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Here are a dozen roses a student sent me for something I did for him last May. If you check out, you'll miss out on things that need to be done. Yesterday, on my Facebook page , I made this comment while we were driving to church. When I got out of church, it had more than 60 likes! It resonated, so I decided to address this thought of "winding down." Tonight I will be in my classroom grading. One of the toughest things about this time of year is just how much time everything takes. Usually I work 50 hours a week but this past week it is more like 65 or 70. Most people don't know or understand these hours. In the business world, if you worked long hours people knew because your car was there or they got emails. In teaching it isn't as evident.  I think those who understand and respect teachers during this time of year are our friends and it is appreciated. On the flip side, those that call with frivolous requests because "things are winding down" c...

Green Ribbon Schools This competition to create a video game will teach you how to make a game and help you study about health. they are due March 15 in this competition. Comptetitons are a great way to get students outside the classroom and create. way to help kids make more than a 100. What is more relevant and engaging to students these days than video games? In a few short weeks, you and your students can go from no game design experience to publishing your health related online video games on the Green Ribbon Schools website. The best part is we will show you exactly how to do this. We understand that Game Design can be new and intimidating. So we have developed a simple Lesson Plan for teachers to follow. No matter how computer-phobic you may be, you can complete this Lesson Plan with your students in 4-5 weeks. No game design or coding experience necessary. (With game design experience you can complete this in a matter of days)." ...

Green Ribbon Schools This competition to create a video game will teach you how to make a game and help you study about health. they are due March 15 in this competition. Comptetitons are a great way to get students outside the classroom and create. way to help kids make more than a 100. What is more relevant and engaging to students these days than video games? In a few short weeks, you and your students can go from no game design experience to publishing your health related online video games on the Green Ribbon Schools website. The best part is we will show you exactly how to do this. We understand that Game Design can be new and intimidating. So we have developed a simple Lesson Plan for teachers to follow. No matter how computer-phobic you may be, you can complete this Lesson Plan with your students in 4-5 weeks. No game design or coding experience necessary. (With game design experience you can complete this in a matter of days)." ...

Hunger Games Meadow Song (Rue's Lullaby) Bookmarks - Resources - TES Hunger games bookmarks with lyrics to the meadow song on it. If you have some obsessed students, you could print them out and give them to the students as a reward. tags: education teaching literature Twitter Tweet Chapter Summary - Resources - TES This is a fascinating idea. Students should summarize each chapter in a "tweet" or 140  characters. As the lesson plan says "Every word counts and most important events should be included." You could do some fascinating things with this in class. This is a high school literature assignment. tags: education teaching literature literature_teacher ...

Graduates 11-3 - Flat Classroom® Projects The newest graduates of the Flat Classroom Certified Teacher program 11-3 have "graduated!." They are an amazing group of teachers: Cynthia Sandler, Cindy Shultz, Kathy Scarpato, Sandy Wisneski, Phil Macoun, Kevin Duncan, Michell McGarvey. Read about them and their projects on the blog. Congratulations! It was great getting to know you! tags: education flatclass certifiedteacher news Policies & Principles – Google Google Drive is covered under same terms of service as other Google services. This means they can scan your data and us it to share with third party vendors for advertising purposes. For this reason, I'm not using Google Drive. I'm already in so deep, I'll just keep paying dropbox. tags:...

Graduates 11-3 - Flat Classroom® Projects The newest graduates of the Flat Classroom Certified Teacher program 11-3 have "graduated!." They are an amazing group of teachers: Cynthia Sandler, Cindy Shultz, Kathy Scarpato, Sandy Wisneski, Phil Macoun, Kevin Duncan, Michell McGarvey. Read about them and their projects on the blog. Congratulations! It was great getting to know you! tags: education flatclass certifiedteacher news Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Search for socrative teaching resources - TES If you want to see some sample Socrative quizzes and lessons, teachers are starting to upload their Socrative resources to the TES website that I frequent so often. Here are some nice quizzes and lessons, particularly on science: space, electrolysis, animal and plant cells. tags: education socrative eduapp teaching science science_teacher scienceapp Recession returns - Resources - TES The UK economy has entered its first "double dip recession since 1975." Here are some resources that teachers in Britain are using for studying this topic. Kids around the world have heard of this term and it is important, I think, to share the cyclical nature of such things and for them to know that it has happened ...

