Get Students Involved in Classroom Setup

As the new school year begins, it’s the perfect time to start redesigning your classroom. Eductopia blogger, designer, and educator David Bill has put together a three part video series on how to not only reorganize your classroom but to also get your students involved in the process. Bill suggests using techniques such as drawing a map of your current classroom and having students mark areas that they would change by giving students post it notes and having them right their suggestions and posting them around the room.  There were some great tips for repurposing materials that many teachers already have in their room to help organize supplies. Bill suggestions have put a new spin on how to get the classroom ready for the new year and I am excited to try several of his suggestions in my own classroom soon. 

8 Tips and Tricks to Redesign Your Classroom

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-tips-redesign-your-classroom-david-bill

Virtual Worlds Could Be the Future of Learning

Imagine a classroom underwater, on the moon, or in a medieval castle; with virtual worlds the fantasy is now becoming a reality. Used traditionally for online gaming, virtual worlds allow users to interact through avatars in virtual worlds of their own design.  Educators are taking note of virtual worlds and the unique opportunities they could provide learners.  Universities like Dartmouth are even experimenting with the uses of virtual worlds to train emergency response teams. The current generation of young learners are becoming more and more comfortable communicating through virtual avatars and the idea of creating virtual worlds where students from around the worlds will have the opportunity to interact and engage in constructivist learning is an exciting prospect.  To read more about virtual worlds and how they are changing the landscape of education read:http: 7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Worlds

What can Lulu do for you ?

Looking for a way to self-publish? Lulu could be your answer.  Whether you want to create and print a textbook or create content that students can digitally download, Lulu’s publishing services offers easy to use and relatively inexpensive options for people to self-publish their writings.  The flexibility offered by self-publishing opens the door for educators to tailor their course materials.  As an art educator I am particularly interested in the ability to print and develop comic books. Comics are a media that my students are particularly interested in; whether I create comics that are pertinent to art education topics for students to read in class or have student create and print comics of their own design Lulu allows for the creative process to take the next leap onto the published page. To learn more about Lulu and self-publishing, you can read “7 Things You Should Know About Lulu.”

“It’s Not Enough to Simply Teach; You Have to Tell Your Story.”

As teachers gear up to the return for another school year, discussions about education, its future, it’s funding and its importance seem to be going on everywhere.  While the media and Hollywood paint the educational system in extremes, there are hundreds if not thousands of stories within each school that tell of students experiencing success, finding inspiration and making a difference for their communities.  As teachers, it is important for us to share these stories.  Edutopia blogger, Suzie Boss writes about why teachers need to be great storytellers and lays out ways educators can shift the narrative and highlight a more personal education narrative.

She explains how teachers can use the Ignite Talks format to not only tell a story but also truly capture an audience with the slogan “Enlighten Us but Make It Quick”.   An inspirational story presented in the Ignite format may be the perfect way to start off this year’s back to school professional development.

Ways to support the creative process

As an art teacher I find myself constantly trying to find ways to help my students capture the creativity of their beautiful minds. The creative brainstorming process is so different for everyone and advancements in technology have created new and dynamic tools for students to utilize during their creative process. Edutopia blogger Diane Darrow highlights some of the best online brainstorming and creative applications available in her post, Creativity on the Run: 18 Apps that Support the Creative Process. I know I already enjoy what my students have created on applications like Brushes and I am looking forward to using some of the other tools that Darrow suggests.

 

 

How Ning is changing social networking

Discussions about social networking in education usually tend towards the negative with the lines between professional and private on networks like Facebook and MySpace.  However, Ning is offering a solution to this; Ning is an online service that enables users to customize their own social networks. With the ability to create both public and private networks educators can tailor networks to specific academic topics or groups.  Ning’s open format allows for creative experimentation and new adaptations of what a social network can not only look like but how it can help enhance education. To learn more about Ning and how it’s changing the face and function of social networking read  “7 Things You Should Know About Ning.”

Staying Up To Date On Ways To Stay In Touch

One of the most difficult and rewarding tasks a teacher faces is not just getting students engaged in the classroom but getting parents involved in their students learning as well.  There is an arsenal of different tools and approaches a teacher can uses to reach out to busy parents and what works to reach one parent does not always work for another.  This can be difficult for teachers who want to reach every parent equally.  Lisa Mims writes about the old school and newschool methods for keeping parents up to date with what is going on in the classroom. Whether it is the classic phone call or the behavior monitoring web tool Classroom Dojo, the ways teachers can get parents involved is evolving and it is crucial that as educators we stay up to date with the latest tools because a student with involved parents is more likely to be a successful student.

 

 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/old-new-school-parent-involvement-lisa-mims