted everyday.

Productivity501 – Productivity501 is a productivity blog with frequently updated entries on time management, organization, productivity, and technology.

Unclutterer – This blog is all about getting organized and staying organized–in your home and in your career.

Netvibes – This free web service allows you to create your own personal home page with all of your favorite blogs, news feeds, social networks, email services, widgets, and websites. Putting all of these things in one place is guaranteed to save you a few minutes each day.

Google Reader – Google Reader boosts your productivity by bringing all of your websites to one place and notifying you know when new content is posted.

Clusty – Clusty was designed to help people conduct faster and more effective searches on the Internet. It sorts results into topic-based clusters to eliminate the time it takes to sort through unwanted results.

Hooeey – Hooeey helps you become more productive on the Internet by analyzing your browsing history and offering suggestions on how to better use your browser.

Ref Desk – If you need to check a fact quickly or get kid-friendly info for the classroom, Ref Desk is the place to go. This award-winning website offers tons of search engines as well as an enormous online collection of reference materials.

Lesson Plans Page – HotChalk’s Lesson Plans Page makes it easier for teachers to plan lessons by providing nearly 4,000 free lesson plans and other classroom resources.

TeAchnology – Teachers can get free access to thousands of resources on TeAchnology. The site offers nearly 8,000 printables and more than 30,000 lesson plans to help teachers save time.

Online Worksheet Generator – This online worksheet generator can be used to quickly create math worksheets, word puzzles, word searches, word scrambles, and more.

BookFinder – BookFinder makes it easy for teachers to find the books they are looking for. This meta search engine searches multiple sites to find the cheapest price.

Engrade – This online classroom community offers an entire suite of free web tools for teachers. Features that will help with productivity include an online assignment calendar, gradebook, attendance book, and secure messaging.

Edmodo – Edmodo is a communication tool for students and teachers. It can be used to share notes, files, and more.

Class Marker – Class Marker not only allows teachers to make professional-looking online quizzes, it also saves teachers time by grading the quizzes automatically.

Phonevite – Used frequently by school systems, Phonevite is a free phone service that sends recorded telephone messages, reminders, and alerts to other people.

Remember The Milk – Remember The Milk is the ultimate productivity app. You can manage and update your tasks from anywhere, get IM reminders, and share your tasks with other people.

Task Coach – Task Coach is an open source task manager that can be used to create and manage to-do lists and personal tasks.

TracksLife – This free web app tracks everything with customizable databases. And if you ever forget something, TracksLife will send you a reminder via email or RSS.

GradeFix – Although this homework management system was designed for students, it has features that would also be useful for teachers who want to stay on top of projects.

30 Boxes – This online calendar has all sorts of handy features and couldn’t be any easier to use.

TweetLater – This free Twitter app can help teachers who use Twitter better manage their account. The app allows you to type all of your Tweets up whenever you want and then set them to drip on the day you decide.

TweetDeck – TweetDeck is an all-in-one browser that can be used to better manage and update Twitter and Facebook accounts.