Teacher Appreciation Week starts May 6th, 2013 and CNN’s Student News area is sponsoring a ‘Teacher Appreciation’ contest. Students create a video telling why their teacher is awesome and then the videos are uploaded the CNN iReport site. The contest page details include, Here’s your chance to tell everyone about your favorite teacher! We don’t [...]

I received the following email from the Making Curriculum Pop Ning and wanted to share it with everyone in case they did not see the email. 2013 CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE CLASSROOM TEACHER WORKSHOP July 31 to August 1- ONLINE SESSIONS August 5-6 - SESSIONS at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University […]

Livebinders is hosting a top 10 livebinder content and two of my livebinders were nominated!  Voting is open until June 16th and the top 10 winners will be announced on Wednesday June 19th during a webinar with Classroom 2.0 LIVE! at 5PM Pacific Time, 7PM Central Time and 8PM Eastern Time. After voting, Link to […]

Even though the 2012-2013 school year has ended, Gov. Rick Perry, who wanted to do away with the US Department of Education, has called a special Texas legislation session to deal with several issues with several bills featuring education issues. Two years ago a huge budget crisis hit Texas public schools as a result of […]

Testing reform in a special legislation session called by Gov. Rick Perry has been a huge focus. Secondary students got a reprieve from 15 end of course (EOC) exams to now just five and elementary students may get a reprieve but that is yet to be seen. According to the Texas American Federation of Teachers […]

If you haven’t used Thinglink with your colleagues or students you are missing out! You can link external images, documents, diigo lists, websites, etc. to nubbins placed on an image. Below is a short video I created on how you can use Thinglink. Watch the mouse pointer to see the options available and hopefully this […]

Sheila Adams, 7th grade teacher at Rye Junior High School in Rye, New Hampshire, will be celebrating Earth Day in a very unique way. They have been working on a number of things in class, including what ‘gyres’ are which I have been informed are giant masses of garbage made of mainly plastic and caused […]

The past couple of years I have really become interested in all things gamified. I am a huge proponent of BYOD/BYOT and gamification is a great way to enrich curriculum and teach content in a fun, engaging way. Most educators have played games as a student and while teaching their students but gamification is more […]

Many junior and senior high school students are taking or preparing for the SAT and ACT tests throughout the summer and school year. Khan Academy has partnered with the College Board to provide free preparation materials including previously unreleased questions in the math, reading and writing sections taken from previous SAT tests. There are over […]

The National Board for Professional Standards that certifies national board certified teachers is looking for teachers to field test some of the future official tests candidates for certification will take. I received an email from my NBCT network. The email states, As part of the National Board’s ongoing revision of the certification process, we need to recruit thousands of PreK-12th grade teachers to participate in field tests over the next three years. To meet our targets for validity, we are in great need of Art, Physical Education, Physics, Social Studies, Counseling, English as a New Language, and Exceptional Needs teachers to volunteer for the field tests.Teachers need not be board-certified to participate. The field tests offer candidates a chance to "test drive" the various components that make up certification at no cost and no risk. While there is no compensation or scores given, we are offering some incentives for teachers who complete the field tests. We would greatly appreciate your help in ensuring we recruit the required number of teachers for this Content Knowledge component in particular. The remaining components will be field tested over the next two years. The testing window for the second part of the Content Knowledge field tests has begun and will continue through October 13, with various windows depending on the certificate areas. More information, including a link to the field test application, is available here. Would you consider forwarding this email to teachers in the certificate areas I listed? I would greatly appreciate it. You don’t need to be a national board certified teacher (NBCT) but if you participate you will receive As a token of our thanks, field test participants will be eligible to receive CEUs - bUp to two Continuing Education Units Recognition - A letter of commendation from the National Board Gift cards - Up to $50 in either Amazon or Powell’s Books, $25 upon successful completion of each online testing appointment Join me in helping shape the future of the national board certification process!