Better Teaching: Why You Bore Students & What You Can Do About It

Why You Bore Students & What You Can Do About It Preface: You don’t mean to bore students. In fact, sometimes you’re downright interesting–the students are engaged, the buzz in the room is palpable, and even the hesitant students are asking questions. But the fact of the matter is, even the most charismatic and experienced…

Teacher Planning Doesn’t Have To Stifle Creativity In Schools

by Grant Wiggins, Authenticeducation A recent query via Twitter asked a question we often hear: isn’t UbD (or any planning process) antithetical to such approaches as project-based learning and inquiry-based learning, since you can’t and shouldn’t plan for an unknown serendipitous result? More generally, isn’t there something faintly oppressive and hampering of creativity in such…

Twitter Unplugged On Your Classroom Door

Twitter Unplugged On Your Classroom Door

Using twitter in the classroom is great–if you’ve got the bandwidth, apps, and hardware. And if students have signed Acceptable Use Policies on file. And so on. Here’s another idea for those who may lack any of the above–or maybe do use the real deal but want to follow that up with the best door in the…

How A Good Teacher Becomes Great

How A Good Teacher Becomes Great

How Does A Good Teacher Become Great? by Terry Heick Good teachers are amazing–and rare. The ignorance of the Those who can’t, teach mantra is frightening–being a good teacher is an incredible challenge to achieve consistently. Good teachers use data to drive instruction, know the ins and outs of their curriculum, have refined assessments over…

The Teacher’s Guide To Writing In The Cloud

The Teacher’s Guide To Writing In The Cloud

Preface In part 1 of this post we took a look at the writing process itself–the relative awkwardness of the process for many developing writers, and how live modeling can help support writer growth. In this part, we are focusing on using cloud-based word processing and general productivity suites like Adobe Buzzword and Google Docs….

Using The Habits Of Mind To Promote Teacher Happiness

by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick, Institute for Habits of Mind A Whole Child Deserves A Whole Teacher: Using The Habits Of Mind To Promote Teacher Happiness A lot is said and written about the whole child. We often forget, however, that we should be considering the whole adult as well.  A teacher’s performance in the…

6 Possible Roles For Teachers In A Personalized Learning Environment

by Justin Marquis, Ph. D There is a mountain of speculation and debate about what school and learning will look like in the near future. Will education be online? Individualized? Self-paced? Flipped? Hybridized? Maybe even completely irrelevant? Rarely, however, is much speculation given to the role of the educator in the future of learning. All…

20 Reasons You Shouldn’t Assign Homework Over The Holidays

20 Reasons You Shouldn’t Assign Homework Over The Holidays by Miriam Clifford Many students agree that homework over the holidays really is a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Upon returning from winter break, you’ll probably have a handful of students saying the dog ate their homework or it got blown away in a winter…

5 Strategies For A Student-Centered And Visual Curriculum

The internet is fast becoming a place of spectacle. Early transition to the world wide web was marked by text-heavy prose while developers struggled for ways to “digitize” old media forms. Admittedly, this process is not entirely new. The benefits and allure (not always one and the same) of multimedia have been leveraged from the…

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