Tips by Tony

Articles I Found Interesting in the Last (Several) Weeks

Still working through some backlog. Here are just a few of the articles I found interesting over the past several weeks:

• Thirty-Two Interesting Ways to Use Search Engines in the Classroom

  This is a Google Docs slideshow presentation that shows some unique ways to use search engine (and related) tools in the classroom. For example, did you know that Google has a “Wonder Wheel” tool that allows you to visualize search results as a wheel, with different keywords as spokes?

• 21 Things for the 21st Century

  A collection of training modules for 21st Century skills.

  The purpose of this course is to provide “Just in Time” training through an online interface for K-12 educators based on the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). These standards are the basic technology skills every educator should possess. In the process, educators will develop their own skills and discover what students need in order to meet the NETS for Students, as well as the new MMC Online Experience requirement. Participants who fulfill all of the requirements have the opportunity to earn SBCEU’s. To learn more about the session, look under the tab “The 21 Things”. We hope you take advantage of this unique opportunity.

• New York Children Take a Google Lit Trip

  How one educator in New York is using Google Lit Trips to engage students.

  Following the directions at the Google Lit Trips Web site, Brusca created a new lit trip for The Family Apart. She marked the path of the Orphan Train with a series of Google Earth “placemarks.” Each one provides additional information, such as historical photographs, and poses a question for further student research.

  In the school library, Brusca watched students virtually navigate the same journey the characters took aboard the Orphan Train. “I’ve never seen them so intent,” she says. “This got them to deeper learning.” The fifth-grade teacher had students create a newspaper to document the journey, which gave them another way to apply what they were learning.

• ZOOM Playhouse

  Complete scripts for the plays seen on the PBS show ZOOM. Everything you need to put on a (very) short play.

• A 21st Century Education – Empowering Young Learners (video)

  In this film, Stephen Heppell makes his way through London, describing his vision for schools, meeting with kids at the Be Very Afraid conference, and exploring ideas for classroom design in a technology pilot school in Teddington.

• Do we really need tech?

  Readers respond to a previous blog post titled “Why are we using technology?”

  While the standardized test scores may show no increase in the scores of schools heavily invested in technology, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My students use technology to consume and create content. The higher-level thinking skills required to do this would be very hard to test using standardized multiple-choice and short-answerquestion tests.
  —Joshua

• Thinking in the Seams: Engaging Interdisciplinary Thinking

  Dr. Kevin Washburn talks about what he calls “thinking in the seams,” thinking that merges ideas from different disciplines to generate something novel and beneficial. The article includes tips on how to foster such thinking.

  Many education systems emphasize departmentalization, especially as students progress through the grade levels. Each subject is taught by an “expert” who specializes in the discipline and who rarely, if ever, designs instruction that engages students in interdisciplinary thinking. Specialization, while valuable in some contexts, prevents interdisciplinary thinking.

Related posts:

1. Monday Morning Roundup (8/31/2009)
2. Monday Morning Roundup (7/19/2010)
3. Monday Morning Roundup (8/24/2009)
4. Monday Morning Roundup (5/11/2009)
5. Monday Morning Roundup (07/27/2009)
6. Monday Morning Roundup (5/4/2009)
7. Monday Morning Roundup (10/19/2009)
8. Monday Morning Roundup (06/01/2009)
9. Monday Morning Roundup (08/10/2009)
10. Monday Morning Roundup (5/18/2009)