Monthly Archives: January 2014

Online Brag Board Solutions for Teachers

For Teachers
Online Brag Board Solutions for Teachers

Moving your brag boards from offline to online is a great way for you to connect with parents and students on a regular basis.

In most classrooms, you will see a bulletin board or wall covered in student work, often called a “brag board”. They make the kids feel good and validates their hard work, as well as gives the teacher something to point to during parent conferences or walkthroughs.

Portfolios, if you are having students keep them, don’t really serve the same purpose. They are cumbersome to display and might contain work that, frankly, isn’t that impressive.

But as student work moves increasingly to the online space, with learning management systems and blended learning tools, how are parents and other stakeholders supposed to view students’ work? Luckily, there are a few solutions for that.

Evernote

Evernote has become the de facto king of online information saving and storage. Smartphone and web browser apps help people clip everything from handwritten notes to photographs to webpage links and much more. In this way, a teacher can integrate students’ online work with their offline, physical work, and then share the results.

Kidblog

Writing is becoming crucial across the curriculum. The Common Core has recognized that every subject area has a stake in kids learning how to write for an audience in each discipline. Students of this generation might find blogging more engaging than traditional pencil-and-paper work.

Kidblog offers a safe, scalable alternative to “adult” blogging sites like WordPress, tumblr, etc. Not only are those sites complicated, but they are also open to the world. Kidblog, on the other hand, is controlled by the teacher through administrative access. Each blog is private by default, only viewable by the classmates and the teacher and only shareable by the teacher. The functionality and creative output is what you’ve come to expect from any other blogging platform.

Educlipper

Teachers are particularly infatuated with Pinterest. There is no shortage of lesson plans, worksheets, and resources that teachers have pinned and repinned. But Pinterest is wide open, a true social network in the largest sense possible.

Educlipper sometimes scoffs at the comparison to Pinterest, but it’s accurate—with one distinct difference. Educlipper has been designed from the ground up to be used by teachers and students for educational purposes. Through the creation of clipboards, teachers can organize relevant information and then share it with the class. Students can organize their research and collaborate on projects, then share them with the world. It handles links and pictures, just like Pinterest, so pretty much anything can be posted.

Preparing Your Child for the Upcoming Assessments

For Parents
Preparing Your Child for the Upcoming Assessments

What supports will you offer your child as they prepare for upcoming assessments?

Once the holidays are over, it’s full steam ahead toward assessment season. It could be as early as February for some jurisdictions. Teachers will be busy unloading as much content as possible into their students’ brains, but here are some things you can do at home to help improve your child’s chances on the high-stakes tests.

Communicate

Above all else, be a sounding board for your child. More days than not they will come home overwhelmed. Let them vent. Let them work out the new content in their heads. The ultimate demonstration of learning is to patiently let them explain what they studied that day in their own words. Then you (and them) will know that they’ve truly synthesized the learning. If your child isn’t so forthcoming, do a little research or even contact their teacher to find out what’s going on in class. Then you can start the conversation.

Get started on good habits

At the beginning of the school year, you might have resolved to help your child get enough sleep, eat properly, and establish good homework and study habits. Then life got in the way. There’s no need to be ashamed if you’ve let things slip. It happens to everyone. But it’s never too late to help your child start moving in the right direction.

On test days, a good night’s rest and a solid breakfast are crucial things you can do to help the cause, but they will be harder to implement if you just start on the night before testing. Get them into the habits now and not only will their chances improve on test day, but their success in this ramp-up period will also increase.

Read your child’s signals

Some kids thrive on pressure or need reminding of how important these tests can be to their future. Others are well aware of the stakes and can shut down if their parents harp on the upcoming assessments.

You know your child better than anyone. Listen to your instincts. If you feel they need a cheerleader, get your pompoms out. If they have everything under control, do your best to stay out of their way (even though that might be really difficult for you to do). Just make sure they know that they can come to you for any support they might need.

If needed, get some help

It’s never too late to find some outside tutoring for a struggling student. It could be that their only barrier to success on the assessments is a background skill that they failed to master earlier in the year or in a previous year. Some extra help identifying the shortcomings and then some practice to remediate those skills could make all the difference come test time.

Protecting Your Child on the Internet

For Parents
Protecting Your Child on the Internet

How do you keep your child safe online?

Threats on the Internet are changing as quickly as dangerous people can invent them. Obviously, children are especially vulnerable. And while the computer can be a valuable resource for any student, parents need to work hard at making sure they are using it responsibly. Here are some tips to help you along.

Maintain communication

A good dialogue with your child is the key to almost any parenting challenge you may face, and Internet safety is no different. As soon as your child starts using the web, set the tone that what happens online is free to talk about. Share your own stories and ask them about what they’ve seen and the sites they are visiting. If you work at building an open relationship with them, they will be much more likely to report something inappropriate to you.

Stay informed

If an online threat has made the nightly news, it’s already too late. Your student was probably aware of that site or app six months ago. The only way to keep ahead is to commit yourself to being on the cutting edge. Become a frequent visitor to sites like Mashable and Reddit, sites that specialize at what’s new and upcoming online. If you see something unsettling, talk about it openly with your child.

