teaching effectiveness & teacher productivity

Teacher Research and the Need for Experimentation to Drive Policy in Education

by Mark November 20, 2011 instruction

One of the things I do is work with the Education Study Group, an organization that supports teachers doing cheap and fast experimentation and data gathering on what works and doesn’t in their classroom and education as a whole. This video explains the rational, from a Fortune 500 perspective: Data should not be about Teacher [...]

It’s not ironic, when it’s all the time…

by Mark November 20, 2011 instruction

Keep this in mind when you look at the management of Education Policy.

“Happy Black Friday!” and Other Title One Holidays

by Mark November 19, 2011 instruction

“Happy Black Friday!” one hears repeatedly around Thanksgiving from the newly minted residents of the USA which make up the bulk of our Title-One students. One hears it on the playground, in the hallways, the cafeteria and art room, “Happy Black Friday!” for the weeks leading up to our November break. It’s apparently a national [...]

Learning Microsoft Office in K-5 is Like Taking Latin

by Mark October 16, 2011 instruction

They are already being usurped by wikis, blogs, google docs, Wordpress, google wave-like things, all if which provide the basic functionality, but allow multiple people to edit a document simultaneously and keeping only one copy prevents the ridiculous organizational head-ache of making sure everyone edits the latest copy. … They have Google Sites which allows multiple team members to edit a webpage with almost the same functionality as PowerPoint, and it is published and can allow (though we don’t allow this) for comments and global interaction.

A Note To Staff About K-5 Social Media Use

by Mark October 4, 2011 classroom_management

Folks, Please don’t be shocked when you find out during my Internet Safety class that all or most of your students have personal Facebook accounts. Your class is not alone. We want to foster conversation about how to stay safe online. Admonishing your students that they must be 14 to have a Facebook account simply [...]

K-5 Social Media Use Preliminary Results

by Mark October 4, 2011 cooperative_learning

Five years ago, when I started looking at social networking use in K-5, the numbers worked out like this: 5th Grade = 90%+ 4th Grade = 40% 3rd Grade = One or two students per class, who had older siblings. Today, I’m doing my standard research and found the creep downward of social media use is progressing without hesitation: 5th, 4th, 3th Grade = 90%+ 2nd Grade = 75% 1st Grade = One or two students per class, who had older siblings.

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →