September 2010 Blog Posts (23)

This is a post which has been brewing for some time now and I have taken the opportunity to publish it on this day of September to celebrate the International Day of Peace.…

I would like to invite your students to participate in The Global Education Conference this November

15-19, 2010. This conference is held online in Elluminate over 5 days in…

We had just finished a series of lessons on the Renaissance in my AP European History class when it became clear that a massive review was needed to cement their understanding of this time period. Learning from a missed opportunity with my AP World History Class we used Google

Documents in a Wiki like fashion to create a study guide for their assessment.…

Backchannel chatter is the use of any type of texting communication by students while a lesson and/or discussion is in progress.

Previously, this texting was frowned upon by educators and looked upon

as a distraction. After all, students are expected to be respectful and

pay attention to the discussion, each other, and, above all, the

teacher, right?

In previous classes, I experimented with allowing the students to use Google chat. It was an…

Recently, I read an essay in…

Day 1

Today I begin my first class of instructional…

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher

You know, I hate when I miss an opportunity to use Google Docs in the classroom, and this was such an easy thing to do but I missed an opportunity to use it in class. We were doing a “Brain Dumping” activity (some call it brain storming) to prepare for our first real AP Assessment in…

I survived the first week of Kindergarten again! I forget every year how exhausting this first week is both physically and mentally. I have always been an athlete and have been through many weeks of long practices and conditioning but nothing conditions you for that first week of Kindergarten. I look just like Arnold in the scene from Kindergarten Cop, when he falls onto the bed. This week is not from a Hollywood movie. It is my life and a reality and I absolutely…

It's now 23 years that I've been in education. In that time we've had a Conservative Government, a Labour Government and now a Coalition Government.

Education has moved forward and I firmly believe that kids get a better deal with better teachers now than then although the teacher I worked under on teaching practice proves that there were outstanding teachers back in 1986!

Jane Parkin put the children first, went the extra mile to make learning interesting and…