SMART Goal Setting: A Surefire Way To Achieve Your Goals I encourage you to pick up a pen and a piece of paper and jot down the goals you want to reach. Look at each goal and evaluate it. Make any changes necessary to ensure it meets the criteria for a SMART goals: S = SpecificM = MeasurableA = AttainableR = RealisticT = Timely Specific Goals should be straightforward and emphasize what you want to happen. Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART model. WHAT are you going to do? Ensure the goals you set is very specific, clear and easy. Measurable If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Choose a goal with measurable progress, so you can see the change occur. Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. Attainable When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. Goals you set which are too far out of your reach, you probably won’t commit to doing. The feeling of success which this brings helps you to remain motivated.
Yes, You Can Teach and Assess Creativity! A recent blog by Grant Wiggins affirmed what I have long believed about creativity: it is a 21st-century skill we can teach and assess. Creativity fosters deeper learning, builds confidence and creates a student ready for college and career. However, many teachers don't know how to implement the teaching and assessment of creativity in their classrooms. While we may have the tools to teach and assess content, creativity is another matter, especially if we want to be intentional about teaching it as a 21st-century skill. In a PBL project, some teachers focus on just one skill, while others focus on many. Here are some strategies educators can use tomorrow to get started teaching and assessing creativity -- just one more highly necessary skill in that 21st-century toolkit. Quality Indicators If you and your students don't unpack and understand what creativity looks like, then teaching and assessing it will be very difficult. Activities Targeted to Quality Indicators Model Thinking Skills
8 Tips and Tricks to Redesign Your Classroom Remake Your Class is a 3-part video series that covers how one educator transformed his classroom with the help of his students, some community volunteers, and design experts. Editor's Note: Author David Bill is a designer and educator who consulted with The Third Teacher+ on the Remake Your Class project highlighted in the videos below. The tips in this post go along with the companion video. We are excited by the simplicity (and low price tag!) of this great redesign. Hope you'll share any of your own tips in the comments area below. If you're thinking of completing your own classroom remake project, good for you. The tips below can be used for smaller scale remakes right way. Whether you are looking to reorganize one corner or redesign the entire room, here are eight tips that may help you throughout the process. 1. Students are your primary users and should be at the center of such a remake process. Create Visual Inspiration Students Define Pain Points 10x10x10 Student Helpers 2. 3. 4.
Desmos | Beautiful, Free Math Product | Naiku Better Assessment, Better Learning Know if students “got it” before they even step out of the room. Accelerate Learning with Formative Assessment Stop waiting days or weeks to know if your students know (or don’t know) critical concepts! Use Naiku to identify student knowledge gaps and address them immediately with informed instruction. Automatic Scoring Student assignments are scored automatically for a variety of item types, including T/F, multiple choice, matching, and short answer. Built-in Reports Reports are immediately available illustrating class and student performance by standard. Gradebook Integration Scores can be directly sent to your gradebook, when you wish. Instant Student Response With Quick Question, teachers can check for understanding anytime with real-time polling – no item preparation is required! Collaborate on Common Assessment Don’t live on an island – with Naiku, teacher collaboration is fundamental. Share Search Common Assessments Engage with Better Assessment No problem!
Edmodo November 2016 Sometimes it is easier to annotate an Assignment to give your feedback rather than writing lengthy comments. It is now possible to Annotate a Student Assignment through Office Online. September 2016 You can now add Spotlight Apps to your App Launcher. July 2016 Notes that you send to your Groups will automatically populate in the Posts sections of the Parent account! June 2016 Students and Teachers can now add attachments to replies! The Edmodo Store has moved into Spotlight. May 2016 Threaded replies and Likes to replies! April 2016 Quiz Sharing! Collaboration on Edmodo just keeps getting better! March 2016 Topics Interested in following a specific Topic? February 2016 Sign up or Log In with Office 365 and Google You can now use either your Office 365 for business account, or your Google account to sign up or log in to Edmodo. January 2016 Updates to Assignments: Request an Assignment Resubmission: Did one of your Students forget to attach a file to his or her Assignment? Library 2.0
How and Why to Teach Your Kids to Code dy/dan Empathy: The Most Important Back-to-School Supply Photo credit: iStockPhoto My most important back-to-school supply doesn't fit in a backpack, and it can't be ordered online. It's as essential as a pencil, but unlike a pencil, no technology can replace it. It's actually a "muscle" I've been working on all summer. What's the Big Deal About Empathy? Empathy starts with putting yourself in someone else's shoes -- a key step in understanding perspectives that differ from your own. Also like a muscle, empathy is easy to forget, particularly when operating in a crisis mode, always putting out fires. As we think about empathy in a well-functioning classroom, the physical state can serve as a metaphor for the health of the social-emotional learning setting: A classroom might look fine on the surface, doing OK on standardized tests, memorizing facts and figures, but its internal environment might remain weak. It goes farther than that. A Fitness Plan for Building an Empathy Muscle Step 1. Create the conditions in which empathy can thrive. Step 2.