Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Campaign Launched To Stop School From Claiming Copyright On Student Work | Techdirt Claiming intellectual property of STUDENTS and FACULTY (check your contracts faculty, most contracts already claim your IP which is why you shouldn't use school computers for anything you create) but now, publicly schools are going on record claiming copyright. Sadly, like many colleges, this serves more as a dampener than a revenue generator. I think a more creative copyright where students own their work, but schools have permission to use and reuse for school purposes makes more sense. I agree with TechDirt that this is a problem that we should begin speaking out about. Read and educate yourself, however, TechDirt needs to realize that most work for hire documents claim IP rights.  "We recently wrote about how the school board for Prince George County, Maryland, was considering a policy that would claim the copyright of everything produced by both stu...

The Gettysburg Address: Literary Nonfiction and the Common Core | Edutopia A nice reflection on what is happening to reading with Common Core. I find the overemphasis on literary nonfiction problematic, unless, the fact that math and history are primarily nonfiction allows literature to remain 60-70% fiction, however, for those schools who just have "reading" in literature (that would be sad), this is going to have issues. This is a great read. "The CCSS mandates that by the end of high school, 70% of what students read should be informational texts -- specifically, complex and non-narrative literary nonfiction. Furthermore, students should be able to identify central ideas and articulate their development, summarize, analyze, draw inferences, identify an author's purpose, evaluate the effectiveness of rhetorical features, and figure out the meaning of words. In short, the CCSS has reclaimed a technique popular in the 1940s, ...

Books are beautiful gifts... but you can write words to improve other's lives too. "No man is an island..." These words were penned by John Donne as he thought he lay dying from the plague. Masterful words as he pondered the meaning of life and death 'for whom the bell tolls." Truly, some of the most heart wrenching, agonizing circumstances, squeeze from the pen of great authors words full of meaning that distill rich drops of life onto the pages of history. "Never, never, never give up." said Winston Churchill to a people who were pondering just that. The words meant so much because the nights were, quite literally, so black, punctuated by fiery death dropped from the sky and sirens that kept sleep at bay. Who could understand a sleep deprived people with tear encrusted eyes working through the day to live to face another unfaced foe again that night? Yet, the words became immortal when uttered at the darkest moment. They gave hope and sta...

We know every basketball player will miss some shots... so why do we expect others to be right all the time. And when they are wrong, how do we act? "You welcome the one who joyfully does what is right." Isaiah 64:5a Do you ever read something and the unique combination of words just opens your mind to a truth? This morning the words describing a person who "JOYFULLY does what is RIGHT" lept off the page and furrowed my brow. Do you know people are who are doing the right thing but with totally the WRONG attitude. They stomp their foot and say, "Well this is the right thing and I'm going to do it if it just kills me" and then proceed to be so cranky and fussy that everyone knows they are doing the RIGHT thing and perhaps it is the RIGHT thing but they do it with such a WRONG attitude that you can't stomach being around the person? Inside comes out more than you think. As teachers, we are surrounded with doing the right thing for kids...

BigHugeLabs: Do fun stuff with your photos This is a great website that lets you do fun things with your photos. In particular, I like having students create a magazine cover of themselves in 10 years inspired by their goals of today. If they keep doing what they are doing now, what things will be their genius? Great, fun website. I also use the motivator to make fun sports photos for playoff games, etc. tags: photos teaching tumblr Civil War Lesson Plans When you're studying a particular subject, it makes sense to dig deeper. For example, the Civil War Trust has some excellent lesson plans on the Civil War as well as a field trip planner, glossary of civil war terms, civil war coloring book, and more. If you cover the civil war in the US, you'll want to visit...

PopClip - Mac - English - Evernote Trunk This very cool Mac app, Popclip, lets you highlight and send text on a page just about anywhere (including evernote.) I wish I had this for sending quotes to buffer, etc. tags: news productivity mac 10 Apps That Work Great With Evernote I've used some of these apps like Kustomnote. I like vjournal as my daily diary that goes into Evernote. This is a nice list of apps that work well with evernote. Take a look. tags: education news productivity Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

technology rocks. seriously.: School Signs Teacher Sarah Thomas on Facebook got the link to these incredible free classroom posters from a "pin buddy" - if you click the link, you can download the PDF. Don't bemoan your budget is cut, get up and print and laminate your own signs!!! This site has them for just about every subject. Love it! tags: Teaching math science Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .