Love it or hate it, if you live in the 45 states that have adopted it, Common Core is coming to a classroom near you by 2014. Common Core State Standards are a state-led effort by state governors and leaders. They were written by educators and standards experts. They give teachers, parents and students a clear understanding of what they need to know at each grade level. It isn’t a curriculum but a guideline for educators. While teachers must incorporate the lessons and standards into their lesson plans, they have the flexibility to decide how they will use them. The Difference Between Good Teachers and Great Teachers Good teachers hold a teaching degree and want to play a part in the education of children. They love their students and look forward to coming to work. They’ve laminated their lesson plans and reuse them every year with some fun activities. Good teachers show up right before the bell and leave right after and usually don’t attend conferences. They teach their students how to solve problems and memorize facts for the test. Great teachers engage their students and encourage them to discover the answers on their own instead of force feeding the facts. They also have activities, but they tie them to real world connections and demonstrate the passion behind the why. They are always looking for the new ways to present ideas and excite their students. Great teachers know how to turn the lessons into unforgettable learning experiences that get home to the dinner table. They instill a lifetime of memories in their students that always start with "I’ll never forget the day that…" Common Core Subjects Common Core does not address science and only contains standards for Reading, Writing and Math. Next Generation Science Standards are coming down the pike, but with such an emphasis on high-stakes testing on reading and math, even the great teachers run out of time to teach science. At Steve Spangler Science, our busy season is usually April and May when testing is over and teachers are ready to teach science. Science is not an extra curricular activity. Science is found everywhere - in sports, in cooking, in the products we use, in technology and advancements and so much more. If we are not spending the time to educate our future scientists, our future is dim. Today’s teachers must squeeze a lot from tiny budgets, to birthday cupcakes to science social studies and music. Funding shouldn’t go to a program, it should be put into our students. How do you fit it all into a six-hour day and still produce well-rounded, fully educated children ready to enter college and eventually the job market? Squeeze it. The secret to teaching is integration. Pack a lot of information into a tiny space, a tiny budget and a tiny timeframe. Stop thinking of the school subjects as separate pieces…everything touches. Nothing is separate. Sports coaches use math and analyzing skills, financial planners must read, and software developers must write. Scientists read, write and calculate in their labs. Just because you feel weak in a subject, doesn’t mean you can avoid it throughout your life and career. Squeeze Science into the classroom.  Lisa is a 2nd grade teacher in Denver, Colorado who knows how to integrate. She shared her five top tricks to squeeze science into her classroom using Steve Spangler Science materials. 1. Lisa did away with sharing treats on birthdays. Instead, her students get to be the lab assistant for the day and help her perform and science demonstration. The kids don’t miss the sugar and get really excited to be a mad scientist for a day. 2. Lisa also integrates a lot of science into story time. She reads The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. After the class works on retelling the story while also determining the moral in the book. The class then uses UV Beads in place of the colorful Rainbow Fish scales to make their own bracelets. The beads can also be used for counting and sorting activities. 3. Axle Annie by Robin Pulver is another read aloud book she uses to teach vocabulary and plays-on-words. The students also compare and contrast how the two main characters respond to the main events in the story and determine the lesson. Then Lisa makes it snow indoors with Insta-Snow. The kids love it when she makes snow in their hands, a memorable experience. 4. About five days before Halloween, Lisa takes out her Mad Scientist Growing Body Parts Jar and fills it with water. The students take turns measuring the brain, ear, hand and nose to compare how much they’ve grown each day. She also fills a jar with salty water and asks the kids to make predictions about what will happen. 5. Lisa gives each student a Baby Soda Bottle Test Tube. They must conduct an inquiry-based activity to explore and hypothesize about the true use of the test tube. After they learn the real use, she then asks them to find a new and innovative use that solves a real world problem. She extends the activity by having the students create an advertisement or persuasive writing piece to sell the product. Don’t forget that integration is key. Everything is connected. Include a quick science activity with your read aloud. Or make math connections within science experiments. Inspire your students and create unforgettable learning experiences in your classroom. What are your tips for integrating more science, music, art, social studies or any of the forgotten subjects into your lesson plans? The post How to Tackle Common Core and Squeeze Science into the Classroom appeared first on Steve Spangler.

