All Blog Posts (1,002)

Technology can improve learning on days that teachers have a substitute teacher. The teacher and the sub can both make online preparations to ensure a sick day is still a day full of learning.

Lets first consider the classroom teacher. There are any number of ways that you can prepare for a sick day. Traditionally, a teacher will have a subfolder prepared with a map, the teacher's schedule, trustworthy students and some simple lesson plans. If you know in advance, you can also have…

Can you imagine every student at your school or in your organization improving raeding reading skills? The Launchpad Company is starting a nationwide campaign to make a difference in how students enjoy reading.  The company helps students by providing reading level using Lexile scores.  A Lexile score is a measure of a student’s reading ability.  The student gets to select two books that get them excited about reading  each month.  Right know too many students are getting books that are not…

I recently worked with elementary and middle school teachers on infusing Web 2.0 tools into their classrooms.  This is the resources we found most useful.

Check out my blog at http://mrskeehnersblog.blogspot.com/

The beginning of the month saw the publication of an insightful and thought provoking post at Mathalicious. This post really probed the conversation around Khan Academy and the changes that this product and platform has brought to the world of math education. While I agree with much of what was written, there are some aspects of the authors claims that I find problematic.…

Several weeks, “How do educators collaborate within a building to better their professional practice? What would make such collaboration easier/better?” was the #edchat topic. I enjoyed participating in this chat because I have had major concerns about the lack of cross curricular planning and collaboration among the staff in my school. Despite the hard work of my administrator, our staff lacks the collaboration and consensus of what ideals and goals we share. A portion of our staff are…

As an educator for the past four decades there is very little in the way of conversation that I haven’t discussed about what it is to be a teacher. In these discussions, over all of these years, there is one position taken by many people which always gives me cause to think less of the person with whom I am having the discussion. It forces me to question their bias on the subject. The statement that sets me off is usually some variation of,”teaching isn’t really a profession”.

The…

Has the growth and technology decreased reading scores? Are students reading less? This is a big topic of discussion in many education circles. Everyday students are on computers, Ipads, Kindles and other devices. Students are getting information much faster and they are very enticed by three dimensional images. In spite of all of this technology it is still important to read. Learning to read feeds students brains and it challenges them to grow intellectually and emotionally. Students…

Reading and writing used to be much simpler. We would get some sort of sharp stick (a pen or pencil) and scratch at paper until the marks we made could be interpreted by someone else. Well, our writing has evolved somewhat and along with it, so has our reading. Nowhere is this change more evident than in the home of reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic... academia.

Lets start by looking at our writing tools. Lets start off with PDF's. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, PDF's are…

After listening to a webinar today on PLNs, I realized that I often speak about various facets of personal learning networks but haven’t addressed them head on. I’m a big advocate of PLNs because of their power to network with peers locally and globally. Additionally, I work from home, so I don’t have the more familiar hangout time with colleagues during breaks or at lunchtime when you would normally spend time discussing various topics. Instead, I’m more likely to attend a Google+Hangout or…

Co-founders of Flat Classroom®, Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis, are excited to be able to offer this global collaborative project to classrooms around the world. This project will run as a pilot for the coming semester, February-April 2012 and be open to Prep/Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 classrooms (4-7

year old students).

Can very young students effectively connect, communicate, and collaborate in a global project?

What does this look like? What products can students in…

Classroom, a photo by James F Clay on Flickr.

As teachers, sometimes we think of ourselves as only giving the lessons and not receiving them. This year that has changed for me. I love to learn and always have. I have a master’s degree…

Teachers around the U.S. are struggling with just how to create common formative assessments. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than just coming up with a little quiz or thinking up an exit ticket at the end of class. A lot of the work deals with meetings within our department. We get together to discuss the scope and sequence of what we teach. Then we have to generate the actual assessment.

Once the assessment is deployed, of course it has to be analysed. We once again have to…

A personal observation: Back when I began my early education, the year was 1952. I don’t believe Pre-K even existed back then, so I started my education in Kindergarten. There is no doubt in my mind that in my early education I was exposed to educators who were students of a 19^th Century education. Those teachers were teaching content to kids using methods they had learned in the 1800’s. Content back then was more solid and more trustworthy. Things did not change. Encyclopedias,…

Check out my latest blog post about our activities for Digital Learning Day.

I am currently working with the PE department on creating a UbD unit for Team Sports.  If anyone knows of good resources that address UbD, specifically implementing with PE, I am open for suggestions.

I am anticipating that this post may be among the most unpopular posts I will write as a blogger. My position on this topic certainly did not win me the “most popular guy” award when I was a secondary teacher. I remember when Barry Goldwater ran for President; there was a saying that “He would rather be right than be President”. That was a testament to the man’s core beliefs. That seems to be a dying quality given the examples of politicians today. The point however is that sometimes…