2018 update: if you are interested in the details of this class, check out my latest article about it here. I’ve been teaching English language arts for over 20 years, and as much as I love it, I have always wanted to add some variety to my work load by teaching an elective class. I envisioned this class as a break from the deluge of … Continue reading What’s up in Digital Media (now Design Lab) class?
It all started with a Facebook post by a friend of mine: “Check out these customer reviews on Amazon! It’s like a whole new kind of writing!” The Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer has generated nearly 3,000 customer reviews that mock the absurdity of this unnecessary product. Ranging from “What can I say about the 571B Banana Slicer that hasn’t already been said about the wheel, … Continue reading Evolution of a lesson
Our junior high semester ends with three days of finals: two classes per day, two hours for each class. I could easily create a semester final exam that would take my students two hours to complete, but I’m not sure that would be the best use of our time (nor am I convinced that junior high students should be taking two-hour finals). So each year I … Continue reading Final Project 2.0
You are frustrated with the testing emphasis in education, and you really resent politicians and non-educators trying to tell teachers what to do in their classrooms. You are especially upset over the shift away from creative, artistic pursuits in the classroom as drill-and-kill math and reading replace the arts. So what can you do to make a difference? Don’t despair, my friend! The Office of … Continue reading A Novel and Most Excellent Cause
It’s Day One of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and my 8th graders wrote for a full hour in class, tap-tap-tapping away on the first chapters of their novels. They wrote in a Google Doc, which they shared with me, so when I should have been working on my own novel, I was taking peeks at theirs. Wow! Some great stuff. Here are just … Continue reading Call me NaNo…
I had planned a follow-up to my recent Power of Positive Technology post… but then life happened. The new school year started on a Wednesday, and Thursday night my father died. He and my mom had been living with us for about five months, waiting to move into their new house. Dad had been sick for a long time, and we knew the end was … Continue reading …and then life happened
I’m feeling like Marty McFly this summer, jumping from the futuristic world of 24/7 technology at the ISTE conference, to the distinctly old-school peace and quiet of our total no-tech Sierra summer cabin… and then back to the future again at the Google Apps for Education Summit. I kicked off my summer by co-teaching a flipped-class workshop, then flew down to San Diego for ISTE (International Society … Continue reading “…where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
One more reason to love project-based learning: as the weather gets warmer and the kids’ minds wander to summer, my students stay focused, working hard to complete projects that are due at the end of the semester. Of course one reason they continue to work so hard in spite of rampant spring fever is that their semester grade depends on their performance on these … Continue reading PBL conquers spring fever
We work hard all year, writing and reading and analyzing and discussing and reading and writing some more. And then, all of our hard work and learning are evaluated and assessed in two days of state exams. Multiple-choice exams, mind you, no writing necessary. So we also work hard to create a testing environment that supports our students. We keep our daily routine the same. … Continue reading They’re kids, not Olympians
Kids today are born with a mouse in their hand, right? They navigate websites intuitively, clicking their way around the Internet with their eyes closed. Their teachers are stuck in the binder-paper-and-#2-pencil routine, while the students go home to blogs, wikis and websites. Our students are the digital natives, while we are the immigrants, relying on pre-teens to show us how to tweet and upload… … Continue reading The Myth of the Digital Native
Laura Bradley 