By Blog Editor Susan Wells As the back to school season starts, what types of feelings are stirred up? For me, it was always a mixture of excitement and joy over new clothes and school supplies and a knot in my stomach knowing I was headed into a new class with a new teacher. There were so many unknowns and stresses placed in that first day of school. While some kids are ready and eager to return to school, many face a plethora of fears and aren’t ready to say goodbye to the freedom of summer. Our Steve Spangler Science First Days of School Kit not only contains activities to turn students into friends, but also engages the kids and gets them excited about learning. If you are a teacher, you know how difficult it is to enthrall a new classroom of students who have spent long lazy days dulling their minds in the sunshine. How do you grab their minds, shake some oohs, ahhs and laughter out of them, and become the coolest teacher in the school? The First Days of School kit is packed with several Steve Spangler experiments and science toys. If it makes it to the dinner table, you win! Windbag Wonders Team Building Activity Give each student a Windbag and ask them to blow it up as fast as they can. How many breaths will it take to inflate the 8-foot-long bag? The kids will blow and blow and blow and swear that it’s impossible. It may seem that way, until you share a little secret called Bernoulli’s Principle. Inflate the bag in front of them with one breath. Now divide the students into groups of three to five and have them inflate the Windbags. Ask the students to create a free standing structure. The highest structure wins the challenge. As a chorus of laughter and chatter erupts, the students will be so engaged, they will forget all about missing mom or dad. They may even meet a new friend or two.   Do You Trust Me?  Before the students arrive in the classroom, set up by adding 1/2 a teaspoon of Water Gel in a styrofoam cup. Fill a pitcher of water and set it aside. When the students come into the classroom, choose a volunteer. Have the volunteer hold the cup above eye level while you fill it. Don’t let them see inside. The Water Gel is a special powder that is similar to the polymer found in baby diapers. When you pour the water in the cup, the powder will absorb it. Talk about the idea of trust and say "If you give me your trust this year, I promise to teach you things that will change your life forever!" Now hold the cup over the student’s head and poke pencils through the cup. Have the student promise not to runaway, and warn, "you may get wet, but I really need my pencils back." Pull the pencils out of the cup. The water will appear to have vanished and the room will fill with shouts of "how did you DO that??" Before you give yourself away, have the students make guesses as to what happened to the water. Get them asking questions and making predictions. Now that’s the science of leadership! Rainbow Friendship Bead Bracelets Give each student five or so Color Changing UV Beads and a pipe cleaner. Ask them to string the white beads and make a bracelet with the pipe cleaner around their wrist. The beads will remain white until exposed to ultra-violet light, like sunlight. The secret is a pigment in the beads that responds to UV light waves. Remove them from sunlight, and they return to their white color. You may want to "forget" to tell them that the beads have this special power and instead send them home or out to recess with the bracelets to discover on their own. Fuel their curiosity by asking the students how and why they change color. Then use the beads for one or more of these great metaphors and life lessons - B.E.A.D.S = Becoming Enthusiastic and Dedicated Students The beads are a celebration of diversity - diversity is often hidden in the brightest source of light. The beads are a metaphor for a person’s true colors. True colors are a person’s inner strengths, willingness to help out, a giving heart, compassion for others or being truthful. A person’s true colors may not be visible at first, but character traits may come out in life situations. The First Days of School Kit comes complete with an Activity Guide packed with science experiments, connections to life lessons and scientific principles. The kit is aimed at making those first days of school energetic and unforgettable by using teamwork, sharing, goal setting, reasoning and creative thinking. 30 Windbags Approximately 250 Energy Beads (Assorted Colors) 100g jar of Water Gel™ 50g jar of Jelly Marbles 3 styrofoam cups 30 pipe cleaners First Days of School Activity Guide     The post Easing the Fears and Anxieties Through Team Building During the First Days of School appeared first on Steve Spangler.

Our focus at Steve Spangler Science is teaching hands-on science - don’t read just about it in a text book, touch it, see it and live it. That’s where discoveries are made and real learning begins. Some are challenging that focus on teaching science and pushing for more of a foundation in content before going into the lab.  Daniel Willingham (Why Don’t Students Like School?) believes elementary students in particular are novices and are therefore unable to think like a scientist. The only people able to think like scientists are the expert scientists themselves, believes Willingham. Willingham argues that the only way to become an expert is to have a strong foundation in the field coupled with years of practice and experience. He believes students should write poetry and perform science experiments, but they will not have meaningful and memorable lab experiences until they become a real scientist. Katherine Beals (Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World) explains that labs are essential for the advancement of science, but questions if they are needed to learn what has already been discovered. In other words, is it better for students to study, hypothesize and question about a specific lab topic and then instead of performing it themselves, read about the experts’ findings? She questions if there is a purpose in re-enacting experiments that have been done over and over. The results have already been discovered, so why have students go through the same motions? We now teach in a world with science videos, science apps and a plethora of scientific knowledge at our fingertips. There are even programs that will step students through complete labs without the students ever having to touch a pea seed, smell formaldahyde or measure a chemical. Virtual labs calculate the results based on past experiments and give students the data they need while saving money on materials and time spent in the lab. There are the students out there that will jump up and down about this type of learning. They will step through the exciting parts of the lab without actually having to do it. But what about those who love putting on the lab glasses and gloves and diving into smelly, messy science to watch their results come alive in front of them? Even if a result has been proven again and again, isn’t there something in letting novice students make their own discoveries? A picture of Elephant’s Toothpaste is cool, but observing it shoot into the air and then smelling the reaction is something you can’t get out of a book. Science is explosive, olfactory and incredibly visual. It’s also tedious, boring at times, full of research and writing and results don’t always come out as expected. Shouldn’t students of all ages get the opportunity to experience a slice of what the expert scientists live everyday? Just like reading the real Declaration of Independence with the actual signatures of our founding fathers while standing in the National Archives makes a deeper impression than looking at a copy in a book. What are your thoughts about hands-on vs. building a deeper foundation before reaching for that lab coat? What creates memorable experiences for students?     The post Is the Hands-on Approach Really the Best Way to Learn Science? appeared first on Steve Spangler.

