8 Strategies for Teaching Academic Language "Change your language and you change your thoughts." -- Karl Albrecht Understanding Academic Language Academic language is a meta-language that helps learners acquire the 50,000 words that they are expected to have internalized by the end of high school and includes everything from illustration and chart literacy to speaking, grammar and genres within fields. Think of academic language as the verbal clothing that we don in classrooms and other formal contexts to demonstrate cognition within cultures and to signal college readiness. There are two major kinds: instructional language ("What textual clues support your analysis?") and language of the discipline (examples include alliteration in language arts, axioms in math, class struggle in social studies and atoms in science). Where to Start It would be a mistake to think that academic language is a garbage pail category involving any word, depending on the context. Teaching Academic Language 8 Specific Strategies 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
5 Free Twitter Curation Tools To Enhance Your PLN Your personal or professional learning network (PLN) is alive and seemingly awake 24-7 when it comes to Twitter. You’ve probably faced a few scenarios where your real-world obligations got in the way of a hashtag chat, your vacation meant you weren’t able to connect as often, etc. What you need is some free Twitter curation tools to help stop the madness. The following short list of tools should help you enhance your experience with your PLN by making it more manageable and easier to surface high quality tweets and resources. I realize I sound like a used car salesman but it’s really just because I’m a fan of twitter tools that help you get the most out of your experience on the social network. They’re perfect for anyone of any skill level as they’re designed to make your tweeting experience easier and more productive. Storify Storify is a popular tool among teachers and students as it lets you create stories using social media and works exceptionally well with Twitter. Paper.li
Tom Green: Did Steve Jobs Ruin the World? Steve Jobs is considered an amazing genius and made billions of dollars. Sure we overlook that he didn’t pay his share of taxes and didn’t believe in charity. But other than these occasional rumblings of dissent he is pretty much held in high esteem. The dirty little secret that nobody likes to talk about is that things just might have been better before the Internet. Help us tell more of the stories that matter from voices that too often remain unheard. Instead we hear the purveyors of modern thought preach about how the Internet and social media have brought people closer together and changed the world for the better. And even worse, the human condition is beginning to devolve. Before the cell phone and the Internet you felt a more pure sense of liberty than we do today. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates have become the rock stars of our generation, The Beatles of our time. And yes, we love Steve Jobs because he is an artistic and at times poetic technical genius.
Express 9.15 - Supporting Effort by Pairing Rubrics with Checklists Supporting Effort by Pairing Rubrics with Checklists Cynthia Kube In my position as a gifted resource teacher, I often see students struggle with the planning required for a challenging task. Too often, they have only a vague idea of what is required and are easily overwhelmed by the effort involved. To demonstrate an understanding of content with an authentic performance task, students need clear direction on the criteria for success and support in managing the work required for the task. It is crucial for teachers to carefully construct a task rubric and explicitly review it with their students, clearly delineating performance level criteria. As Kay Burke explains in her book Balanced Assessment: From Formative to Summative (2010), checklists can be used as thinking tools to provide students with a self-monitoring strategy. Checklists not only serve as a self-assessment for students, but can also be used as a formative assessment by teachers, as well as a tool for feedback. Reference
Why Mobile Learning Is Inevitable This may sound like a lofty title, but it’s not wrong. There’s an impressive presentation making the rounds dubbed “Mobile is eating the World” by Benedict Evans. In the presentation, Evans shows some staggering charts, interesting factoids, and all the other statistics you’d expect with a title so grand. It makes me think about mobile learning, mobile browsing, and mobile everything. But the real story here is about education. Mobile learning is not only on the rise, it’s inevitable. As you can see in the presentation below (there’s just 24 slides, pretty easy to scroll through and worth it!) So not many people will care about the Macbook announcement(s) but they will care about the internet radio service which some are calling iRadio. Same goes for education. Source: Mobile is eating the World
Scholars Sound the Alert From the 'Dark Side' of Tech Innovation - Technology By Marc Parry Milwaukee Companies, colleges, and columnists gush about the utopian possibilities of technology. Surveillance. After a week of faculty backlash against online education, including the refusal of San Jose State University professors to teach a Harvard philosophy course offered via edX, the down sides of digital learning emerged as a hot topic, too. In a talk dubbed "Courseware.com," Rita Raley, an associate professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara, described how societal and technological changes had "reconditioned the idea of the university into that of an educational enterprise that delivers content through big platforms on demand." Much discussion followed about the implications of that shift—in Ms. 'A Built-In Inequality' The conference's organizer, Richard Grusin, a scholar of new media, worried about the potentially "dire" consequences of massive open online courses, known as MOOCs. Education, Mr. Ms. 'Professional Savages' 'A Loss of Control'
MET Project :: Welcome 10 Resources To Learn About Memorial Day This weekend is Memorial Day. It’s a time for family and picnics–a solid day off on Monday. I struggle with this. Too many Memorial Day sale fliers are mailed to the house and stuffed into newspapers, “Memorial Day Sale–Half Off!” We should never forget the reason for this day of observance. Women in the Military Women have served in the military in many capacities. their role is expanding, however. Military Careers Are you a student interested in a military career? Discovery Channel: The Military Channel: Backyard to Battlefield This Discovery Channel show follows weapons makers as they develop military weapons in small shops, bringing them truly “from backyard to battlefield.” The Month of the Military Child It’s very difficult to be a military child. The USO The United Service Organization , given a face by Bob Hope, is a non-profit Congressionally chartered organization that supports service members and their families during times of conflict and deployment. Homeless Veterans
4 time-saving content curation tools Do you spend too much time scouring the Web for content your fans will like? Try one of these tools and lighten your workload. By Michael Statford | Posted: June 20, 2013 A content curator is a service that uses algorithms to show a user only the most relevant and appropriate content in a specific niche or topic. In 2012, Forbes called content curation one of the five hottest new Web trends. Companies like American Express and Whole Foods actively curate content that might be interesting to their customers. [RELATED:Learn how companies like NASCAR drive engagement with content marketing at Ragan's Content Summit.] Here are four tools that will help you get the content you need on the topics you love without having to comb through Google: 1. LikeHack is an easy-to-use tool that saves you time by aggregating, curating and delivering the top stories on your topics of interest. Key features: Aggregates your Facebook, Twitter and blogs. 2. 3. Pearltrees is a visual and collaborative library. 4.
Educational Leadership:Getting Students to Mastery:The Value of a Pointless Education Jay C. Percell I decided to restructure my classes to foster authentic mastery learning and increase my students' intrinsic motivation, as opposed to simply having them accumulate points to get a grade. This journey would lead me to experiment with grading and to ultimately develop what I call the No-Points Grading System. The Problem with Points Reflecting on my seven years as a secondary teacher, I concluded that the point values ascribed to assignments hindered true, authentic leaning among my students. Points as a Means to an End Many of my students' primary concern was not what they learned or what skills they gained but what final grade they would receive. Points as Extrinsic Rewards How many times has a teacher lamented, "That assignment was worth 50 points! Points Ascribe Value As Weimer (2011) indicates, points detract from collective learning in our school cultures. Solution: The No-Points Grading System Earning an A the Point-less Way FIGURE 1. Mastery in Practice Student Reactions