Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

I welcome my students into my room during break and lunch or after school to help them set up their own personal blogs. I also ask them to tell me so I can subscribe to their blog via bloglines (and let their parents know so they can monitor it.) I am very pleasantly pleased with the vacation blog of a ninth grader of mine named Casey. Casey has had the rare opportunity to travel to many places that even I have not. She has wonderful, down to earth parents and I love her dearly. Her most recent post about New York is very good, I think, and I was hoping some of you who have been there recently (its been about 10 years a go for me) might post a comment. Tags: blog student blogs

On Friday, I had an enlightening discussion with Stewart Mader , an instructional technologist in math and sciences at Brown University, about the use of wikis in education. He will be posting a series from our discussions. ( Read the transcript of our chat .) Stewart and I came in contact when the Westwood Wikispace was profiled by east wikkers as their #13 wiki and his Spectroscopy Wiki was profiled as the #14 wiki. He used campfire for the chat and I loved it. It has a great transcription feature and is easy to set up. I plan on using it in some of my classes next week. I hope you'll read the whole transcript , I have just pulled out a few highlights. Thank you, Stewart for such an enlightening discussion. On adding the mashup to the front of the Westwood wiki: Stewart M. What inspired the mashup on the front page of the wiki? Vicki D. To make things relevant to the students, I like to show it in action. We’ve been talking about mashups and some got it and some d...

I've had some questions come lately about how I do assessments. I've integrated blogging and wikis into almost all of these. It is important to have "genuine" assessments which accurately reflect the knowledge of students. It is always a struggle to make sure we assess fairly but responsibly. Here is what four of my classes are doing this semester. 8th grade portfolio 9th grade portfolio Computer Science portfolio If you have any questions, post them. Remember, as teachers we must be willing to do what is best for our students, not necessarily what we are used to. It was difficult to switch from "formal exams" but now that I have, I'm very happy and feel better the knowledge my students have. Tags: assessment tests exams coolcatteacher genuine assessment education teaching teacher blog wiki

May is a tough month for any educator I've ever known. As I was in the mountains last weekend, I contemplated my upcoming May and penned this little poem. Living in May Lord, let me live through May as underclassmen stress and seniors play Help me stay positive no matter how they act Let my emotions be calm and my attitude intact. Lord, please let me live through May. Lord, help them live through May as they tend to act up all day When temperatures rise and tempers flare As younglings try wings and rebels dare. Lord, please help them live through May. Lord, let me teach through May not just biding time all day! Each day is a gift as is each precious one. This may be my last chance to reach someone! Lord, please let me teach through May! Lord, let me live in May sharing knowledge all the way Enjoying the ride and laughing a lot Cause in this school year May's all I've got! I do not want to waste a day even the waning days ...

Mike Muir (hat tip to Doug Belshaw ) has an incredible post entitled Fear and Disruptive Technologies in which he criticizes the knee jerk reactions of many educators to ban some potentially useful technologies such as: iPods, cell phones, etc. In this post, he recounts an interview with an 0bviously progressive IT Director at another school system, Gary Brown , here is part of the interview: At his [Gary's] schools, about 95% of the students had cell phones. Did they ban their use? No. They purchased a system to push school announcements out to the phones. Some of the teachers use them for quizzes (kind of like the "clicker" student response systems). Now 100% of their students have cell phones. Their cell phone abuse rate? According to Gary, 0%. We were paying $3000 fifteen years a go to have the computing power of a cell phone in our classroom and now we ban cell phones? We're missing the boat. I don't think the applications are out there yet. We...

Jeff Utecht has a great post - Turn off the screen and go play! : " This week we have been celebrating TV Turn Off week at our school, and when your wife is the counselor leading the charge, you set a good example. So for the past couple of nights we have not watched any TV, turned on a computer or participated in any “Screen” activities.... After some meaningful ponderings, Jeff says something that resonates with me: We can’t ignore that technology exist for this generation; what we need to do and learn is to balance the use of technology with good old fashion play. Maybe preschool students don’t need to watch a movie every day, or a 2nd grader doesn’t need a Gameboy. How do these activities help foster growth in students? Sure a Gameboy is great when you are traveling. It will keep a kid occupied for hours, but do they need to play it for hours when they get home from school? I agree totally! I live in the country for a reason. Although I did very well academically throughout ...

This is a rehash of a post I did in December on another one of my blogs. I get a lot of questions from bloggers on how to keep up with everything, this is how I do it. ( Brittany May, this is for you .) This article is about the number one most useful thing a person can have today -- a news aggregator. News Aggregator or News Aggravator? It will be a news aggravator if you don't do it right. There is something relatively new on the web called R SS - (really simple syndication ). It can be very confusing, however. I've tried several services and methods -- here is the easiest and best that I teach my students to use. I have found the best use of RSS is to sign up for an account like bloglines and subscribe to the information that interests you. Setting up a bloglines account - here are the steps: 1) Go to bloglines.com The only required is an e-mail and password 2) Set up your free account Remember, use another password other than your e-mail password -- some folks thin...