Steve Spangler visited the set of The Doctors Science Lab this week to share lessons on the science behind some health discomforts…   With Steve as their lab instructor, The Doctors donned their lab coats and went to work. They used Red Cabbage Indicator, Milk of Magnesia, giant flasks and a few ‘glubs’ of vinegar to demonstrate how antacids work and the classic Elephant’s Toothpaste demonstration to show what happens with food poisoning in the stomach. The Science of How Antacids Work  Antacids have to be one of the most popular over-the-counter medications that help control indigestion and heartburn. The active ingredient in most antacids is magnesium-hydroxide. It works to buffer and turn the liquids in the stomach from an acid to a neutral. When an acidic food that can cause heartburn is eaten, the antacid goes to work to neutralize it. For the occasional episode, it’s okay to use antacids to calm heartburn and indigestion. It is not a good idea to take them every day or after every meal like it was once thought. Our stomachs are designed to be acidic to digest food and function properly. The Science of Food Poisoning You’ve eaten something that wasn’t quite right - it sat out too long or was contaminated in some way. Your stomach feels like it is going to explode in all directions and you begin praying to the porcelain gods. To demonstrate what is happening inside the digestive tract, Steve used graduated cylinders to act as the stomach. When the "bad food" was introduced to the stomach, it reacted naturally, by quickly expelling the bad stuff fast. Vomiting and diarrhea are the two ways in which your body gets rid of the bacteria or virus. As cool (and smelly and hot) as this experiment is, it is best to leave it to the professionals like chemistry teachers. For more information about the Monster Foam Elephant’s Toothpaste demonstration and a kid-friendly Elephant’s Toothpaste that everyone can do at home, click the experiment links. The post The Science Behind on The Doctors Science Lab appeared first on Steve Spangler.

In his 15th appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, Steve Spangler brought a few of his science tricks to the talk show. Steve made yet another colossal mess on Ellen’s set as he rigged 60 leaf blowers with 60 toilet paper rolls to launch at the same time. When Ellen pushed the button, the studio was instantly swallowed up by flying toilet paper as a demonstration of Bernoulli’s Principle. Ellen also demonstrated centripetal force by swinging a tub of water over her head. To watch The Ellen Show in its entirety, check your local listings. The post Steve Spangler Toilet Papers The Ellen DeGeneres’ Studio appeared first on Steve Spangler.

Bullying makes the news almost every week. It exists in schools, sports fields, playground and online. We’ve also recently learned bullying is also present in professional organizations like the NFL. Children who are bullied tend to withdraw and suffer emotional scars. In extreme cases, some become so desperate, they take their own lives. Steve sat down with professional speaker and certified professional coach Laurie Flasko to talk about bullying and what we can do as parents and teachers to put a stop to it. In her book, Bullying Is Not a Game, A Parents’ Survival Guide, Flasko shares advice and tips for parents on how to help their child get through bullying and survive. If you aren’t sure if your child is being bullied, watch for some telltale signs like a change in their personality. Are they suddenly secretive and withdrawn? Do they hide their email and online activity? Have their friends stopped coming over? Children who are being bullied may be afraid and don’t want to talk to their teachers or parents. You may need to reach out to your child and help them feel secure in talking to you. But don’t drill them. Then talk to the teacher and school about next steps. For teachers, Flasko says their relationship is very important. Know your students and watch them for sudden personality changes or behavior. A good student who stops turning in homework or falls behind quickly may be a sign. When you see something or after a student comes to you about a bullying event, address it quickly and keep the informer anonymous. Do not bring the two kids together unless the bully wants to apologize and the bullied child is okay with sitting down. For more tips, support and help, sign up for Flasko’s Bully Tip of the Week. Here are some additional resources for bullying help - National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255) National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Bullying Website StopBullying.gov  StompOutBullying.com BullyHelp.org The post Bullying Is Not a Game appeared first on Steve Spangler.

NPR ran a feature today on the future of books. Here's the part that most perked my interest (beings that many of us have been talking about this for some time now)...Long the building blocks of academia, textbooks are seen more as albatross and less as asset these days. They are expensive — some costing more than $300. They are quickly outdated. They can be so heavy that students and teachers are forced to tote them around in wheeled luggage carts.Students, professors and universities are rebelling against the weighty — and wasteful — tomes. Stanford University's brand new physics and engineering library is advertised as "bookless"; relying almost solely on digital material. Free and downloadable textbooks are at the heart of the growing "open educational resources" movement that seeks to make education more available and more affordable. Groups such as Connexions at Rice University and the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources in Silicon Valley are supporting free online textbook initiatives.

