Recent Blog Posts

RSS

You'll find practical classroom strategies and tips from real educators, as well as lesson ideas, personal stories, and innovative approaches to improving your teaching practice. If you have any thoughts or comments about these blogs, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Mark NicholJanuary 4, 2008

I'm not old, but I feel like a fossil when I remember taking a continuing-education course for teachers about computers nearly twenty years ago. Each of us was given one large, thin floppy disk after another, onto which, with guidance from our instructor, we took turns copying various low tech simulations and activities from the classroom's lone personal computer, a primitive and boxy IBM clone.

Read More
Chris O'NealJanuary 2, 2008

At a recent teacher's conference, I presented a session called "Maximizing Technology Efficiency in the Classroom." We had lots of fun setting up home page aggregators, synching our schedules, and getting a handle on all our bookmarks.

Read More
Mark NicholDecember 21, 2007

In my last entry, I described a favorite experience from my short teaching career: the opportunity to use free and freely available science manipulatives and materials to enable hands-on discovery in the classroom. It reminded me of one of the most remarkable learning environments I have ever had the pleasure to spend time in.

Read More
Bob LenzDecember 18, 2007

At a recent professional-development day, I challenged my colleagues to think about how we could reduce the number of students in our lower division (grades nine and ten) -- especially the ninth graders -- who fail high school courses. "What if we decided that failure is not an option, and that success is the only choice available to us?" I asked them.

Read More
Mark NicholDecember 13, 2007

While walking through my neighborhood recently, I noticed several large, colorful cardboard boxes in the back of a pickup truck parked in a driveway. Upon closer inspection, I recognized their labels: Each read "FOSS," the acronym for the Full Option Science System, a science curriculum developed about twenty years ago by staff at the Lawrence Hall of Science, a museum and learning center at the University of California at Berkeley.

Read More
Diane Demee-BenoitDecember 11, 2007

I was recently introduced to FORA.tv, a new Web site that aggregates videos of discussions and debates on interesting political, social, and cultural issues. If your schedule is anything like mine, it's difficult to find the time to travel to a bookstore to hear a famous author read or to afford the price of a ticket to see a big headliner speak.

Read More
Jim MoultonDecember 5, 2007

When a FedEx truck pulled into our driveway to deliver my new digital camera the other day, I headed down to the driveway to help the large panel truck get turned around, only to see it back up with seeming abandon, coming perilously close to a sporty red Honda Civic that belongs to a visiting friend.

Read More
Mark NicholDecember 3, 2007

One day, the mother of one of my fourth-grade students came in to meet with me about her son. She reported that Noah, who I knew to be extremely bright, was bored with math. Although my school district's textbooks included problem-solving activities and stories, and I augmented the curriculum with various exercises that required students to apply creativity and higher-order thinking skills, the assignments, she told me, were still too easy for him.

Read More
Bob LenzNovember 28, 2007

When a colleague at another urban high school commented to me that because his students needed more structure, he no longer employs project-based learning, I replied that his decision presumes that PBL is unstructured.

Read More
Mark NicholNovember 19, 2007

In my last entry, I recounted my challenging first year as a teacher. Here, I'll describe my second-year misfortunes, and my decision to call it quits after my third strike.

Read More
see more see less