Advanced English Grammar 25 Ways to Ask Your Kids 'So How Was School Today?' Without Asking Them 'So How Was School Today?' | liZ Evans This year, Simon is in fourth grade and Grace is in first grade, and I find myself asking them every day after school, "So how was school today?" And every day I get an answer like "fine" or "good," which doesn't tell me a whole lot. Or at least get a full sentence. So the other night, I sat down and made a list of more engaging questions to ask about school. They aren't perfect, but I do at least get complete sentences, and some have led to some interesting conversations... and hilarious answers... and some insights into how my kids think and feel about school. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. So far, my favorite answers have come from questions 12, 15 and 21. And the answers we get are sometimes really surprising. As my kids get older, I know I am going to have to work harder and harder to stay engaged with them -- but I know it's going to be worth the work. This post originally appeared on Simple Simon and Company. Alamy 1.
10 Excellent Social Bookmarking Tools for Teachers February, 2014 Social bookmarking is a new concept that has seen the light with the emergence of bookmarking services like the ones I cited below.Semantically speaking, ' social bookmarking' is made up of the the term " social " which is related to society and general interactions between people, and the verb " to bookmark " (used here as a gerund ending in ing) which has to do with recording and/or saving content for both later use and quick access. Weaving the semantic reference of the two words results in social bookmarking as we know it today : a collaborative and collective saving and sharing of web content.' Below are some of the best social bookmarking websites I would recommend to teachers and students. 1- Diigo This is my favourite tool for socialbookmarking. 2- Livebinders This is another powerful tool for saving and organizing your bookmarks. 3- Scoop.it Scoop.it is another powerful web tool for curating digital content. 4- Pinterest 5- Edshelf 7- Educlipper
43 Apps, Games, and Websites Transforming This Year's Classrooms In the middle of October, we invited educators to tell us about the "apps, games, and websites that are helping to tranform their classrooms this year." We asked that you submit your responses in the form of Field Notes and we received more than 700 submissions! 43 products emerged with several votes and strong, detailed Field Notes to explain just how they are being used effectively at school. So here is our (albeit unscientific) list of apps, games, and websites transforming classrooms this Fall. We are also pleased to announce the winner of the $250 Amazon gift card. What apps, games, and websites are transforming your classroom? Related Posts: 5 Easy Steps to Writing a Great Field Note
Avatar -embodied 3D persona with speech skills. Ready to create your own Avatar? Avatars are commonly known as computer (animated) characters representing a real life person, concept or artificial entity. Quite often this term is used to address human-like online assistants representing organizations, commercial firms and brands. These virtual assistants are able to answer questions and perform tasks through conversational dialogs with humans. Typical usage Avatars are the visual representations of real or artificial intelligence in the virtual world. It is hard to draw a line between intelligent avatars which have conversational AI skills and act dynamically, and on the other hand static unintelligent avatars which are just a snapshot taken at a certain point in time. The technology for creating avatars is evolving at a high rate, especially our ability to reproduce human beings. One of the events demonstrating innovations in speech technology is SpeechTEK Europe, which focuses on speech technologies, speech biometrics and voice user interaction design. Background .
50 Little-Known Ways Google Docs Can Help In Education Google Docs is such an incredible tool for college students, offering collaboration, portability, ease of use, and widespread acceptance. But there are so many options, both hidden and obvious, that there’s a good chance you’re not using Google Docs to its fullest capability. We’ve discovered 50+ great tips for getting the most out of Google Docs as a student , with awesome ideas and tricks for collaboration, sharing, and staying productive. Access your documents from anywhere : Whether you’re in your dorm room or the school library, you can access your Google Docs. Work on documents all at the same time : Google Docs allows users to simultaneously work on a single master document, so you can come together with other team members and professors to work on a document at the same time.
The Best Resources On Differentiating Instruction My colleague Katie Hull-Sypnieski is leading a February 1st Education Week Webinar on differentiating instruction, and I would strongly encourage people to participate. Katie’s the best teacher I’ve ever seen…. In addition, Katie and I have co-authored a piece for Education Week Teacher on the topic that will be appearing there soon (it’s appeared: The Five By Five Approach To Differentiation Success), and an upcoming post in my blog there will be talking about it, too (that two part series has also appeared). I also did a second two-part series in Ed Week on differentiation. Also, check out The Best “Fair Isn’t Equal” Visualizations. Given all that, a “The Best…” post was inevitable, and here it is. Here are my choices for The Best Resources On Differentiating Instruction: The Best Places To Get The “Same” Text Written For Different “Levels” Busting Myths about Differentiated Instruction is by Rick Wormeli. Reconcilable Differences? Deciding to Teach Them All is by Carol Ann Tomlinson.
15 Options for Creating Screen Capture Images and Videos - Including on Chromebooks For the next few days I'm taking some time off to relax, play with my dogs, and ski with friends. Rather than leave the blog dormant for a few days, I'm re-running some of the most popular posts of the year. TechSmith Snagit is a screen capture tool from the producers of the popular screencasting tools Jing and Camtasia. TechSmith Snagit is a Chrome app and extensions that allows you to capture all or part of screen then draw and write on your screen capture. The Snagit Chrome extension is what allows you to capture your screen. Vessenger, producers of a group messaging system, offers a free program for capturing and annotating images on your computer screen. Using the print screen key on your PC or "command+shift+4" on your Mac are easy ways to create a screen capture. Monosnap is a free screen capture tool for Mac and Windows. Szoter is a free online tool for annotating images that are stored on your computer. Pixlr offers a large set of image creation and editing tools.
The Happiness Project Popplet and Pizza So how does a pizza and attacking multi-syllabic words go together you are wondering? You don't eat a whole pizza at once, in one bite and if you don't know a long word (multi-syllabic word) you don't try to read the whole thing at once. You break it down (slice it up like a pizza) and read it (eat it) bite by bite! My groups in grades 1-3 need a lot of practice with breaking words into syllables to try to read them. The kids are interested in anything done on the iPads, of course. With this app, you can create as many Popplets, or boxes, as you need. My first grade groups needed to go back and do some more work on story events. Students did a quick sketch in each box to represent what they would write about on their B-M-E page. I can see we will be using Popplet a lot!
Sing-along Songs One of the most fun group participation activities for family and friends is to engage in sing-along songs. The essence of a sing-along song is that it has a simple enough melody and memorable lyrics for everyone to easily learn. Many of these popular songs have been around for over a century and are taught to children as part of their grade school music education. "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" is a very well known sing-along song. It was a traditional folk song written in the 1860s that became a huge hit in the early 1960s by The Highwaymen. She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain Not many songs over a century old are still as popular as "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain," which originated in the late nineteenth century by an unknown composer. What A Wonderful World The song "What A Wonderful World" was first popularized in 1967 by Louis Armstrong and in 1999 was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Louis Armstrong enjoyed one of the longest recoding careers of any singer in history.