Decided to take a break from blogging with the plan to get started again the day after Labor Day.Looks like that day has come.And so, I offer this humble post -- which is really just a reflection on something that's been running mantra-like through my mind recently. Namely: this paperless thing is easy.Really.You don't need a guru to lead you through this mess. It's not even a mess.I remember when I quit smoking. I'd started back in high school and got up to two packs a day by the time I was 23 years old. Then a serious case of bronchitis hit and I was put on my back for a few days with nary a smoke. Coming out of that, I decided to see how long I could go without a cigarette. And I wound up quitting.I think about this now, because as I've said before, the number one reaction I had to quitting smoking was that I became furious at the cigarette companies. And I grew furious at myself. I was so angry because I felt like I'd completely been put on and because I'd wasted so much time and money on smokes.And that's the same way I felt years ago when I went paperless.I felt like for so long I'd been at the mercy of paper companies and printers and publishers. And I realize how that can sound silly; but as any teacher sitting under five sections of research papers knows, it's anything but silly.These days, instead of waiting for all of my students to meet a deadline, I just have them share a Google Doc with me and I follow along -- popping in now and then to give advice and see what they are doing as they are doing it.And that's a paperless move that changes the feel of teaching. It's an empowering thing. It's a formative thing. It's a thing that suggests what the future might be like rather than a thing that insists on dragging the past along out of some sense of perceived comfort.And it's easy to do.Easy.And that's why in this -- what I guess you'd call the third season of TeachPaperless -- I am questioning whether or not I need to write this blog. Because so long as you can get computers and access, you can do this stuff. You don't need to pay me to come teach you. You don't need me to write a book to sell you. This stuff is easy; all you have to do is experiment a bit and find what works for you.As for those of you -- many of you, in fact -- who don't have computers and access: make this your year. Make this your year to organize parents, students, and teachers together to figure out how to get real tech in your building. Make this your year to petition your admins, their supers, and all the rest to get what you want going on in your school.Because it's 2010.And if you don't do it now, when are you going to do it? And if you don't do it, who will?So bring your A-game. Do some research and argue for the reallocation of funds from textbooks and printers to internet devices and wi-fi. Find grants. Find alternate funding. Get your parents on board. Get your tech thing worked out.And then you'll have the chance to try out this paperless thing with your students. You'll have the chance to learn and to teach and to blog and to share. And you'll have the chance to realize that this stuff is easy.And then, come one summertime soon, you'll have the chance to sit back and reflect on what you've done. And you'll think to yourself: this paperless thing is easy.Easy.

Things go wrong. So it's always best to be prepared when they do.One of the things I've found, especially with teachers new to working in a live social tech environment, is the fear of the tech breaking down and said teacher being stuck twiddling the proverbial thumbs.So here's a shortlist of things you can do (or should think about) when broken tech brings the pain.1. Prepare tabs of all sites you plan to lead students through in advance; this way, should your network go down, you can still manage through the majority of your web content. Students should also save offline syncs of info-style pages regularly accessed -- like e-books, encyclopedia entries, etc. In fact, tab-prep can suffice as a pre-classtime requirement for students.2. If you have both wired and wi-fi networks available, consider setting up a small local hub in your room to connect computers should the latter go down. Or if you have your own portable 3G hotspot, share it.3. Should the network fail while using Google Docs or while writing blog posts, have students dump their work into a word program and work there until the connection is re-established (this is what Gears should have been able to do). Anyway, make sure that your students know to do this from day one, it will save a lot of headaches.4. I realize this could be considered a controversial one, so I won't tell you what to do, but I'll make a suggestion that you think about making "educational fair use" temp downloads of those YouTube videos you want to show. While I don't publicly condone hacking, there are plenty of easy-to-use and easily-Google-able resources that will help you do what you need to in a pinch.5. Find alts. If you need a backchannel and Twitter gets scrambled, try TodaysMeet. There are plenty of Web 2.0 sites made specifically for education, as well; search through Richard Byrne's site for ideas.6. Design assessments based on students both collaborating and playing to their individual strengths. If your network is shaky, you might be able to have a few kids online while others are working offline. Rotate it up, let kids share tech, for the sake of argument consider the parameters of a shaky network an opportunity to experiment with group dynamics and new forms of collaboration.7. Let kids access the Net via their phones and personal Internet devices.8. Have students create any and all new accounts -- i.e. Twitter, Google, YouTube, Jing -- from home or from the library. All new account registrations basically work the same these days, so just give the students the info they need and have them set up their resources as homework. This gets rid of the problem you often encounter in a classroom when trying to make multiple accounts simultaneously under the same IP address. There's nothing more frustrating than having an entire classroom of kids fail at trying to set up online accounts just because of security and redirect issues. It's a waste of time; so save time and have them do it on their own time.9. Be prepared to improvise. And I'm not talking about flying by the seat of your pants. I'm talking jazz. You've got to practice the skill and hone the craft of improvisation everyday in every class so that when things do go haywire you're not completely screwed. If it were up to me, I'd make "Authentic Improvisation" -- as opposed to "B.S. Improvisation" -- a required class in ed school.10. Know your students. I'm convinced that at least part of the fear of tech going down in flames in one's classroom is really a manifestation of a deeper issue: teachers not really getting to know their students and therefore not having the trust, conversational faculties, and mutual understanding of learning goals to get past a rough spot. If you and your students trust one another, you should be able to teach each other using nothing more than voices and gestures. And that's not some newfangled idea: that's what teachers have/had done for thousands of years.11. Take a nature walk. Every classroom community benefits from mutual engaged experience. So you lose the wireless and your lesson is shot? Use it as an opportunity to go out and experience something with your students. Take 'em out for fresh air and conversation. Take 'em to the cafe for a snack and a chit-chat. See if the gym is open and shoot a few baskets with 'em. Don't dwell on what didn't work; rather, use the opportunity presented by a snafu to look at the world in a different way.Now, if that wi-fi keeps going out or those computer batteries keep drying up after a half-hour of use, you're obviously going to have to deal with that problem. No one can integrate tech and education in those conditions. But with a good network in place, on those relatively rare occasions when things do fall apart, you should be able to manage without losing your hair. Consider the tips I've offered (all of which I've used at one time or another) and please leave some of your own ideas in the comments. Good luck!

