Category: Teaching

Things Teachers Wish People Understood About Teaching


Image Source: Jamie Santos

“Once your student always your student. I have students who were 8 years old 17 years ago and are now 25, and I still worry about them, celebrate their successes, and pray for their futures. Always my kids, always. #TeacherTalkTuesday.” – Dr. Adam D. Drummond

There are many misconceptions about what it’s like to be a teacher. Jamie Santos shares some of the highlights from when Chasten Buttigieg reached out to fellow educators on Twitter to see what they wished other people understood about the teaching profession.

Guiding Students to Be Independent Learners

“In the quickly evolving workplace and at a time when graduates are competing for jobs and careers with others around the world, the capacity to change rapidly and apply new skills is paramount. Bottom line: Learning how to learn is a game changer in the global knowledge economy, and it’s never too early to teach students how to begin to learn more independently.”

Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers share three strategies for helping students become self-motivated and take charge of their learning.

21st Century Skills: It’s More Than Just Technology


“Given the growing ubiquity of [technology] in schools, as well as the increasing numbers of educators advocating for their use, it can seem as though education may have reached a tipping point when it comes to improving students’ 21st-century skills. According to the Partnership for 21st Century skills, these can be categorized as the 4Cs: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration.” — Beth Holland

Beth goes on to share that she has started to worry about the growing presence of what she calls the Fake Cs.

Source: EdWeek

7 Characteristics of Teachers Who Effectively Use Technology

“…Using technology in the classroom – and using it effectively – might require some slight adjustments on the part of the teacher to sustain the effort, creative problem-solving, and innovation required to actually improve learning through the use of technology. This occurs at the belief level–what teachers believe about technology, education, and their own abilities to manage technology.

“Looking at the characteristics of teachers that effectively use technology in the classroom, then, can be useful to create an “edtech” mindset–one that believes in purpose, adaptation, change, and meaningful planning.” — TeachThought

Click here to view the infographic of these seven characteristics.

Project-Based Learning Through a Maker’s Lens


“A Maker is an individual who communicates, collaborates, tinkers, fixes, breaks, rebuilds, and constructs projects for the world around him or her. A Maker, re-cast into a classroom, has a name that we all love: a learner. A Maker, just like a true learner, values the process of making as much as the product.

“Making holds a number of opportunities and challenges for a teacher. Making, especially to educators and administrators unfamiliar with it, can seem to lack the academic rigor needed for a full-fledged place in an educational ecosystem. However, project-based learning has already created a framework for Making in the classroom. Let’s see how Making could work when placed inside a PBL curriculum unit.” — Patrick Waters

Source: Edutopia.org

Wonderful #EdTech Job Opportunity

Here’s a great job opportunity in an excellent school district working with wonderful people.

  • Curriculum Technology Teacher (CTT)
  • Arlington Community Schools
  • Arlington, TN

#edtech #mlearning #edchat

Can Micro-Credentials Create More Meaningful PD for Teachers?


With micro-crentialing educators “can no longer attend a workshop and receive credit for merely being there. Instead, they must take their learning back into their classrooms and try it out, submitting evidence, receiving feedback from peers and refining their approach. They also have to reflect on what they learned through those experiences. Participating teachers then submit these artifacts, which are evaluated before the micro-credential is awarded. If the reviewers feel the educator did not submit strong enough evidence of learning, they can provide feedback and ask the educators to try again.” — Katrina Schwartz, Mind/Shift

Continue reading this article.

Image Source: CollectEdNY