Let's get one thing very clear here. EMAIL is NOT FREE.  Never has been. Never will be. You may not pay actual money for the service, but you are paying your time and your eyes each and every day. Your time is your life. It is all you have. Time wasted responding to bulk mails and junk is wasted. I'm to the point that all press releases from people I don't know go in the TRASH. Period. Most of us aren't journalists working for newspapers and it isn't our job to cover everything that mainstream PR firms want us to. As for me, I'd rather talk to people and converse and see what is happening that way. You won't get extra stars on your tombstone because you read every email. Some things aren't worth reading. Stop the madness and ignore, delete and trash junk email and then maybe those that do it will realize that they are wasting the lives of good people. The problem is the trash is getting in the way of doing real work that is important to me....

TED-Ed | Just How Small Is an Atom? Here is an example of a flipped lesson. In this one, "Just how small is an atom" you have the video, then the other materials to the right. This is a public lesson, but you can take it and flip it, make it your own, and make your own private URL for your class.  tags: education teaching news flippedclassroom TED Blog | Flip this lesson! A new way to teach with video from TED-Ed TED-Ed now has a new way to flip lessons. Now in beta at ed.ted.com you can redo lessons or create lessons from scratch using TED or any youtube video. The nice thing is that you can see who has completed lessons. These videos give you tours and information. Time to test this. Yet another reason to unblock youtube and make peace. tags: ...

Flattening your classroom, flattening your own world | The Global Classroom Project Kyle Dunbar (@edtechdunny) has a reflection on how to start connecting with the world and our new Flat Classroom book. This was an amazing birthday present for me today because it shows that Julie and I have accomplished what we set out to do: create an experience for teachers to join in. tags: education flatclass globaled flatclassroombook Apps in Education: Monster List of iBook Tutorials Monster list of iBooks tutorials and resources http://t.co/bGIG0fDa #edtech #ebook #edapp #flatclass tags: edtech ebook edapp flatclass twitter Secondary: Cit...

TED-Ed | Just How Small Is an Atom? Here is an example of a flipped lesson. In this one, "Just how small is an atom" you have the video, then the other materials to the right. This is a public lesson, but you can take it and flip it, make it your own, and make your own private URL for your class.  tags: education teaching news flippedclassroom TED-Ed | Lessons Worth Sharing Here's the TED-Ed website where you can flip lessons. One other nice thing is you can also see what other teachers have done. tags: education flippedclassroom ted youtube teaching web2 TED Blog | Flip this lesson! A new way to teach ...

Mom's coffee cake that will be in the teacher's lounge in 15 minutes and gone in 30. ;-) We need cheerleaders. Teachers who encourage and help us "seize the day" and know we're going to make it. I don't have a lot of time this morning, but I'm going to give you a poem that I'm taking to the teacher's lounge this morning. I took some funny teacher cartoons  and put it on the top of the paper and then put this poem at the bottom: You are going to make it, the end is near. Just hold on for life to all you call dear.  Our school is a special gift and has been blessed beyond measure. These times are our legacy and ones we should treasure.  But meanwhile we have a lot to do now! And with kids already on vacation, we have to wonder how.  Grades to take, things to teach, projects galore – we’re already tired when our feet hit the floor.  But these times will flee and time is so hurried, let’s work together, laugh, and work instead of g...

Gideon Sundback: Today's Google Doodle honors zipper genius - latimes.com From the LA Times today. Lots of people "unzipped Google" today in honor of his birthday, however, he did NOT invent the zipper.. "Gideon Sundback -- the man who did not invent the zipper but did perfect it -- is the recipient today of a giant, interactive Google Doodle zipper. It's a doodle to add zip to your day, honoring the birthday of the man who helped introduce the fastening device into everyday clothing. Look around -- there's a good chance you'll see Sundback's handiwork in nearly every item of clothing you own, save shirts and blouses. Even sneakers sport zippers these days. Sundback was born 132 years ago today in Sweden. He lived briefly in Germany before making his way to the U.S. and becoming the epitome of the American success story. He didn't actually invent the zipper. Such a device -- which uses metal teeth to pull tw...

Dream School Challenge Lifetime's balancing act (where I also blog) has a 300,000 dream school challenge. Here is where you sign up. Good luck. tags: teaching contest education Body image - Resources - TES Another lesson with an activity called "agony aunt" that lets students discuss things affecting body image. More materials on this important topic. tags: education health_teacher health bodyimage teaching all_teachers BodyImageHealth.org - Promoting Healthy Body Image Attitudes This website has a lot of free downloads about body image from Kathy Kater. I have a friend on FAcebook who is recovering fro...

