Blogs on Integrated Studies

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Andrew MarcinekApril 24, 2012

There has been a lot of conversation and debate in multiple forums, both online and face-to-face, about schools adopting or already working in a 1:1 environment. While many of these conversations revert back to replacing teachers and what device is best, the real conversation begins with providing our students with the best learning environment possible.

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Todd FinleyApril 23, 2012

"We want to find a person behind the pen." -- Professional Writing Retreat Handbook

Last weekend I attempted to draft an inspirational message for my English education majors. Maybe because I haven't yet mastered a grownup man voice -- I'm 48 -- or because of the paragraph's naked sentimentality, the passage sounded fake and bloated, like words pushed through a megaphone: too much volume, not enough texture, and a void where there should have been confidence. To find out more about what was missing, I turned to science.

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Earth Day has deep roots in education. The first one was in 1970, held as a "national teach-in on the environment." It was groundbreaking in that it brought together people with different beliefs and backgrounds to fight for a single cause. We celebrate on April 22nd, but you can teach your students about sustainability and environmental stewardship all year round. It doesn't take much for kids to feel like they can make a difference for our planet, mobilizing them to be life-long environmentalists! Here's a playlist of videos to get you started.

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Lisa Michelle DabbsApril 19, 2012

Reading poetry is inspirational! And teaching it can be even more so. If you haven't thought about using poetry in your daily work with students, I really want you to re-think that whole idea today.

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Mary Beth HertzApril 10, 2012

Poetry is one of my favorite forms of writing. As I wrote in a recent blog post, there was a time when poetry was "my grounding force, my way of grappling with the world, questions, uncertainty, joy, sorrow, conundrums, beauty, ugliness and all forms of life that living could throw in my direction."

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Spring has sprung, and it's time to start thinking about getting outside and planting green things! School gardens are a great way to teach kids hands-on science. Whether you have a full garden where the kids produce their own cafeteria food, or you're just getting started and egg-crate seedlings are more your pace, you can pull valuable lessons in ecology, sustainability, healthy food habits, and teamwork out of the dirt.

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Terry HeickApril 2, 2012

The best definition I've heard for poetry is that it's "the extraordinary perception of the ordinary."

Being a kind of art, poetry eludes strict definitions. The very nature of art is to challenge thinking. Trying to define something artistic simply opens up new ground for exploration by those hoping to challenge convention.

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Todd FinleyMarch 27, 2012

Did you check out Open Education Week this month? The international event highlighted free lesson plans and materials, searchable by subject, grade and quality. I spent a couple days throwing keywords into OER (open education resources are digital materials freely available through open licenses) search engines to assess the quality of secondary and higher education writing curricula.

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Judy Willis MDMarch 14, 2012

This post is part of a series on executive function. Here I will cover the arts and the neuroscience of joyful learning.

Promising Starts

Children's brains need to acquire memory associations that link pleasure with learning. The creative arts can provide this link through associations with the pleasures of creative experiences enjoyed during early childhood.

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