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Every day I share ideas and teaching tips. As you may know, there are some authentication issues with Diigo and blogger, so here's today's tips posted manually. Behavior management Ideas Some more ideas for behavior management including some tips from experts. If your students don't mind the first time it is time to rethink. (Fred Jones Tools for Teachers is also a great book for this as well as Todd Whitakers - what good teachers do differenty.) tags:  education   teaching   behavior   management Teaching Ideas and Apps / Simplifying classroom rules This is a very simple, nice #classrules poster This is one of my favorite simplified clasroom rules posters. I am thinking to do something similar to this. tags:  education   classrules   classroommanagement   teaching Pinterest / Search results for #classrules If you're on pinterest and use the hashtag #classrules in the description it will show up on this lovely board. This is an ...

Improve Your Learning and Memory.: Your Kid May Be Smart. Just Don’t Tell Him So Too Often Every kd isn't smart but every kid (and adult) needs a "growth mindset." Please read this article. "Research by Carol Dweck and colleagues at Stanford demonstrated that the students who are most likely to learn from their mistakes are those who don’t think of themselves as smart as such but smart enough to get smarter. They have a “growth mindset,” a belief system that they can get better if they will just invest the time and effort." "In one of the group’s experiments, half of the students were repeatedly praised for “being smart,” and these students were not good at learning from mistakes. It is not clear why. Maybe they thought the problem was in the learning material, not in them. The other half of students were praised for effort and improvement and these students got better and made fewer mistakes. Several months later, al...

I wrote this at halftime last night. Here was my view. Sometimes teaching is like basketball. When you are hot... All net. You can't miss. Things are clicking. Everyone is learning. Everyone is behaving. You've got it together. And sometimes. Air ball. Literally. The paper is flying at the trash can, at each other...at you. The kids are disruptive. Every time you turn your back -whoosh someone disappears from his seat. Not a good day. The goal is to have more excellent days....to get more net than air. To score learning. The principals know who their star players are. The teachers who consistently get results. They also known their inconsistent players who really need more practice before hitting the court in a game. Therein comes the big difference between basketball and teaching. Everyone starts. Everyone. All full time teachers are starters because every full time teacher is a student's only chance to learn that topic. This is why having the best team possibl...

Some teachers are tempted to be babysitters during the holidays when, in fact, you can get some powerful teaching moments in your classroom. Take time to be creative and integrate holiday-themed teaching into your classroom. Please share what you like to do in the comments. 1 - Have a Social media activity relating to topics you're learning Two of my most tweeted things from last week were the Facebook template and Twitter template that you can download and use in Microsoft Word. This is a great alternative for those of you who cannot use the online Fakebook template from Classtools.net. Our AP Literature teacher has had students create a Facebook profile for their term paper author. They have to add at least 8 "friends" who are contemporaries of the author, a certain number of status updates with comments from friends. All of it must be believable. It is a lot of fun because students have to research their person, figure out the contemporaries and understand aspe...

As team captains, Julie and I were asked to bring forth our comments about leading global collaborative projects and we have some very current comments on what we're doing now in there. Look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback. Presenters: Vicki Davis, Julie Lindsay with Curt Bonk, Anne Mirtschin, Judy O'Connell, Dean Shareski, Don Tapscott, David Warlick , Flat Classroom conference students - Doha Qatar, Suffern Middle School (Peggy Sheehy and Marianne Malmstrom), Mt. Carmel High School (Suzie Nestico), Phoenix School (Betsye Sargent), West Tisbury (Valerie Becker), and Flat Classroom Students Description: Students are the greatest textbook ever written for each other, yet, many schools close the book on learning outside classroom walls. After five years of global collaborative classroom excellence, this presentation first uses voices from the keynoters, students, and teachers around the world that have been part of the Flat Classroom projects and con...

Social media has added to my life because there are incredible people in my sphere of socializing.What you get out of your time engaged with social media is directly proportional to the number and kind of people you socialize with online. I've seen teachers get on Twitter and follow no one and say, "I don't get Twitter." That's because Twitter isn't solo. Find the people who are using Twitter, like Jerry Blumengarten ( @cybraryman1 ) and Angela Maiers ( @angelamaiers ), and you'll learn a lot from them. If you don't get Google+ (and I don't really... yet, but I will) then follow people like Peter Vogel  or Chris Porter who do. If you don't understand Facebook, I've really found that Mari Smith has helped me get it. And in the last month or two, I've been enjoying my twice daily visits to Facebook. (5:45 am and 7 pm ;-) These people help us understand how to have effective conversations. Cool Teacher Conversations on ...

