Useful Links

“Balance when mentoring” (CC BY-NC 2.0) by  rhondda.p 

 How to Deal When Things Go Wrong in Your Makerspace The author has a realistic view of her makerspaces and her students. She shares her wisdom here. ” in the real world things can go wrong. There are days when there’s a lot of mess and days when students rebel and refuse to work on any projects. The fact of the matter is that things go wrong in my makerspace all the time. Over the years, I’ve learned a few things about how to deal with them and not let them get me down”

Create Your Own Printable Board Game “Board games can be great fun and a good educational tool too. From this site you can try creating your own game with a range of printable versions available. It can be fun and it is easy to do using these templates.

249 Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs For Critical Thinking “Bloom’s Taxonomy’s verbs–also know as power verbs or thinking verbs–are extraordinarily powerful instructional planning tools. In fact, next to the concept of backwards-design and power standards, they are likely the most useful tool a teacher-as-learning-designer has access to.

They can be used for curriculum mapping, assessment design, lesson planning, personalizing and differentiating learning, and almost any other “thing” a teacher–or student–has to do”

Harry Potter Scavenger Hunt ” Harry Potter Scavenger Hunt”

Create a treasure hunt “This website creates the most exciting treasure hunt games you can imagine. All of the puzzles and clues are included, all you need to do is print the clues and hide them around your house and back yard.”

How to be a Scholar. 6 Steps to Encourage Critical Thinking | College Ready This is a simple infographic that could be used as a poster in the classroom. It would serve as a reminder to students to ask themselves the type of questions that will lead to them developing their critical thinking skills and become better learners.

Authors and Their Day Jobs: INFOGRAPHIC | GalleyCat “An infographic that gives the day jobs of several high-profile authors including Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, and Harper Les

22 Tricks That Can Make Anyone A Keyboard Ninja An infographic that offers some useful keyboard shortcuts.

Common Sense Digital Compass | Educational games for kids to help teach digital citizenship and digital literacy skills. “Digital Compass is a choose-your-own adventure, interactive game developed with 6th to 9th graders in mind, in which students step into the shoes of one of eight characters to experience the twists and turns of daily digital life. Invite students to explore digital dilemmas, make good (and not-so-good) decisions, and try out possible solutions through stories and mini-games – all without risking their real-world reputations. Discover how Common Sense Educational’s award-winning digital literacy and citizenship curriculum seamlessly integrates into blended-learning environments.”

Teaching Students to Self-Monitor their Behavior – Education to the Core “Self-monitoring allows students to take charge of their behavior in order to earn “reinforcers”. This is a great tool for a student (or students) that have trouble staying on task, remembering to raise their hand, or even just following the general rules of the classroom. Students are in charge of recording their behavior. This helps keep them accountable and helps them understand what they need to do in order to earn a “reinforcer”. It’s also great for the teacher, since it can be difficult to teach and take data on student’s behavior at the same time.”

Homeschool Unit Study: Coding Games Unplugged! “These unplugged coding activities is that you can really see why each line of code is important. This is especially true in the activities where you are writing code for another person to follow. Simple but effective”

Coding in the Classroom: A Problem Solving Framework | Edutopia “Learning to code means stepping out of your comfort zone, dealing with frustration, and leaning into discomfort. For a student that is new to programming, it’s easy to give up and walk away from it all when you encounter a bug (a logic or syntax error) in the code you’ve written.To that end, one of the first class lessons is the importance of problem-solving. Good problem-solving boils down to two main components: asking the right questions and doing research well. ”

Teach Your Kids to Code: 6 Beginner’s Resources for Parents | Edutopia “Introducing computer programming to your kids can be a challenge, especially for those who aren’t familiar with the nuances of code. Fortunately, in the last few years, a number of apps, software, and guides have been produced that make the often-complex subject of computer coding easy to grasp for young learners. These are a few resources that parents can share with their kids to help them start learning about programming.”

Buckling Bookshelves: 1001 Children’s Books “This is the list from 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.”

Assessing Digital Literacy: Standards, Tools, & Techniques — Emerging Education Technologies “Digital literacy is like any other core curricular subject. It is no longer an option, just as reading and math are not. Students must be digitally competent if they are to be successful in school and in their professional and personal lives as adults. Indeed, many of the best jobs for years to come will involve digital expertise. Educators have spent years developing reading and math curricula and crafting, as well, all sorts of assessment tools for these subjects. State departments of education have developed state-wide competency testing in core subjects; national testing services have spent years developing and refining assessments. Computer literacy, however, because of its newness, has not been an area in which standards and assessments have been articulated, codified, and developed.”

Quizizz: Fun Multiplayer Classroom Quizzes This is a fun online quiz game. It is similar to Kahoot but it is not speed-based. Students can move at their own pace. These to tools offer similar classroom experiences but whereas Kahoot is great for fast thinking and suits the quick-thinking student, QuizIzz, it offers the online quiz game excitement without the stress of having timed in your responses

Ways to Make Your Classrooms Introvert-Friendly – Julie Smith A few of the ways this author has tried to make their classes more comfortable for introverts.

5 ways to motivate different kinds of students with digital learning tools – Microsoft in Education blog “Motivation is crucial to learning. Without motivation, students are prone to just memorizing information or crunching for an exam instead of immersing themselves to really learn about the topic. Ideally, with high motivation, surrounded by a culture of learning and supported by a community of experts, students can learn deeply, actively share information, and even create new knowledge. One quite detailed motivational model relevant to schools (Tapola, Veermans & Niemivirta, 2013), categorizes students into five different achievement goal orientations. Each type of goal orientation responds to different ways of motivating, which is made easier by personalized learning and tools in a digital learning environment.”

