classroom_culture

Elementary School Newspaper

by Mark April 11, 2011 classroom_culture

Terracetimes.com started a number of weeks ago. Posts are generated by students, mostly without being assigned. In the lower grades, teachers are pulling together class projects on the curriculum in VoiceThread, MovieMaker, PhotoStory and posting them.

Are their ideas we could take away from this video which could be implemented in an elementary setting?

Elementary School Student Newspaper

by Mark March 2, 2011 classroom_culture

There is an elementary school student newspaper done by a friend of mine using wordpress. It is still “early days” but the kids are taking to it. I’m told some student editors were appointed in 4th grade yesterday. By this morning, they were holding court in the school library, before school started. Each had a [...]

Design A Computer Lab

by Mark October 2, 2010 classroom_culture

The Four Best Computer Laboratory Layouts for Schools have a lot of similarities to subdivisions in southern Florida.
Subdivisions are built to squeeze the most humans into one place while keeping them from interacting, “We love our neighborhood, but no, we haven’t really gotten to know the neighbors yet.” It seems both traditional computer lab setups and subdivisions are designed for individual, parallel play, in a confined space.
But all the research points in the other direction. In computer labs there should be talking. Groups of children talking, sharing, collaborating.

Online Work-Flow For School Newspaper Defined

by Mark December 17, 2009 classroom_culture

The 4th and 5th grades are joining forces to publish a school newspaper. They need an online workflow which is backed-up, feature-rich and future-proof. This outline of our plans is a starting point.

21 Things That Will Be Obsolete in 2020? Try 2010.

by Mark December 16, 2009 assessment

A list of 21 things in Education some believe will be obsolete. At a small title one elementary school outside Washington, many of them already are.

Teacher Productivity Vs. Teacher Effectiveness

by Mark December 4, 2009 behavior

So going forward I’m going to focus on these two concepts: “teacher productivity” and “teacher effectiveness.” I’m going to list the tools, means and ways the productivity experts have come up with over the years and how they can be applied to the administrative, troublesome and ancillary aspects of our jobs as teachers. I’m going to list and think about all the ways teachers can become more effective at their craft–the art of teaching. And I’m going to try not to mix up the two.

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