Generic Names for Soft Drinks by Countyhttp://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats/total-county.htmlA note here to folks getting this via a reader, you definitely want to check this out on the site: www.teachpaperless.com so that you are sure to get all of the pictures; this just won't make sense without the pics. The map here is pretty amazing. Color-coded, it shows the national distribution of terminology used to describe soft drinks. You'll notice some telling facts. For example, the thin swath of yellow running down an otherwise red Florida's coast. That's East Coast migrants (aka retirees) bringing their slang to Florida. And notice which state seems most pluralistic? Yup, that's all those military folks from across the country huddled together in New Mexico.Maps tell a story. And that's what my Human Geography students and I talked about today. We talked about how you could lay a map of something as seemingly innocuous as how people describe soft drinks over the context of patterns of human habitation and find a telling correlation.They were pretty blown away.Until somebody said, "But how do we know that's accurate?"So we decided to do a little informal test. The 9th graders and I tweeted out the following:Question from Freshman class: Hey world, what is the generic name you use for a softdrink? Please give name & yr location. THX! #JCHUMANGEOAnd then we started chatting about the accents and dialects of different folks in different parts of the country. Had a nice discussion. And then I remembered to check to see what had come in via Twitter.And I saw this:Tweets 9/9/10How's that for a little confirmation?In real-time, sitting in a classroom in semi-rural Maryland, my 9th grade Human Geography students reached out to the world, asked it a question, and got a response.We looked through the responses -- many of which included little stories of people's own lives and migrations -- and compared them to the map. The map proved most accurate.Now that's what I call 21st century education: analyse information, check it against the real world in real time, and evaluate what it all means.

Thanks to Scott McLeod for spotting me a guest post on his blog today; go check it out, it's titled 'A Simple Request'.

Just giving you a peek into the kinds of stuff we're doing this year in Human Geography class. Right now we're working on a unit about language and migration. Here are the last two posts from my class blog -- I think you can get an idea about some of the stuff we're talking about as well as see some of the resources we're using. Recap of Indo-European Language DiscussionTUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2010What we did in Section 2: 1. Listened to the Urdu story here: http://www.theworld.org/2010/08/20/a-persian-insult-an-inuit-dialect-and-urdu-directions/ 2. Played a game where we had to give directions in Urdu to a blindfolded friend. 3. Looked at the history of Indo-European language; (Here's a link to the Indo-European language map.) 4. Used Google Maps Streetview to explore places where Indo-European languages are spoken. 5. Discussed how English and Urdu are related. Tonight, please finish up the Language Region Google maps. We'll use those next class. And remember to check our Twitter feed for announcements/updates. Thanks. Language and Humans MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2010What we did today: 1) Review of how a human geographer can use the "Soda Pop" map to analyse migration patterns. Here's a link to the map: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NLOcDtt0kJA/TIkbvmqtWaI/AAAAAAAABTI/GR6lF6RQWU4/s1600/Pop_vs_Soda.gif 2) Listened to a podcast about Dual-Language Schools: http://www.theworld.org/2010/09/08/learning-in-two-languages/ 3) Debated whether immigrants to the USA should have to learn English. 4) Used Google Translate to read news in German and Korean. Here's the podcast to listen to and summarize for homework: http://www.theworld.org/2010/08/20/a-persian-insult-an-inuit-dialect-and-urdu-directions/ (20 minute program -- spend about ten minutes writing brief three or four sentence summaries of each part of the program).

