An Educator's Guide to Twitter

I am newly intrigued by Twitter, slowly figuring it out, dipping my toes in, but not yet ready to jump. This is an excellent guide if your interested in getting started: An Educator's Guide to Twitter

WashPo Answer Sheet - The unusual next season of ‘Survivor’

Fantasy Revenge!


The unusual next season of ‘Survivor’: "Here is a dream write-up of the next season of the television show ‘Survivor’ that just about every public school teacher in the United States would love to watch."

WashPo Answer Sheet - How test scores are used as a political prop

On the fact cherry-picking "reformers" and their continuing hypocrisy...

How test scores are used as a political prop: "Politicians have long used funding to mandate policy–often with little logic (consider the use of highway funds to force raising the drinking age to 21 under Ronald Reagan). This is happening with abandon in education, as policymakers ignore evidence as they insist on ‘reform.’"

WashPo Answer Sheet - Ironic extremes: Lauding and bashing teachers

This will make you angry...


Ironic extremes: Lauding and bashing teachers: "How’s this for ironic extreme: An international conference is underway in New York about how to elevate the teaching profession, while, in Florida, a new law is about be put on the books that will go a long way to making sure nobody wants to be a public school teacher."

Ferlazzo: “The Books Everyone Must Read”

"The Guardian newspaper created a great word cloud infographic showing The Books Everyone Must Read.  They used “the results of over 15 notable book polls, readers surveys and top 100’s.” It’s definitely worth a look…"

NCTE Inbox - Writing Conferences

A Look at Conferencing 
For more ideas on conferencing in online environments, take a look at Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes. Beth Hewett and Christa Ehmann show how instructors can engage students in productive conversations about their writing with or without face-to-face contact. See also "Online Writing Instruction: No Longer a Novelty" from NCTE's Council Chronicle.

The following resources from NCTE and ReadWriteThink.org provide more tips and strategies for conferencing with students.

The Council Chronicle article “Formative Assessment: Helping Students Grow” (G) shares how teachers can measure how well their students are learning by implementing and responding to class discussions, quick writes, reader response journals, quizzes, and writing conferences.

"Conferring in the Writing Workshop" (E), a themed issue of School Talk, highlights advice from four experienced teachers of writing -- Ralph Fletcher, Carl Anderson, Joanne Hindley Salch, and Marianne Marino. They share responses that can be given to student writers in the classroom which have been found to enable students to stretch their ability as writers.

Two teachers reflect on their combined experiences in teaching middle school, teaching preservice teachers, and teaching online in order to adapt and apply strategies for bringing positive experiences in a computer-based environment to middle grade students in the Voices from the Middle article, “Lessons Learned from Integrating Technology in a Writer’s Workshop” (M). The result is five valuable lessons, each of which is explained theoretically and described practically through a writers’ workshop example, where teachers conference with their students.

The approach to conferencing and feedback outlined in the Classroom Notes Plus article “Reworking Conferencing for More Effective Writing Feedback” (S) draws upon some basic structures that exist in most writing workshop classrooms at both high school and college levels. But a few important adaptations improve the effectiveness of teacher feedback and student uptake of that feedback.

Teaching students how to talk about their writing and responses to other students’ writing may be key in improving their writing skills. In “Thank You for Sharing: Developing Students’ Social Skills to Improve Peer Writing Conferences” (S) from English Journal, the author suggests several activities that can help. The examples here show how students can conference with each other.

NYTimes Op-Ed Contributor: Let Kids Rule the School

Let kids be in charce of their own learning and curriculum?
Op-Ed Contributor: Let Kids Rule the School: "Eight teens were given the chance to create their own curriculum, and the results have been transformative."

NYTimes: Essay: No Face, but Plants Like Life Too

Is it more "right" to kill and eat plants than it is to kill and eat animals? Essay: No Face, but Plants Like Life Too: "Vegetable behavior, and other ruminations on what we kill so we can eat. "

Sitomer: My blog was hacked!

My blog was hacked!: "Hi, my name is Whit Little and I have hacked Alan's blog today to talk to you about this most important of seasons.

The season of data.

See, as we all know it's coming up on testing time and in my role as the DDVP (Data-Driven Vice Principal) I want to make sure that you are properly placing all of your energy into the singularly most important area of a child's education: their standardized test scores.

• Are your students prepared for the tests?
• Have you pre-tested the test material in order to make sure that your students are test ready?
• Have you generated data which can give an indication as to the data that will ultimately be generated from your students' test data?
• Have you had the requisite amount of conversations about the importance of these tests to your students? (i.e. Twice a day on M,T,F and and three times per day on Tu, Th as per Ed Code Section 6ZL9TH.90L87M-B)
• Has your faculty engaged in enough meetings about the importance about upcoming tests?
• Have you done your 'How to properly administer this test' workshop? (And don't give me any of that, 'But I've done this for years, why must I attend the same ol' meeting yet again?' nonsense. It shows a lack of respect for the tests and of the importance of the data that these tests will generate.)

This time of year is no joke and we hope you understand the gravity of these tests. Please report all suspicious peers who display a cavalier attitude about the importance of these tests - or the data - to me, Whit Little. (You can just leave a comment below.)

And if you think it's unethical for me to hack into Alan's blog in order to relay the importance of the upcoming tests, might I remind you that the powers being granted to me, the DDVP, are currently growing in scale and scope to an unprecedented level.

Rightfully so, too. It's a new era and this is but one of many changes to come in the near future so get over yourselves.

And yes, there will be a test.

"

WashPo - Ravitch: Jon Stewart and other education heroes

Ravitch: Jon Stewart and other education heroes: "This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch for her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Deborah Meier on the Education Week website. Ravitch and Meier exchange letters about what matters most in education. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, is the author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” an important critique of the flaws in the modern school reform movement."