Shifting Schools: Conversations for K12 Educators

A reflection on trainings I have been giving recently and the use of student monitoring software in a 1:1 classroom. Let's use the software to start conversations, not as a punishment for opening a tab.....BTW....that doesn't change behavior.

This week while working at the International School of Luxembourg (ISL) I sit down with my good friend Ashley Sawyer and we talk about her 3rd-grade classroom and some of the units she has done with her students that use technology in authentic ways. We also discuss the new portfolio system we are setting up here at ISL and are looking for ideas and suggestions if you have been using Google Sites with 3rd Graders as portfolios.

Thanks to Katy McKee a technology coach in the Royal School District for sending this article to me that has me thinking and reflecting on the idea of engagement. Worth a read:

Link:

What is engagement in a learning experience? https://www.goguardian.com/research-and-insights/state-of-engagement-2019/

How do you assess learning when it happens in the process of creating not the product? All too often we assess the product but that is not where the learning occurred. How can we assess learning when it is actually happening...in the process of creating. I invite you to leave a FlipGrid comment over at sospodcast.org and join the conversation on assessing learning.

Link:

Great video to share with your students as well. Obvious to you. Amazing to Others.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcmI5SSQLmE

Here you go! My top Chrome Extensions for Students to start the new school year. My goal is for you to hear my 5 and then share your favorite chrome extensions that you like to use with students either at #sospodcast or at our Flipgrid at flipgrid.com/sospodcast.

Links:

Flipgrid: flipgrid.com/sospodcast

Share to Classroom

Screencastify

Selection Reader

Mercury Reader

Grammarly

To kick off August and a month of 1:1 Summer of Fun we start with my reading of the peer-reviewed article I wrote along with Doreen Keller that was published in May 2019. We start with the Connectivism Learning Theory, a theory that talks about the connected ways in which we learn. It's the foundation for my own thinking in changing classrooms and schools.

Links:

Critical Questions in Education - Volume 10, Issue 2, Special Issue on the Digital Academics