Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Here are my notes from today at a great Cooperative Learning workshop. I always learn so much. "I shall never think that I have arrived lest I begin not to think For things left dormant begin to rot and o'er time begin to stink." Vicki Davis -- That is me! Here are the great notes -- taken directly from the Google Doc. In some places I go from notetaking to editorializing - I hope you can tell the change in tone. MaryFriend Sheperd Day 2 Talked about how I presented the notes from yesterday and how things have changed. We talked about how Chrissy New Zealand left a comment yesterday on Mary Friend's class and how we streamed it live. Lecture should not be the dominant mode of instruction although it can be used. (Clarification from yesterday.) She has us think pair share what we did yesterday (I love think pair share -- use it all the time.) -- here are the highlights: 1- The principal of overchoice and teaching students to make a choice. (Have things where the...

HEre are my notes from today from the cooperative learning in service today. Dr. Sheperd is great. MaryFriend Sheperd - Cooperative Learning 4 Things we'll learn with cooperative learning: 1 - Models for cooperative learning - 5 most popular ways to use them in the classroom 2 - How do you grade and assess with cooperative learning (Demonstrating and assessing) 3- How you put students in groups - you must be in control of the groups 4- Team Building activities - Teach students how to work in cooperative groups or they will fail Some teachers do a lot in cooperative groups. One learning strategy that should combine with all of the other strategies. Have many choices of instructional strategies of which this is one. She divided us up -- we have a color and a playing card for each of us. List the names and the groups. We did a cooperative learning activity using shapes - 5 team members and an observer. It was great because we learned the following: you can do a cooperative lea...

I just live streamed Dr. MaryFriend Sheperd teaching about how to split cooperative learning into groups. (permission) Watch the video here. I'm looking for the archived chat in there. You can see my channel at http://ustream.tv/channel/cool-cat-teacher-tv . I have a couple of wishes: Private channels (viewable only by friends.) The ability to download and edit the video A private network for educators. Oh, I really just don't know how to think about this. Things are changing so quickly. I did this over wifi on a laptop with a $90 Logitech Quick Cam Fusion. Hey, Mom, I have my own TV channel. Here are some RSS feeds for these streams: Me - http://ustream.tv/coolcatteacher-videos.rss Will Richardson - http://ustream.tv/willrich45-videos.rss (Hey guys, vlogging just got a whole lot easier -- you can live vlog and then it archives. Oh my goodness!) I think this should be in acceptable use policies, however, remember you can block ustream, however live streaming on cell phones ...

Twenty seconds a go the K12 online keynote by David Warlick went up. How do I know -- k12 online twittered it. You can watch it online however it is 93 MB so you should probably right click and download it . (Justright click those words and click download.) Also there is a backchannel chat conversation that you can log into and comment for the next 24-48 hours. I strongly encourage this as it is part of connecting! I've got staff development this morning but I want to listen to this!! Oh goodness! Blog it, share it. Discuss it. And prepare to meet new people, that is the most important part about these conferences. I'm preparing to live breathe and learn k12 online. Take a look at the schedule. Are you going to join in? Oh, and remember to use the correct tags to blog about sessions. k12online07pc , k12online07 tag: teaching , learning , education , teacher , staff development , professional development , free , conference , online conference , David Warl...

Ok, guys, k12 online 2007 is beginning in a few hours and I love this conference. Julie and I did meet up last year via K12 online so I encourage your participation. It is a great conference and you'll get a lot out of it. It is a must attend! A hope for the future... While I am excited, I also hope that after you attend, you'll encourage the conveners to have more diversity in their keynotes next year in the post-conference survey. This is to take nothing away from the keynoters, all of whom are extremely qualified. We will learn a lot from them. tag: k12online2007 , k12online07 , diversity , equality , teacher , teaching , education , learning

Teachers everywhere are stressed out. We have training classes, students, and so many expectations of us... not to mention the many many papers to grade. I was listening to a great old song by Billy Joel tonight -- and although the name of the song is Vienna waits for you -- I've interjected the world Life... it fits. (For those who haven't heard the song, here is the song with a mashup from Harry Potter movies. Awesome.) AND I've bolded my favorite parts! So, here you are teacher... this one's for you. Slow down, you crazy child you're so ambitious for a juvenile But then if you're so smart, tell me Why are you still so afraid? Where's the fire, what's the hurry about? You'd better cool it off before you burn it out You've got so much to do and Only so many hours in a day But you know that when the truth is told.. That you can get what you want or you get old You're gonna kick off before you even Get halfway through When will you realiz...

First post: Live watching Will Richardson uStream . Second Thought: If we know ahead of time, how about scheduling live ustreams and post it on our event calendar (see previous post.)