Into the Driver's Seat

Do you manage your time or does time manage you? The lines between work and home life have blurred over the past year of remote working conditions for many educators. The feeling of always having something to do or an email to answer can be hard to turn off. Cognitive overload is real for educators.

But honing executive functioning skills will make it easier to find balance between work and life. Here are five ways to get started.

Via John Evans

Business Insider asked K-12 public school teachers to answer the question, "What's something about your job that a lot of people don't know?"

Via John Evans

“We as teachers have a lot to learn from coaches,” said Jeff Gilbert, a former teacher and coach and now principal of Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, California. Most important, student learning would improve if teachers included more public performances in their instruction, he said.

In sports, players practice their skills in order to play the game better, and coaches modify what and how they train based on the athletes’ performance. Students in the classroom would benefit from similar high-stakes public performances, where they demonstrate what they’ve learned. In this way, the learning has a purpose, the same as throwing and catching drills in baseball.

Learning grounded in performance also allows teachers to give students constant feedback, like a coach who tweaks a player’s stance or swing. Though it’s more difficult for teachers to assess how well students are learning—unlike coaches, who can see immediately whether what they’ve taught has stuck—projects that include performances give more opportunities for immediate feedback.

Via John Evans, Dennis Swender

For those of you teaching math, here is a collection of some of the best YouTube channels we reviewed this year. You can draw on these resources to access and find educational video content to help you in the teaching of math for different grade levels. Some of these channels are set up and run by math teachers and others by popular math websites. You may want to go through the collection and see what works for you. Links to the channels are under the visual.

Via John Evans, Cyndi Danner-Kuhn

John Spencer

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa) , Dean J. Fusto

Teachers are grappling with how to present the recent overhaul in the federal government's stance on environmental issues.

Via Sarantis Chelmis

Free resource of educational web tools, 21st century skills, tips and tutorials on how teachers and students integrate technology into education

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa) , Tania Gammage

This is an interesting workshop presentation given at #converge11 by Joyce Seitzinger. It has a focus on curation in EduTech but is generic as well in a lot of aspects.

 

In particular, I love the distinction she makes from slide 22 onward between all types of "curators": a fun way of showing what curation best practices should be all about.

Via catspyjamasnz, Guillaume Decugis, Gust MEES

Teachers who want to learn more about teaching with technology will find this Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Introduction to Technology-Enabled Learning (TEL), informative and engaging. Using up-to-date learning design and simple, accessible technology, the course runs on an easy-to-use learning platform available via the Internet. The course is designed for teachers who want to build on their knowledge and practice in teaching and learning with technology. It will run over five weeks and requires approximately three to five hours of time each week. Designed to accommodate teachers’ busy schedules, the course offers flexibility with options for learning the content. You will learn from readings, videos, discussions with other participants and instructors, meaningful exercises, quizzes and short assignments. Certification is available for those who wish to complete all required exercises and quizzes.

Via Peter Mellow

Several years ago, former fourth-grade teacher Tracy Johnston Zager took an informal survey of two groups of people to find out how they feel about math: mathematicians and teachers who teach math. She discovered that while mathematicians used words like “beauty” and “wonder” to describe math, teachers recalled “dread” and “fear.” These words aligned with what Zager had observed in her job mentoring student teachers who expressed similar reservations about math. Teachers’ sentiment toward math is noteworthy because research has shown that adults can transfer anxiety to kids.

As teachers try to improve how they teach math by applying numeracy, inquiry-based learning, productive failure and complex instruction, the idea of how to become better math teachers is gaining a wider audience. But Zager writes in her book, “We moved right into a new way to teach math, without addressing teachers’ personal histories with and understanding of mathematics.”

Via John Evans, Omar Elizondo

When teachers reexamine how they were taught math and their perceptions of their ability, student test scores and attitudes about math dramatically improve, according to a new study.

The research, which appears in the journal Education Sciences, shows that fifth-grade teachers who took an online class designed to give them a different approach to mathematics teaching and learning, achieved significantly higher test results for their students compared with a control group of teachers in the same schools who did not take the class.

Via John Evans, Jim Lerman

"Teaching STEM is now very cool! Here is a generous list of tech tools that are transforming the way teachers approach STEM education. Utilize these resources to better engage your students, as you connect theoretical concepts with real-world applications.

Via Leona Ungerer, John Evans

John Spencer

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

Nowadays teachers are encouraged to use technology in the classroom given that it brings numerous benefits to both students and professors. On the one hand, by using technology teachers are able to manage their classes much easier, to engage their students with creative materials, to make interactive and interesting lessons and many other things. While on the other side, students will acquire knowledge faster since it is transferred in active and fun manner.  Therefore, one of the best ways to use technology in everyday teaching is to start taking advantage of many perks that iPad offers. It is small, light and easily portable in every occasion. Moreover, with its various useful apps, iPad will help you enhance and enrich teaching and learning experience. For this reason, here is a comprehensive list of different iPad apps for teachers that will improve and facilitate each aspect of your teacher’s life.

Via John Evans

Free resource of educational web tools, 21st century skills, tips and tutorials on how teachers and students integrate technology into education

In Professional Learning in the Digital Age: The Educator's Guide to User-Generated Learning, Kristen Swanson shows educators how to enhance their pro...

Via Robin Good