Marshall K posted an interview with the editor of super-blog Lifehacker over at Net Squared . It's titled " On the care and feeding of a techno-garden: an interview with Lifehacker's Gina Trapani ." Here are some great quotes I think everyone need to glean from this interview. For a transcript of the whole thing, visit NetSquared. Marshall K is a must-read! Gina on constant connectivity The other lesson that many for-profits haven't learned yet is to avoid drowning your employees in gadgets and tech - like Blackberries, laptops, and weekend email sessions - because constant connectivity and an interrupt-driven existence can really degrade people's morale and productivity levels. Amen! Sometimes it is great to get away. No telephone. No TV. No E-mail. Bloggers who go for years without missing a post any day are missing life! I believe in taking a break! Gina on building an audience On the editorial side, to build an audience, you need to post often...

Today, I am reminded of life's fleeting beauty for three reasons: One former student on a ventilator tonight after a terrible automobile accident Another student that I taught up until January is undergoing a CT scan in a terrible hit and run accident...he was riding his bicycle home from school It is my birthday. It makes me think. As I think of this, I am reminded of my calling as a teacher. Educators may disagree on methods, practices, and such but the purpose is clear: the education of the future of the human race. As I cry and pray for these precious boys, it strikes a chord of nagging fear that I haven't done enough. Did I give enough attention? Did I show enough kindness? Did I kindle a spark of excitement that gave them something to look forward to in their day? Did I matter in their lives? I am pulled back to a quote from the late James Ramsey Ullman "For it is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that man is never so much a man as when he is striving for wha...

This is an excellent case study for those of us who teach ethics in our classes. I will be using it in my blog this week. Best-selling teenage author admits lifting parts of novel - The Herald : " CTV.caBest-selling teenage author admits lifting parts of novel The Herald - 1 hour ago A teenage writer educated in Scotland last night admitted that passages in her best-selling debut novel had been borrowed from another book. Here is my question, what should be the consequences? If there are none, it will reinforce to our children that the ends justifies the means.

I heard a great story about a honeymoon gone awry: The groom and bride arrived exhausted at about 1 a.m. at the bridal suite at a posh hotel. They were exhausted from greeting friends and a long weekend of celebrations. Upon scanning the room, they saw the couch, a refrigerator, a table and chairs, the bathroom, and a closet. Too tired to think, they kept looking for the bed. They finally figured out that the couch had a pull out bed in it. All night they slept fitfully (among other things) on a lumpy, uncomfortable sofabed. In the morning, the bridegroom went down to the front desk to give them a piece of his mind about the terrible accommodations in their room. Quite confused, the manager took them to their room and went to the closet door. He opened what the couple thought was a closet door into the most lush, comfortable, intimate king sized bed along with now-lukewarm champagne, chocolates, and specially engraved glasses all set out for the couple. The couple missed out. All...

Dave Sifry has posted his quarterly State of the Blogosphere on Technorati . It is fascinating! Here are a couple of things that I have learned: The blogosphere tends to double every 6 months. The blogosphere is 60 times bigger than 3 years a go. Fifty five per cent (55%) of bloggers are still blogging after 3 months. A new web log is created every second. Eleven per cent (11%) of blogs update weekly or more. Sixty per cent (60%) of pings are from spam blogs and their cousin spings (ping spam -- or spam on trackbacks!) The most amazing thing is the chart that is shown above which is t he spike in blog postings as are correlated with world events . I think that the offline increase in conversations and how they are reflected in online life is fascinating. (If this interests you, you may want to see the Center for History and the New Media they are doing some cool analysis and research about this information.) News Media watches the blogosphere for Grassroots News In the historical...

No, I'm not talking about seducing your students! I'm talking about Kathy's Sierra's newest mind blowing post entitled, Cognitive Seduction (a Typology of User Experience Pleasures) in which Kathy profiles several books including the book Rules of Play , by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman . In this book, game designer Marc LeBlanc defines 8 categories of experiences in a "typology of pleasure". Kathy summarizes them for those who design experiences for users in the corporate world. I'd like to take this Typology of User Experience Pleasures and put them in the context of the classroom. These are the things about games that make them so addictive to students. We must use them to addict them to lifelong learning. Kathy Sierra is unbelievable! Typology of Cognitive Pleasures in the Classroom 1. Discovery This is why Socratic teaching is so very powerful, in my opinion. When you teach by asking questions, the STUDENT gets the light bulb experience...