So there's this debate that goes on in my head. It's about homework. And whether/how and what/when to give it. I think about how I've handled assigning homework over the years, and it's chilling for me to think just how lousy I used to be.Because I used to be a homework freak. In my early years teaching, I was that guy who insisted students do problems #1, 3, 4-6 and then I'd check 'em the next day. I'd give homework before even reading the questions myself. And I felt fine with that. Because I really thought that so long as the students were 'working' they were 'learning'. So I piled it on.And while I certainly learned a lot about the mechanics of grading homework, I'm not sure I did much more for my students than increase their stress and decrease their sleep.So, I've sort of come around. I still give homework -- or more properly titled 'work that needs to get done on your own time' -- but these days I like to think that I've replaced the arbitrary with the essential and the busy-for-busy's-sake with something the students can actually 'use'.These days, the homework I give isn't based on some arbitrary idea of how much work a kid should do 'at home' to reinforce something we did in class, but rather it's a matter of asking the students to do something necessary to prepare themselves for the next class. Homework becomes an act of preparation -- and hopefully sparks some anticipation not for seeing what you 'got right or wrong', not for seeing if you can jump through that next hoop, but anticipation for taking part in the next day's discussion, activities, and learning.I want homework to be a cliffhanger. I want it to be the device at the end of the chapter of every thriller that won't let you put the book down until you've read the whole thing.The key is that it has to make you want to continue.It's like in life: if you have a meeting with a really interesting character, you prepare for the meeting -- you might review material and jot down notes, maybe talk to an associate beforehand to make sure you've got your bases covered, and hit the Web to make sure you understand both the material and the objective of the meeting. Your preparation is done in anticipation for the meeting and because you care about the meeting and genuinely want to talk about the matter at hand, you prepare out of a sense of thrill.Yes, I said 'thrill'.I want homework -- or work done beyond the limited time that I've got 'em in my classroom -- to come with a sense of thrill. I want it to accompany a sense that it's really helping one get in the right frame of mind to engage with what we're talking about in class.Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the most complex thing on paper turns out a dud and sometimes the most simple thing turns out to have some real teeth. One way or the other, the trick in preparing kids to prepare is to more often than not get the teeth rather than the dud.And it usually comes down to simple choices.Consider a photography class. Is it a better use of my time and my students' time to have them go home and read a photography manual or is it a better use of time to ask them to take pictures? Sort of depends on a lot of factors, but I know which one is more 'thrilling'.Consider English class. Is  it a better use of time to go home and answer questions out of a textbook or is it better to read a poem, jot down some notes about it, and discuss it with friends on Twitter or Skype? Again, in 'real-life' does anyone actually get a thrill out of answering canned questions? Yet there are bookclubs everywhere. And why is that? It's because people love to talk about what they are reading. They don't love to be graded on how they answer questions, they just love to talk. And in talking and discussing, they learn. And in this social media rich environment, it's downright backwards to refrain from tapping in to that.What's a better use of time in history class: practicing the 'proper' way to write a DBQ or listening to the news and current events for 10 minutes each evening so that the next day when you come into class we can actually talk about what's happening in the world and why it's important to understand that what's happening now has a history behind it? Anyone can learn the format of a standardized answer. So who cares what anyone has to say in a standardized answer? It's a mystery to me that we allow random readers on an AP exam to tell us how well the children we engage with everyday understand a subject. That, my friends, is an affront to our professionalism. Furthermore, it makes for really boring and life-draining homework.So I ask myself: why in the world would I do this to my kids?And that question is the one that as a history teacher, I've most been mulling over endlessly.A few days ago, we were talking about 'conflict' in one of my Freshman classes. I put a handful of place names up on the screen -- Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tibet -- and asked the students if they could tell me anything about recent or past conflict in these places. And the one that really got me was Afghanistan: out of 35 or so Freshmen in two different sections, only two or three kids had any idea what conflict was currently going on in Afghanistan.And it makes me wonder what kind of homework they had in middle school. It makes me wonder how a 14 year old -- living during wartime -- doesn't realize they are living during wartime.I don't know. Maybe the two are not related. But maybe they are. Maybe we get so fixated upon the kids knowing what's in the book that we neglect what's in the world.One way or the other, I'm thinking about what homework means and I'm thinking about how not to give it just out of a sense of obligation, and about how not to refuse to give it out of a sense of dissatisfaction with it's results, but to fundamentally change the way the kids and I approach it.In that history class, for example, we're going to spend the year learning and discussing history in class, but as for homework I want them listening to daily podcasts from around the world about events going on right now. I want them to understand the history in every living event. I want the world -- in real-time and live -- to replace their textbook.Because we don't live in a textbook world.And we wouldn't want to.This year, I'm gonna try to use a bit of chance to create asymmetrical understanding. That is, I'm not going to plan the questions -- and I'm certainly not going to plan any solutions -- before we sit down and listen to what's actually going on. I'm going to let current history lead my history class; and I, of course, as a person living in that history have no idea where this all leads, but like a researcher employing grounded theory, I really don't mind looking at something and examining it before deciding according to my own varied theories what the thing is. I'm going to use my own confusion and sense of wanting to understand -- I'm gonna use this stuff to my advantage.Because I myself don't learn anything when I just spit out what I think it is that I am supposed to know.Having read the arguments both for and against homework I can't help but try to think of it not from the teacher's point of view, but from the student's. If I were 15 years-old taking a class, I know that I'd have a better time understanding what was going on if I were prepared. I also know that completing boring (even worse -- patronizing) textbook work every night would drive me insane. So, if the teacher asked me -- given my busy 15 year-old student schedule of school plays, sports, band, family commitments, etc --  I'd pretty much say that I'd want to be prepared for class and that if that meant doing some prep at home, that would be fine. But don't give me homework out of a sense of obligation. And don't give it to me just as a way to get a 'grade'. Give me homework because it's going to help us get stuff done. And let's get stuff done that's going to thrill me.