File Sharing Just Got Easier Through Dropbox Awesome! You can now create a public URL for ANY file in dropbox (not just those in your public folder) to share with anyone. It is a very easy system as Richard Byrne shares in this post.) Great news. Dropbox is my favorite "go to" app for making my classroom paperless. tags: news dropbox eduapp edapp Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Como es tu casa? - Resources - TES There are many language teachers congregating and sharing resources in online spaces. Here is an example of a middle / high school resource for Spanish with descriptions of houses and what houses have. tags: education learning lessonplans spanish language_techer Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

I am a blogger for the Balancing Act on the Lifetime Channel and enjoy watching their many videos on learning. Yes, each session does have a vendor ( this one is Virco  talks about the Zrock rocking chair ) on the piece, however, I had to share this one that I totally agree with that shows and talks about the redesign of schools from furniture, to making them green, to use. At the beginning of this video, the speaker says: "Sitting still does not mean learning." I have students all the time who lean back (and break) my regular "four on the floor" chairs because they lean back. I am a leaner and like to lean back as well. In this clip, they have a school that bought these "rocking chair" style chairs for their students and it totally warms my heart to see the students rocking. They need this! In the Flat Classroom book , we talk about in Chapter 7: Choice - giving students choices. I believe students need choices. Ewan McIntosh shares in the b...

How the iPad Is Changing Education The Read write web writes a comprehensive assessment about how the iPad is changing education.  tags: education news ipad ipadchat The Associated Press: Actors, artists aim to turn around failing schools Artists are going to adopt schools to help improve them. This sounds nice but if an artist adopting someone to make them successful worked, every movie star's child would be successful and we know that this is not true. Hard work from a lot of anonymous people is what it is going to take. This feels gimmicky but if it helps kids, I'm all for it. WASHINGTON (AP) — Sarah Jessica Parker, Kerry Washington and Forest Whitaker are adopting some of the nation's worst-performing schools and pledged Monday to help the Obama administration turn them a...

KS1: Geography: Around the world teaching resources - TES For those working with elementary students integrating global competency, these 428 lesson plans and activities are great ways to cover geography and the cultural literacy that is needed by today's students.  tags: education flatclass globaled elemchat elementary elementary_teacher bestpractices Amazon Kindle: Victoria A. Davis Here's my profile on Amazon Kindle - I share a lot of highlights when I'm reading on Kindle. Right now I"m not reading as much because of the end of the school year but you can see the many transformational books that  I love. If you use the Kindle app, you should sign in with your amazon account, set up your profile and start following. I'm finding i...

We are in great need of some judges to help review student multimedia for TWO projects.  Flat Classroom Project 12-1 -  http://flatclassroomproject. ning.com/group/ fcp2011judgesexpertadvisors NetGenEd 2012 -  http://flatclassroomproject. ning.com/group/netgen-2012- expert-advisors-judges Both of these projects have many students madly finishing off multimedia work, with a timeline for judging to start by mid-May. We will be holding a Judges Orientation meeting around May 1 to go over expectations. However all information is on the respective wiki. If you have a couple of hours spare in mid-May we welcome you warmly to sign up on the Ning link(s) above and follow instructions on the associated wiki to put your name next to the preferred topic of interest. If you have any other teachers in your schools who would like to learn more about our projects through judging the final product, we welcome them to sign up as well. Many thanks everyone. Julie Lind...

May Events If you're planning May and want to see the holidays and events along with lesson plans, you'll want to check out this list. Lots of events including a net one we should bring to the US called "Friendship Funday". tags: education learning teaching may resources lesson plans lesson all_teachers Peeking Into Division 16 This is an excellent blog by a classroom and uses blogspot. Here they share visitor etiquette, word wall words, and also links to student blogs. This is an excellent example of a classroom blog for a young classroom. tags: education blogging news teaching Posted from Diigo . Th...

May Events If you're planning May and want to see the holidays and events along with lesson plans, you'll want to check out this list. Lots of events including a net one we should bring to the US called "Friendship Funday". tags: education learning teaching may resources lesson plans lesson all_teachers Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

You don't measure success by how few people complain. It is a horrific way to measure success and yet we see it all the time. Principals live with complaints and I have seen some tweets and updates saying: "It has been a good day, no one complained." Really, no one complained? This was also a measure of success used in the 1930's and it was called appeasement . (See more on this in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .) Are there people who are not moving forward because they are spending time appeasing all the different types of people? This came to me yesterday as I heard my new preacher, Michael Catt (no I didn't join this church because of his last name ;-)) at Sherwood   talk about the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:17-44) and said "God ticks people off even when He does good things! The leaders started planning to kill him." When everyone likes you you're doing nothing Whatever you believe, this principle does apply. ...