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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!

I am so excited to finally announce my book will be released shortly. You can order it from Visions at http://www.toolsforteachers.com/kim-caise! After months of writing, editing, and reviewing it is finally finished! The book is based on learning activities and tools that you can use in mystery adventure quests along with sample activities and tools to use in the mystery adventure quests you design for your students. You can click here for a full description of the book. The book takes quests and scavenger hunts to the next level and can make them content based with technology integrated. The book is applicable to all educators, administrators and parents - parents you weren’t left out! This is a great start to gamification learning activities for everyone that works with children so check it out!

Recently I have seen a lot of blog posts discussing the removal of mobile devices or 1:1 programs from the classroom as it is becoming a distraction and teachers are relying on the hardware to teach instead of teaching the content in a conceptual, hands-on way for students. While I agree teaching national standards or CCSS is important, as well as test preparation, I also believe teaching students to use digital media within the context of a global project or assignment is just as important. Not all students are adept at using the computer for research or synthesizing information on in-depth projects. While this is true that not all students are efficient and skilled computer users, I don’t think technology should be removed from the classroom at all. In fact, I think trained teachers should increase the use of technology to further learning and motivate students to be actively engaged in the learning process. Steve Jobs didn’t let his children use the iPad. When asked how his kids liked using the iPad, he said the amount of time his children used technology was limited. Blogger Sarah Lesnar shared the following regarding the limited use of technology with children, There is a quote that was highlighted in The Times by Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics and a father of five. He explains what drives those who work in tech to keep it from their kids. "My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules…  That’s because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids." Many people have noticed and made comments that children don’t play outside and aren’t as social in person like we were when we were kids. Over time technology evolved and we did have some technology to occupy our time and learn with but for the most part our entertainment came from socializing in person. As did our learning. Our learning was hands-on, allowing students of all abilities to conceptualize content to develop strong foundations for learning. Again, I wholly support hands-on learning and helping students conceptualize complex content areas or algorithms but technology should be a tool to facilitate the learning when possible in my opinion. Clay Shirky is one educator that bans all laptops from the classroom. He feels that it is a distraction and hard to compete with the challenge of keeping students focused and motivated on the content presented with all of the distractions having laptops presents holds during a lecture. But is a lecture or discussion the best way to engage large classes and present content? Clay Shirky’s thinking is along the lines of the research presented in "Brain Rules" about multi-tasking.  John Medina, best-selling author or Brain Rules, does not believe we can effectively pay attention to multiple tasks at one simultaneous time. Medina shares that our brains can focus on one thing only and multi-tasking is a myth. Instead, our brains switch back and forth from each task and pays attention to several items individually not simultaneously. Other educators are following suit as Clay Shirky. Effective teachers use technology in the classroom and its use is paramount to student success and academic performance. I couldn’t imaging teaching without technology. Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator, shared the following in a recent blog post, Clay Shirky author and professor of media studies at New York University, recently penned a guest article for the Washington Post sharing why he decided to ban technology in his class.  He explains how it was challenging to be more interesting than the devices. The following quote captures some of his thinking: "The practical effects of my decision to allow technology use in class grew worse over time. The level of distraction in my classes seemed to grow, even though it was the same professor and largely the same set of topics, taught to a group of students selected using roughly the same criteria every year. The change seemed to correlate more with the rising ubiquity and utility of the devices themselves, rather than any change in me, the students, or the rest of the classroom encounter." While I can understand the feelings of Clay Shirky, I personally tend to lean to the side of Lisa Nielsen. Lisa contends that the students that just ‘sit and get’ information from lectures don’t experience true learning. In my opinion, students need interaction, to experience simulations and learn from one another by collaborating on authentic, real world challenges that they might experience in a job or career setting after high school or college. Career readiness skills are paramount to preparing students for success as an adult in the workforce and the use of technology tools is one of those career readiness skills. Using technology in the classroom is so important to me it is the reason that I sought national board certification in the area of technology education. Playing outside is important but so is playing games to learn content in the classroom. But that leads into a whole different conversation about gamification, which has become near and dear to my heart since I finished my book on gamification, that I will save for another day. What are your thoughts on using technology in the classroom with students? Agree or disagree? Please leave a comment and let’s discuss this and make connections during Connected Educator month!