"No, I will not tell you the definition of 'austere'.""No, I will not tell you where Laos is.""No, I will not translate that for you.""Do it yourself."Been thinking about this recent TED talk by Sugata Mitra ever since catching it over at Will Richardson's blog. And over the last week or so, I've really been putting into action many of the ideas inherent in the talk. Most important I think -- and this is on top of a ton of important realizations in the presentation -- is the idea that if we want students to engage with learning, we won't tell them the answers.Now, I work in a 1:1 environment. Which means that every single student in this school has a machine sitting in front of them that gives them access to the collected knowledge of recorded human history. So why would I treat them as if they do not wield such immense power?And as an experiment, the way I've chosen to get them to realize the potential of what happens when they combine the power of their brains with the power of that access is to just say "no"."No, I'm not going to define that for you.""No, I'm not going to spell that for you.""No, I'm not going to find that for you.""No, I'm not going to repeat myself five times slowly for you."You want to succeed in learning? Then learn to activate your own capacity to learn. Figure it out. Use that thing sitting on your lap and the connection to the world that it represents. And stop leaning on me; because soon enough I won't be here. And it will just be you and the world.I asked a student yesterday if that made sense to her. And her response was simple, elegant, and telling. She said:"Yes."

My kids are using paper this week. Two sheets per kid, actually.This week's unit in Freshman Human Geography was on forced migration. As our case study, we looked at the events of the Sudanese Civil Wars and the Darfur Genocide.We watched two striking films: God Grew Tired of Us and The Devil Came on Horseback. The first is about the plight of the Lost Boys of Sudan, the second about the situation in Darfur that arose out of the Civil Wars.Then we looked deeper, using the resources of Google Maps, Radio Dabanga, PRI's The World, New York Times, and the BBC. Students looked at survivor accounts and explored the resources of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on genocide, violence, and witness.And we blogged and discussed what we had learned.All of this was done paperlessly. And most of it could never have been done in a pre-digital classroom. But now we come to the stage where we must put pen to paper. Because there are somethings that the digital medium does better than the analog, but there are somethings that pen and paper can still do that you just can't do with an email or a Tweet.Things like getting noticed by a US Senator.And so my students are taking everything they have learned and all the stories, discussions, resources, and realities we have digested over this unit, and they are sitting down, putting pen to paper, and they are writing letters to their Senators. They are writing about what they've learned and they are writing about their own personal reactions to the genocide in their own words. They are asking the Senators what they've done, what they are doing, and what they propose doing to assist and empower the victims and to bring the perpetrators to justice. They are learning what it means to play an active role in democracy and they are learning about the limits and realities of one nation's influence over the destiny of another.And they are writing letters. Not because they don't have access to digital means, but because they do have the ability to produce what in these days of massive digital issue campaigns might be more effective in being something that gets noticed: a handwritten letter.This has not been an easy unit. I've seen kids cry. I've also seen them smile along with John Dau and his Sudanese compatriots. I've heard them ask why they didn't know this was going on. And I've heard their questions and their frustration that something like this could happen.As for 'Teaching Paperless'? Well, two sheets of paper per kid and a handwritten and heartfelt query is well worth it to engage them in that kind of learning.Because, as I've said from the beginning: this paperless thing isn't about the dogma of paperlessness; it's about dynamism. It's about change. It's about using the connections to create situations where learning can take place. And sometimes the best way to do your part to effect change -- or to see the limits confronting it -- is to send a bit of snail mail.

We were putting the finishing touches on the letters to our Senators and several students had just finished sealing and stamping. That's when one 14 year old boy asked me: "Where do I put the stamp?"

This is the first year we're using an advisory system. Basically, instead of teachers having a morning homeroom, we meet later in the day with a small group of about a dozen students. The advisory groups are made up of students from ninth through twelfth grade. We meet to talk about school, classes, grades, and life in general. I've taken my kids out to exercise and @schickbob and I organized a tug-of-war between our groups which was covered by the yearbook photographers.So, now I'm looking for things to do on a daily basis. Just today we began a TED-talk series. Right now, we're watching Pranav Mistry's recent talk about augmented reality. And we're actively taking suggestions on what you all think are the best TED-talks.We also see this as a potential chance to reach out to classrooms in other parts of the world. And so, I would like to invite teachers from -- well, everywhere really -- who'd like to share classroom experiences via Skype to get in touch. I think it would be an excellent opportunity to spend a few minutes each day engaging with the classrooms beyond our classroom.So I'm turning to all of you to advise this advisor. What sort of things would you do if you and your students had ten minutes a day to engage with the world however you liked?

PD today on the topic of working with a growing population of international students.Would love to get some ideas here in relation to how you all are using tech to engage and empower these students. In my own classes, some of the things we do include letting international students use browsers in their primary language, encouraging them to use Google Translate to read the Web in their primary language (easiest to run through Chrome), and using primary and target languages on Google Maps. We also use all of the different language versions of Wikipedia, regularly translate and read news media in different languages, and use search engines from the 'country of origin'.Another thing that I've found really enlightening is allowing international students to turn in work in their primary language. It's easy enough to use Translate to, well, translate. So let students turn in essays written in German, Korean, Urdu, or whathaveyou; of course the translation is not perfect, but it sure gives you a better idea of what's going on in a student's head than trying to make guesses based on the trouble they have writing in a target language.This doesn't mean that English-language instruction in a US school isn't important -- of course it is for all sorts of practical reasons; all I'm saying is that we don't have to let language skills always get in the way of a student's ability to express understanding.Getting past that language issue allows students to demonstrate their understanding of and engagement with content and concepts. And in most classes -- particularly in high school -- that's what we're going for. Furthermore, sharing primary language documents between students can help break down a lot of preconceptions students may have of one another based on language differences.Would love to hear more ideas from all of you.

