Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

A Big List of 375 Free eBooks for Your iPad, Kindle, Nook and Other Devices | Open Culture A nice list of free ebooks from Open Culture. tags: ebook news literature engchat Sean Connery Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Ithaca,” Set to the Music of Vangelis | Open Culture Literature teachers and many of you will enjoy this epic poem ready by Sean Connery with music by Vangelis. Very enjoyable. tags: education news culture poetry The Uncommon blog » Blog Archive » Reshelving Project: Almost There and Already Awesome! Loving how these librarians are transforming their library. Here are some great ideas and examples to share with libr...

Today on social media I saw someone write gritty, gross details of her cat's stomach ailment and another person described the moves that she learned in her yoga pole dancing class (with names too adult to share here.) I'm trying to understand why either of them would think those two things would enlighten or improve the lives of other people. These ill advised shares mar the timelines of otherwise interesting professionals. Don't make this mistake I am going to admit something here. One time, about two months after I joined Twitter , someone sat next to me at an airport and unashamedly did the unthinkable right beside me! I tweeted about his flagrantly loud gastric distress and my shock. At the same time someone at a workshop in Virginia was talking about how useful Twitter was and was showing my Twitter stream as a good example of someone who was so helpful. And across goes my ill-advised Tweet. When I got the direct message, I was humiliated and deleted the...

The Casual Vacancy: 5 reactions to J.K. Rowling's adult-oriented novel - The Week JK Rowling as a new adult fiction book amidst mixed reviews. tags: education news literature authors Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

I want to be captivating. I want to entrance students with my subject. I want students fascinated to walk into my classroom. I am the teacher of THIS subject. I can't make all their subjects captivating, that isn't my job. I can speak of the importance of English, Math, Science, History and pull a little into my topic, but I will make my class one they want to come to. I will be that teacher who captivates them.  When I see the spark in their eyes, I will fan it with my energy, excitement, and education in the subject until it flames into a bonfire that will never go out. I will drive myself to be interesting and interested in what interests my students. I will be on top of my game and push myself to innovate more and be more. I will never let a filing cabinet of lesson plans determine what is next. I will take every lesson and add one innovative element and do ONE thing differently. I will take the lessons that I know bore students and MAKE THEM BETTER. ...

Mentoring Monday: Get the New Twitter Profile Page | Teaching with Soul There is a new setup for the Twitter profile page. Here are instructions on how to set this up for yourself. tags: education news twitter Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Advisory Groups: Creating a Positive School Community - Finding Common Ground - Education Week Nice article on student advisory groups as part of school climate reform. The climate in a school is so important. "According to the latest National School Climate Study (2012) "A growing number of State Depart¬ments of Education are focusing on school climate reform as an essential component of school improvement and/or bully prevention" (page. 2). Schools are often looking for quality ways to create a safe atmosphere for students. Using advisory groups is one way to promote a healthier and more nurturing school climate. Student advisory groups are not what you are probably thinking. This doesn't just mean that school social workers and school psychologists work with groups of students who are in need. Advisory groups are small groups of students that span the grades in the school system and every staff member has a part in it. It ...

Questions about Common Core - Forums - Share My Lesson Discussions about Common Core are beginning to happen on the AFT's Share my lesson website. It looks like a good place for teachers to get help and talk about these issues. tags: edreform commoncore news A defense of Common Core State Standards - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post Interesting conversation on the Washington Post about Common Core. I applaud blogger Valerie Strauss for allowing Sarah Brown Wessling, an award winning teacher, write her defense of Common Core. tags: education commoncore news edreform Education Week: New Studies Dissect School Turnarounds A new study...

