Learner Profile – is it working for you?
In my experience, I have found that the PYP Learner Profile is a much maligned, ridiculed and – even worse – ignored element of the PYP. Yet, it encapsulates the very essence of what it means to be a PYP school bringing up future “global citizens”. It gets laminated and stuck on walls. Kids learn the words parrot-fashion and teachers whack them on planners in schools everywhere. Yet, it is not often that we can put our hands on our hearts and say that the Learner Profile is alive, well and thriving in our schools.
5 Ways to Use Google Docs in the Classroom
Google Docs is a user friendly suite of online collaborative tools that come with tremendous potential for use in the classroom. Last year all of the students in our school received Google Docs accounts and I was kept quite busy getting students and teachers up and running with the new tools, then discovering innovative ways to use them as effective tools for learning. Here are some of the favorites. Collaborative Writing
Lots of Answers to Common Google Apps Security & Privacy Questions
This morning I received an email that I get on a fairly regular basis. The question always goes something like this... "we're thinking about using Google Apps in our school but we worry about storing company projects on a third party servers, can you give us some guidance?" The first thing that I always share with people asking that question is a link to the Google Apps security and privacy overview. There you will find answers to the most common questions about security and privacy including perhaps the most frequently asked question, "who owns the data that organizations put into Google Apps?"
Essential Books for Kids and Teens
Parents often ask us to suggest good books for their kids -- ones that will engage, entertain, and maybe even enlighten them. So we've scoured our recommendation lists and consulted with teachers, librarians, and book critics to assemble what we consider essential titles for your home bookshelves or to download to your ereader, smartphone, or tablet. From the classics to more recent must-reads, fantasy to funny, we have more than 150 great book suggestions for your kids and teens, from bedtime stories to chapter books to true literature, and more. Just search our themed categories, and you'll find all of our picks arranged by age groups. Our goal in creating this guide was to choose books that are proven to click with all kinds of kids -- and can encourage them to become lifelong readers.
The Google+ Guide For Educators – SimpleK12_
Home » Education, Social Media Written by Grace2 August 2011 Unless you've been living under a rock the last month, undoubtedly you've heard of the new social networking site everyone has been raving about: Google+.
Five Essential Google Drive Skills For Teachers
This school year I've worked with a few school districts that are using Google Apps for Education for the first time. A lot of what I have done with those school districts is help to get the teachers acclimated to using Google Drive. When I sat down to plan an upcoming Google Drive training session I thought about some of the essential Google Drive skills that teachers need in addition to creating documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Here are five essential Google Drive skills that I think teachers and students need. 1.
Where Essential Questions Come From
Where Essential Questions Come From by Grant Wiggins, Ph.D, Authentic Education “I didn’t know they could think!” an excited high school principal blurted out. The principal was reacting to what he had just witnessed: his 9th grade students engaging in their first-ever Socratic Seminar, facilitated by my colleague and wife Denise a few years ago in a Louisiana district. It was a poignant moment (even though the students might have taken offense), since their chatter and body language made clear that they, too, were pleased with what they had done.
Productivity Tips - Google Apps for the iPad
Productivity Tips To increase efficiency, it helps to add any commonly-accessed websites, such as the Google eBookstore or Google Docs, to the home screen as a bookmark. This allows the shortcut to show up as an app icon, taking users directly where they need to go. To do this, tap the share button at the top of the screen and choose Add to Home Screen. In addition, many third-party apps and software are available to maximize productivity and make tasks simpler for you and your students. Some include:
Going Google with WordPress Plugins
Peanut butter and jelly. Bonnie and Clyde. Yin and yang. Horse and carriage.
On genuine vs. bogus inquiry – using EQs properly
We had a delightful visit to The School of the Future in New York City the other day. Lots of engaged kids, a great blend of instruction and constructivist work, and an obvious intellectual culture. And as the picture illustrates, everywhere we went we also saw helpful visual reminders of the big ideas and essential questions framing the work we were watching: School of the Future staff have long been users of UbD tools and ideas. But far too often over the years I have seen plenty of good stuff posted like this – but no deep embedding of the EQ into the unit design and lessons that make it up. Merely posting the EQs and occasionally reminding kids of it is pointless: the aim is to use the question to frame specific activities, to provide perspective and focus, to prioritize the course, and to signal to students that, eventually, THEY must – on their own – pose this and other key questions. Let’s start with a simple example from my own teaching.
