Start with a Question

I have been co-presenting with 6 of my students over the past few months at various conferences on the paperless classroom.  There are a few questions that are consistently brought up either with raised hands, on the backchannel during the session, or afterwards when attendees want to ask me face to face.  Most of them are clarifying questions around how a paperless classroom fits into teaching and learning pedagogy.  After our most recent workshop at MassCUE , I thought that these questions are asked so often it would be worth publishing 1. Why do you hate paper so much? Ok, so no one has asked me this to my face at a conference.  But my colleagues and a few students have.  I've made an effort to preempt this question when I share at professional conferences by using this comical advertisement. Funny, right?  No, I don't hate paper. It has an important place in our lives and in our education system.  In fact, although students don't have ...

Tessa and Melanie talk about how apps like Evernote and Google Drive make organization and collaboration so much easier for them. Our students make us laugh, drive us crazy, and inspire us to better ourselves.  They shouldn't just be the reason we teach, they should be a part of the teaching.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to present at MassCUE with 6 of my current and former students.  Watching them present was a proud moment, but it wasn't my favorite moment of the conference.  I knew they would blow the presentation out of the water. I knew they had prepared well and that their session attendees would learn something.  The BEST part of my day was watching them experience, learn, and network because of the unofficial opportunities the conference creates. Networking My students had met members of the Burlington High School Help Desk via Google Hangout a couple of times thanks to the vision and urging of Jennifer Scheffer .  Meeting face to ...

History teachers know that lessons on exciting events are easy.  It's teaching the philosophies behind those events, the intangibles, that is tough.  I needed a quick engaging plan to help the kids learn the material without watching them glaze over before my eyes. This time I was teaching the 19th century ideologies that influenced the European Revolutions of 1830 and 1848: conservatism, liberalism, nationalism .  My plan was for the kids to come up with their best 1 minute presentation and go head-to-head with one another to find out who could best explain their ideology while entertaining their audience. Classmates would vote for the winners. Day 1 Define the word ideology and give students resources that describe the three 19th century ideologies. There are 3 ideologies in this instance, so I divided the class up into 6 groups: 2 groups per ideology. Groups read the resources and come up with an accurate, teacher-approved answer to the essenti...

Some educators from my amazing PLN from #BFC530 created an off-shoot group called Student Connect . We have a Voxer group that allows our students to leave messages for one another from across the country.   Lisa 's 11th and 12th graders in Pennsylvania can talk to my 9th and 10th graders in Massachusetts can talk to Scott 's 7th graders in New Jersey can talk to Sarah 's 7th and 8th graders in Georgia can talk to Becca 's K through 5 students in Texas. We come up with the question for each day and the kids talk to each other about their answers.  They LOVE listening to voices of kids from all around the country thank to Voxer.  They laughed together when eating waffles was mentioned as a fun weekend activity.  They shook their heads together when the stress of the PSATs was mentioned.  One of my sophomores said, " It's nice to know they're the same as us ." Day 1 Question: What do all kids want every teacher to know? Becca used a table as a ...

I was honored to be invited by Dr. Will Deyamport, III  to write a post with my students about our experience with a paperless classroom.  The link is below.  Please read and comment! Thanks Dr. Will! Paperless Love

How global is Massachusetts?  Well, the infographic below might be helpful.  But, the real question we need to ask is: How global are Massachusetts classrooms that are preparing Massachusetts students? See more statistics on global education around the United States at Mapping the Nation I'm just at the beginning stages of this new pedagogy of global learning. I wish I'd arrived at it sooner.  Last week my sophomores had a 45 minute video chat with the expert historians Jamie and Darren at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England . After studying the evolution of textile machinery, they got to see a prototype Arkwright Water Frame live via Google Hangout. They learned about urbanization , the health of women factory workers , Luddite protests , and the enslavement of orphan children. After being part of an international chat, my students wrote about what they learned and how it was different than typical classroom experiences. Kate...