Flat Classroom Help Wiki For those of you interested in understanding fundamentals about the Flat Classroom projects, from kindergarten and up, we maintain a free, open help wiki that you may review to get information. This is our current guide for how we do things as we are always improving projects.  tags: education flatclass teaching globaled YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. YouTube adds questions (in beta) to be able to ask questions about a video. It is in Beta and they are asking for feedback. I am asking flipped class experts to do that. tags: News teaching flipclass tumblr Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Education Week: Common Core Thrusts Librarians Into Leadership Role Librarians are so important. I love this article about librarian Kristen Hearne and the hard work she's doing to help teachers and students get what they need to be successful. This education week article calls librarians "a school's secret weapon." A good librarian has always been one of the greatest assets a school can have. Teachers, admins, we're all important, but never underestimate the importance of a great librarian. They deserve our respect and appreciation. IF you've got a great librarian, take a moment right now to say thank you. You may never realize what it will mean. tags: education facebook news commoncore Google Loses Feedburner.jp Domain (The Latest Sign That Feedburner Is Dying) ...

Amazon Kindle: Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration One Step at a Time (Pearson Resources for 21st Century Learning) Here are some of the public notes of most commented upon items from the book I coauthored Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. You do have to make your notes public to make posts, but I think that highlights may share whether or not they are public. I like to see the things that resonate. tags: education teaching kindle ebook TES iboard: Units of work These are complete mini-topics that are a week's worth of activities and lesson plans on each topic for ages 4-11. This pulls together lesson plans, interactive whiteboard resources, and printables and will be helpful for teachers in a tight or who need to quickly emphasize a topic where t...

If social media has given us the gift of being afraid to speak the truth in love, then we are a sad lot indeed. Speech isn't free, it often costs our speech of mind, but the flaw may be inherent in Facebook's design. It is designed to make us feel good with the partial reinforcement of being "liked" every time we go there. Every human wants to feel liked, so they are catering to that desire. But liking you as a person and liking what you say are two different things in life. The deafening silence of the lack of respectful discourse on issues that matter is upsetting. We only have a "like" button on Facebook. This is not a good thing for balanced conversation and news sites like the Wall Street Journal are carrying stories agreeing with this perspective. There has been a scam running for years claiming to allow people to install the dislike button . People want to do it, they just can't. People are coming to facebook and getting "liked" and onl...

Belkin WeMo I am testing a wemo along with 2 students. If you're a student or teacher, stay tuned to my blog for a very exciting opportunity to test these devices. wemo with ifttt.com is AWESOME and I"m having a blast playing with it. tags: education news wemo gadget Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

As I sit here and watch the pulse beat on the ankle of my left foot, I see that as proof that God is not done with me yet. He has a plan, although I may not see it. The way I see it, if you've got a pulse, you've got a purpose. I took yesterday off, the second day I took off to write in two weeks, in order to get my second book, Collaborative Writing in the Cloud , to a point where I'm happy with it and ready for it to go to the publisher. I started writing at 5:15 am and continued until 7pm when I prepared and spent time with our incredible group of Flat Classroom certified teachers in our weekly discussion. Finally, at 9:45 last night, I went to sit on the couch. Now, I'm quietly typing on my ipad as my family sleeps. With my oldest a senior, we are filling out college applications, prepping for his last SAT, and balancing bank accounts to scrounge up the money to send him to college next year. My daughter is a junior with all of the worries that come with being a ch...

Editing Wikipedia « Kizuna Editing Wikipedia is something we encourage teachers to do in our book Flattening Classrooms, Engagaging Minds and in our Certified Teacher Course. All of us should at least have a user page. Tasha Cowdy, one of our certified teachers shared her experience editing an orphaned article on Wikipedia. This is something all of us can do to learn about the community of practice built around a sustainable site like wikipedia. tags: education news collaborativewriting Wiki Inventor Sticks a Fork in His Baby via wired There is a new type of wiki called the "federated wiki" that is the new brainchild of wiki inventor, Ward Cunningham. INfluenced by GitHub, this invention lets you "fork" a wiki page and make your own version with the original author having the cho...

