Symbaloo is such a great resource for finding resources. I
have been converting many of my bookmarked websites to Symbaloo for personal
organization.Symbaloo is also a great
go to search engine for looking for resources for use in the classroom.For example I was recently looking for sites
for student practice on keyboarding.Rather than going through all the Google search results, I find it
easier to look to Symbaloo and look through the resources that another educator
has already pooled.
You can sign up for a free Symbaloo educator account here
I woke up this morning and in my traditional fashion of wanting to be a little lazy on Saturday mornings, I scrolled through my Facebook feed and to my surprise I found some amazing inspiration from this kid. Who is he? Logan LaPlante as his website states is a "skier, speaker, aspiring designer, director, writer." He is a 14-year old boy who hacks schooling. As he states "Hackschooling" is about creating an education that is about efficiency, experience and outcome in learning. You can view his TEDx talk here.
Logan gives us educators a lot to think about. What is it that people really want out of life? What are we teaching kids? And what SHOULD we be teaching kids?
Logan speaks about how schools should be teaching the practice of how to be happy and healthy rather than just simply assuming that because one goes to school, gets a job, gets married they'll be happy and healthy.
Many people, children, teens, adults spend years, some decades trying to figure out how to be happy and healthy. Some find it while others never do. What if schools spent more time designing, integrating and implementing lessons on the practice of being healthy and happy? What if we made the practice of being healthy and happy a priority in our education system?
What would our schools be like? What would our world be like?
We all know how much kids love to wiggle and dance, thanks to our friends at GoNoodle it is easier than ever to reinforce those much needed movement and brain breaks. GoNoodle is a FREE website with a plethera of digital videos and activities to get students moving and give their brains a break. GoNoodle keeps things fun and rewarding for the entire class by keeping it game like. The class earns points, which is shown through the growth of the "classroom champ." Most importantly GoNoodle is fun for kids and allows them to get the brain break and exercise needed to perform better academically.
Hi Everyone! I wanted
to share one of my saving graces this time of year... a noise-monitoring app
for iPads and iPhones.
With my entire class, I
like to use My Class Rules. I access it using my
personal/teacher iPad and project it onto the interactive white board, while
the class is working. It helps them to self-monitor themselves and each
other, which allows me to work with individual or groups of students as needed.
This is what the students see on the I.W.B. as they are working.
The quieter they work, the more points we receive. When we accumulate a
goal number of points we get a class reward of their choice (usually voted on).
Another FREE app I like to use on the student iPads is Too Noisy Lite. I prefer this app on
student iPads because it is free and helps students to guide student noise
level when they are working in cooperative groups.
How have you used these apps or other noise monitoring apps with your class?