F.L.A.T.s will officially launch tomorrow. Our teachers have been talking about the fact that we need ongoing online pd and sharing of best practices. Also, that many webinars are sort of long. We want to have bit sized presentations with time to ask questions. Our first FLAT will be tomorrow and features two of our certified teachers presenting their take on developing a global project. Join us! On Thursday October 27, 2011 at 8:00pm Eastern USA [time where you are - http://www.timeanddate.com/ worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg= Developing+a+global+project+F. L.A.T.s+with+Amy+Jambor+and+ Sheri+Edwards&iso=20111027T20& p1=861 ] Amy Jambor and Sheri Williams will present “Developing a global project” as a Flat Action Talk.   Please join us at http://tinyurl.com/ FlatActionTalk

Room in My Classroom When frowns are down and people are milling around... It's time to hide in your room. When people are tired and with caffeine over-wired It's time to hide in your room. When no one has slept and some negativity has crept It's time to hide in your room. You see, doom and gloom may loom but not in your room. Your classroom is your room, your creation, your loom, you can do a lot in your room. The most important attitude that walks in your door is the one you bring into your room. Protect your attitude with a shield of stone, keep the negative out don't let it in your room. Schools go up, schools go down, but insulate the learning in your room. Students must learn every day, it cannot fluctuate with ebb and sway keep things consistently positive in your room. My mom was a teacher and she taught me true one of the only places in this world that is yours is your classroom. Own it. Love it. Nourish it. Protect it, even from...

"Should jailbreaking cell phones be part of my research project, 'Miss' Vicki?" said the eager Digiteen student as if a light bulb had just gone on.  "Tons of people are starting to jailbreak phones and I'm not sure if they understand if they should or what the impact is. I think it should be part of our recommendations."  "Is jailbreaking a phone part of legal, copyright, and fair use?" he said, quoting his subtopic on the project. In just a few short sentences I was whirled away on a new inquiry and cutting edge issue of students today. I remember several years a go when some students came to me concerned that too many teens were sleeping with their cell phone in hand or under their pillow. They said it at least six months before news media outlets picked it up. Cyberbullying was on their radar at least five years  ago when the project first started including text bombing. This is why students should be at the forefront of digital ci...

The first day of school was today and it was crazy for me -- as a teacher, 5 classes and 1 homeroom - with my IT hat - making sure all 100 computers and 3 servers were running, the new PowerLunch program went well and the upgraded gradebook to PowerTeacher was running smoothly.  Actually, it went very well (considering) today. But, it was most exciting to me when I hit Computer Science first and second period. The first objective is to understand the digital revolution , and with some summer reading I had done this summer on EMP ( electromagnetic pulse weapons and natural phenomenon) we started there. If a nuclear device goes off in our upper atmosphere, the radiation that falls to earth will not kill us - instead it will knock out anything with a microprocessor.  It is pretty scary to think what could happen - but it hit me -- what better way to understand the impact of the digital revolution than to extricate everything digital from our lives to understand where an EMP ...

Why don't you jump on over to In Need of a Base Case blog by Leigh Ann Sudol and answer her question about computer science education (Hat tip to my favorite Microsoft Blogger Alfred Thompson ): "So my question to you, my readers as well as to myself over the next few days is - how can I measure what my students think is important and relevant? I am considering some kind of electronic survey (so I can get a diverse sample) and I am wondering if I can somehow “narrow in” on particular topics (the way your eye doctor asks you lens1 or lens2?). Keeping in mind that I want to highlight particular aspects of computer science (see last post) I need to really think about what kinds of questions I would ask in order to get really interesting results." Leigh Ann is reflecting on another great article from Joanna Goode from the November 2008 issue of Communications of the ACM:  " Reprogramming College Preparatory Computer Science ."  I just urge her to realize that...

I made the decision to install Office 2007 knowing that the textbooks aren't available yet. We've been comparing and contrasting Excel XP and Excel 2007 and creating our own textbook for about two weeks now with excellent results! But now we have one week until spring break and I want some excitement! These are great moments that can either drone on or can be used as exciting, stimulating times of learning and I teach computer fundamentals, so I have the world at my fingertips. So, meet my Amazing spring Break Project! This project teaches how to insert comments and hyperlinks into excel and gives me a cumulative assessment of the things already taught: templates, formulas, charting, making posters in Excel. I'm very excited about this project and just wanted to share it with you here! (Remember, feel free to use this, but you cannot sell it!) My Spring Break - Excel Project Your project will have three sheets. It will be turned in by e-mailing it as an attac...