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I teach students not to use "weasel words" in their collaborative writing. This includes things like "Many people say" or "it is widely thought" - these statements, unless backed up by a reliable source, lend credibility without fact backing them up. These are words that students should be familiarized with when writing for academic purposes in collaborative writing. tags: education teaching collaborativewriting wikis wiki_book evernote Top Tips for Tweeting Teachers Some great advice. Of course, as it mentions me in this article and that I space out my tweets, I couldn't do that without @bufferapp and @hootsuite - two of my favorite tools. ...

An early look at tools for EARTHWORKS | HASTAC Love the idea of interactive badges. This is a fascinating idea that is part of the open badge movement. This article from Earth works describes the concept and gives a mock up. Yong Zhao from the University of Oregon talks about eventually having a system of "microcredits" where you earn small credits for small, discrete things you learn. I see all of these as coming together as part of that shift. School credits and PLU's and CEU's will eventually no longer be in 10 hour increments or hour increments in semesters. The idea of microcredits and badges is evolving and will fundamentally change how we do education. Of course, there are higher order things we teach like thinking that can't be quantified in a badge or something like this and that, as with our testing focus, is where we will likely get in trouble. The commoditization of knowledge and information is likely but some t...

The Unspoken Truth About Influential Liars | UNSPOKEN ~ Social Media Jure Klepic calls it like he sees it. Just because someone has a high Klout doesn't mean they are telling the truth. One thing I've learned in social media is that if you want a lot of links and people responding to you BE WRONG. BE CONTROVERSIAL. BE RUDE. I no longer respond to rudeness with links and responses because that is helping the fool who is doing it.  Jure also says to beware of those who call themselves social media experts. He's right. Many of the "experts" are buffoons with few followers (they say that they don't have time for that) and fewer real friends. They like to be listened to by making big bucks with big companies who don't ask themselves if they SHOULD listen to them. This is a great, thought provoking post about journalism, klout, and ethics.  tags: education teachin...

Print from iOS with Dropbox, IFTTT and Automator | 52 Tiger Awesome "recipe"to save a file to a dropbox folder and have it printed. I'm going to do this - then I can go to school and have printed anything I need from my ipad the night before. It uses Dropbox, ifttt.com, and automator. Cool and useful. tags: education news productivity ifttt tumblr Friday on Office Hours: Why do some kids succeed and others fail? I am going to be getting this book, which was a topic of discussion last week with Dan Pink. He says that the author (aptly with the last name of 'Tough') says: "The book takes on what Tough calls the “cognitive hypothesis,” the idea that success hinges on mental processing speed and traditional brainpower. Instead, citing lots of interestin...

Two Minute Mental Math Warm-UP - Resources - Share My Lesson I like this two minute mental math warm up for grades 4-8. Interesting idea to get them started. tags: education teaching math I Wonder... Informational Writing - Resources - Share My Lesson "This activity can be used during a science unit on animals. It can also be used as an assessment if a rubric is used." For elementary students, this writing assignment is cross curricular and designed for second grade, but could be adapted. You can align with common core. tags: education teaching writing Helen Barrett's eportfolio using Google Sites Dr. Helen Barrett shares her eportfolio o...

Teaching ate me alive - Salon.com Heartwrenching, heartaching, upsetting, but all too true. For those who want to see inside the life of many US public school teachers, Peter Hirzel has a gutsy, edgy post on salon and says many of the things that are often whispered and said in email. But there is a part that I want EVERY teacher to hear because it reflects something I say a lot to teachers: "When we have each others’ backs, we are invincible. So I hope all the teachers continue to be kind to one another, because one kind word was very, very often the only thing that got me through the day." BE KIND TO EACH OTHER. Encourage each other. Smile. Say hello. You are fellow journeyman and deserve each other's respect and kindness. Please hear this. Don't be discouraged, but if you're in edreform and don't read this post, you shouldn't be in edreform because you don't get the conflicting emotions plaguing the psyche of...