Do YOUR Kids Think that Being Right is More Important than Being Curious? | CTQ #CTQCollab Some good discussion here. “Questions with no clear right answer should be fun to think about and wrestle with.” “Our educational system has failed if it has trained students to think that “there must be only one answer, and the teacher knows what it is, and they have to be the first to guess what it is.”

Stopping hate: how to counter hate speech on Twitter “Get The Trolls Out has developed the guide “Stopping Hate: How to Counter Hate Speech on Twitter?” which contains useful tips and advice on how to counter hate speech on Twitter.”

The Dead Good Reader Awards 2016 Winners – Dead Good Interesting list of awards

The Heart of Digital Citizenship | Anne Collier | TEDxGeneva – YouTube Bullying & harassment online? Empower youth to make the Internet better! This YouTube video published on 16 Jun 2016. “Digital citizenship is an intriguing but still very abstract idea with a dark past and great potential. A journalist who has followed youth Internet safety and citizenship for nearly 20 years, Anne Collier looks at what digital citizenship is, the struggle it emerged from, and five ways adult society can make it engaging and useful to young citizens, the heart of any digital citizenship discussion about youth. [There ia a link to the research references in her talk: http://www.netfamilynews.org/tedxgene…%5D”

School Librarians and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) | American Association of School Librarians (AASL) This page is updated regularly with new documents. “AASL continues to examine ESSA, unpack the provisions for school libraries within the ESSA, and communicate how they will impact the school library community. AASL’s ongoing work with the ALA Washington Office, as well as the association’s partnerships with other educational organizations, will highlight opportunities within ESSA language for school library programs. Read more about the next steps in the link below for ESSA Opportunities for School Librarians.  “

Definition for effective School Library Program http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslissues/positionstatements/AASL_Position%20Statement_Effective%20SLP_2016-06-25.pdf The American Association of School Librarians supports the position that an effective school library program has a certified school librarian at the helm, provides personalized learning environments, and offers equitable access to resources to ensure a well-rounded education for every student

Instructional role of the school librarian http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslissues/positionstatements/AASL_Position%20Statement_Instructional%20Role%20of%20the%20SL_2016-06-25.pdf The role of the school librarian is to guide students and fellow educators through the intersection of formal and informal learning. The instruction the school librarian offers is integral to a well-rounded education. As educators and instructional partners school librarians are critical to teaching and learning in the school community. The school librarian plays a prominent role in instructing students, faculty, and administrators in a range of literacies, including information, digital, print, visual, and textual literacies. As leaders in literacy and technology, school librarians are perfectly positioned to instruct every student in the school community through both traditional and blended learning.

Infographic: The 9 Rules of Digital Citizenship “Citizenship is the qualities that a person is expected to have as a responsible member of a community. Therefore, digital citizenship is the qualities a person is expected to have as a responsible member of the digital community.” ( rules explianed)

20 Cyber Bullying Quotes That You Must Spread Right Now – EdTechReview™ (ETR) “Children should be able to live a life free from bullying and harassment and it is time that we all took a stand against this. ” Everyone has the above right. Some ideas about starting the conversations that might hepl to alleviate some of hte problem.

3. Integration of Blooms’ Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligence in English Classroom — Rao – The ELT Practitioner “integration of both Blooms Taxonomy and Multiple intelligences gives a teacher a wide spectrum of knowledge that can be successfully implemented in an English class to develop a learner who is a thinking and creative individual. The combination paves the way to holistic development of the child. This implies that students generally may engage in higher order thinking and problem solving in an area of intellectual strength and only lower order thinking in an area of relative weakness. For example a student gifted in linguistic intelligence may produce a creative and original poem but may struggle with a task that demands high-level spatial ability. The planning needs to be done very carefully by the teacher. The points suggested here may be taken care while planning a lesson.”

Is it original? An editor’s guide to identifying plagiarism – Poynter “Plagiarism is a serious charge. If true, it has the potential to upend a career and mar a journalist’s reputation for life. And yet, in today’s world of aggregated news, plagiarism is an imprecise word that stands for a spectrum of offenses related to unoriginal work. And its severity varies dramatically depending on a variety of circumstances.”

Three schools reforms that will lift student outcomes “Take stock of how Australia is doing in the field of Education, where it’s going, and what governments can do about it. This series, written by program directors at the Grattan Institute, explores the challenges that Australia faces and advocates policy changes for budgets, economic growth, cities and transport, energy, school education, higher education and health”

Positive, Negative or Neutral? Crucial Conversations on Digital Citizenship | Connected Principals “The whole notion of “digital citizenship” is a messy conversation, but it is definitely one we need to have with our students to ensure that they have all of the opportunities to find and create their own path moving forward.”

6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 201 6 | Cult of Pedagogy “An up-dated list. Each of these tools can make teaching more efficient and effective, and student learning deeper and more engaging.”

Future Ready Librarians – Future Ready Schools “As schools seek to become Future Ready, it is necessary to identify and cultivate leadership beyond district and building leaders. School librarians lead, teach and support the Future Ready goals of their school and district in a variety of ways through their professional practice, programs and spaces. If properly prepared and supported, school librarians are well-positioned to be at the leading edge of the digital transformation of learning.”

Get your Ditty on “This little tool allows you to create digital music. This post discussed a few challenges you can do with your students and classroom.”

Remembering Future Shock’s Alvin Toffler | Data Literacy for High School Librarians