As part of my course on paperless classrooms and social media at Hopkins, the students and I discuss the pedagogy of distance teaching/learning and the implications of distance learning on the teaching profession. This semester, I am opening up the conversation on Wiziq; you are invited to join us at 6:45PM EST tomorrow, Oct 28th, for great conversation and debate.Go to http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/397322-jhu-paperless-classroom-2010 to sign up. It's free.Please tag #jhusmed on Twitter with questions/comments on the conversation.We look forward to chatting.

Haven't posted in a while. Long story. And you'll hear all about it soon enough.In the meantime, I did want to take just a moment while I've got it to dash off a note about a project my Latin II students are pretty excited about.Two days ago, they started their own Twitter group all about the Latin language and the Ancient World in general. Their goal is to form a Twitter conversation/resource for Latin students, Latin teachers, and folks interested in all things ancient.You can join their group on Twibes and follow the conversation at #latlang.I'm pretty thrilled about this as well. I like the idea of kids creating their own hashtags. I like letting them loose to do their own thing. We'll see where it goes. They want to pick up 1,000 followers on the Twibe. They're also talking about starting a weekly discussion for Latin students at #latlang. So, I've agreed to give them classtime to facilitate that discussion and we'll see what happens.If you could pass this info on to Latin teachers in your schools/districts, that would be a huge help. Let's do what we can in leveraging our networks to allow the kids to establish theirs.

If you are reading up on ed lit this holiday, start here.

A reader comments:I'm of the opinion that technology is hurting education more than enabling it. Yes, access to the collected knowledge of mankind is a good resource, but students still need a guide and interpretor of that knowledge, a guide, a teacher! I am trying to envision my students asking me about how an fission occurs, and I say go look it up. What I am there for then? Could I be replaced by a sign that says, "Turn on computer and don't bother anyone."? Thank you for writing. Your comment really got me thinking.After all: yes, what are you/we there for?I tend to think that yes, if you or I could be replaced by a computer, we should be. After all, if all you are doing as a teacher is explaining 'how-to', I am sure that there are videos on You Tube that do a much better job. But I suspect that you are actually doing a lot more than that.You are a teacher. Which means that you spend a little time each day teaching someone how to do something. But you probably spend a lot more time discussing why things happen. Because you are a discusser. And you probably spend a lot of time discussing what it all means. Because you are a philosopher. And you probably spend a lot of time helping frustrated students. Because you are a saint.Students don't need guides. Kids need folks who can facilitate their being able to explore. Kids are natural explorers. And if you really want to ruin an explorers day, put 'em in a tour group led by a professional guide. Where's the adventure in that? Where's the sense of personal accomplishment? Teachers shouldn't be guides; they should be travel agents. Teachers should set up the trip, but ultimately each student has to take the trip on his or her own.Kids don't need an interpretor. They don't need someone to interpret knowledge for them. What kids need is an interlocutor. They need some one to argue with. They need someone who can help them figure out how to interpret life's problems on their own. They don't need a translation; they need a conversation.I've stopped teaching. That is, if teaching implies the hierarchical management and distribution of content for the purpose of assessing whether the content was understood. Instead, I've become a travel agent. I assess success by whether or not a student learned something about the world and about themselves out there on their trip. When they come back from their journey, I'm an interlocutor. I listen to what they have to say. I let them talk to me and I hit them up with some questions and I let them talk some more because I want them to understand what (and how) they think.I respectfully submit that technology is not hurting education. More often than not, 'teaching' is hurting education.

Thanks to the hard work and research of folks like Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers, you have more free resources at your disposal than you could possibly imagine and you really don't have to pay for stuff like what's pictured in the screenshots below just to 'teach paperless':[Subscribers: visit teachpaperless.com if you can't see the pics.]

Just wanted to thank folks for nominating my post Why Teachers Should Blog for the 2010 Edublog Award for 'Most Influential Blog Post'.Personally, I'm not that into awards. Actually, I take that back. I do watch the Oscars telecast every year. But that's more a habit than anything else; I like production numbers, what can I say? But as far as awards themselves go, I'm relatively ambivalent.What I like about the annual Edublogs Awards, however, is not so much the awards themselves, but rather the nomination lists. Those nomination lists serve as a compendium of a lot of good writing and a lot of the most positive activity to have occurred over the course of the year. That's not to say that the lists represent everything, nor is it to say that everything in the lists is uniformally of the highest quality. But it's nice to see what our peers have nominated -- and it's nice to see that our peers have nominated. In other words, in these busy times, it's nice to see folks actually taking the time to offer up props to edubloggers where ever they may be and what ever they may be writing.Check out those lists. The grab-bag starts here. Take a bit of time to look over all of the blogs. It's striking to see just how much quality thinking and serious debate is going on. Kudos to all you bloggers out there.