Monitor and filter

Using parental controls and placing the computer in a high-traffic area isn’t being “uncool”; it’s being responsible. Use all of the tools at your disposal to know what your child is doing online and block them from inappropriate activities. This extends to any mobile devices your child is using—particularly text messaging. But no matter how good your filtering software is, kids spend a lot of time trying to get around it and are usually successful. The only protection in that case is an open dialogue and the ability to look over their shoulder at any time.

Set up a contract

Even at a very young age, children understand the gravity of putting things in writing. Come up with a contract that outlines appropriate Internet use and what behavior is expected of them. At a minimum, it should cover time limits, how personal information shouldn’t be shared, and the procedure required if the child wants to meet someone they meet online. In return, the parent needs to outline what the appropriate response is to each situation.

Discuss the permanence of the Internet

The things people post online will become increasingly permanent. Children cannot comprehend that their status updates, pictures, and blog posts will probably be used to evaluate them for scholarships, college acceptance, and employment well into the future. Discuss that fact with them now and continue to remind them. Also, familiarize yourself with the deletion procedures on social network sites so you can teach them how to wipe things they will regret later.

Every Teacher Can Encourage STEM

For Teachers
Every Teacher Can Encourage STEM

Will your child code the next great app?

In the previous few years, STEM has become less of a buzzword and more of an educational imperative, with everyone from Fortune 500 CEOs to politicians imploring that we prepare our students for the world of STEM.

Let’s think for a second, generally, about what people trained in STEM are able to do in the workplace. Critical thinking would top the list, followed by computational skills and investigational inquiry. Depending on the specific field, creativity may or may not be required.

These are hallmarks of the Common Core, even in the decidedly non-STEM subject of English/language arts. So how do teachers, STEM or not, train students to compete?

More technology

The first item might seem obvious, considering technology is the second word in the STEM acronym, but even teachers in non-STEM subjects need to facilitate technology usage in their classrooms.

That means if a student in your English class wants to make a short digital film or podcast for a project, let them. If they want to code a website or blog, cheer them on. The student that can balance STEM with communication skills will have a distinct advantage in the economy.

Highlight critical thinking

Success in STEM often comes down to critical thinking, as those subjects and tasks often rely on finding a creative way to solve a problem. Not surprisingly, critical thinking might be the cornerstone of the Common Core.

Critical thinking appears in almost every subject in the curriculum, even electives. Any task that asks students to generate solutions systematically without rote memorization is calling for critical thinking. Simply make more of those tasks available to your students.

Push coding

As was mentioned earlier, the true marketability of a student’s skills comes at the intersection of STEM and something non-STEM, as conventional thought has those skills in two separate silos. For example, the person that sees a need for a new app for musicians will stand to be more successful if they can code the app themselves.

The web is full of coding resources, all free. Code.org does a great job of organizing the websites and MOOC courses that can help students learn a variety of coding languages. Give kids the option to practice these skills in your class.

Encourage AP Computer Science

Considering how STEM is becoming a national priority, it’s amazing that only 1 in 10 high schools offer AP Computer Science, the AP class that teaches coding and algorithms. If your school offers the class, be proactive in identifying students that could benefit and make them aware of the possibilities. If your school doesn’t offer the class, perhaps all it takes is a push from concerned faculty to make it happen on your campus.

Better Study Habits for the New Year

For Parents
Better Study Habits for the New Year

New Solutions to Studying in the New Year!

Your kids may be astute and reflective enough to make New Years resolutions. Unfortunately, their resolution is much more likely to be to increase their average texting speed than to improve their study habits. Here are some additional resolution ideas to suggest to your young learner.

Get more organized

Organization might be even more important for a student than it is for an adult. Whereas you might only have one boss, they can have up to seven (not to mention their coaches, club presidents, etc.), all expecting deliverables at various times.

Now is a great time for kids to get used to writing tasks down in a planner or committing to use a great app like iStudiez Pro to organize all of the balls they have in the air. In addition, although it might seem counterintuitive to growing their responsibility, you need to commit to checking their planner on a regular basis. Responsibility and accountability are two sides of the same coin.

Get serious about distraction-free studying

The ability to focus on a task might be the most important skill for the next generation of workers, considering all of the distractions that have been available to them since they were small children. Some might consider that kind of work environment multitasking, but it’s really just an excuse for slow, sloppy work.

If a student faces the situation and gets their work done before moving on to other things, they will find that schoolwork takes less time and can be more beneficial. Give them enough space to eliminate distractions themselves, but if things aren’t improving, don’t be afraid to move their study area to the middle of the house so you can monitor them.

Don’t be afraid to seek help

Believe it or not, some students needlessly heap a lot of pressure on themselves when it comes to schoolwork. They believe that studying cannot be beneficial unless they are working without any help. How are they supposed to learn if they can’t do the work themselves?

This is obviously misguided. Students should not be afraid to seek help for any struggles they might be having in school. That might be as simple as watching a few YouTube videos for a refresher on a topic they thought they had mastered all the way to professional tutoring. Remind your student that a strong person doesn’t do everything themselves; they realize their shortcomings and find people to help them get better.