Public

Summer is almost here [insert applause track], and your time is tight, so here are a couple of quick and helpful publications from Phi Delta Kappa.  The first gives a short list of ideas for ending the year with your students.  The second is a list of ways that you can use the summer to grow as an educator.

6 Tips for Ending the School Year

As we cross off the days to the end of the year, let’s all remember to tread lightly and think positively.  Today’s blog topic is email etiquette; that’s something easy to forget while taking care of our long list of year-end tasks.  Take a few minutes to review what you probably already know:

·        Make email messages polite, reasoned, and to the point.  No one will ever win a prize for an email message.

My first year to teach was the same year that I student taught in 1982—student teaching mornings/my own classes in the afternoon with an emergency certification until I completed the requirements.  I was young, married, and a mother--four years out of college. In addition to the confusion of multiple roles, I was a traveling teacher in a large middle school moving each class period, borrowing classrooms from other teachers during their planning periods. Thank you, Annelle for giving me a shelf in the library office to keep my supplies and personal items and for giving me a place to eat lunch. Thanks to Vickie, Gay Lynn, and all of you who helped me along the way with classroom management advice, instruction for 16-mm and filmstrip projectors, for sharing your great ideas, and for the grace to overlook some of my rookie errors.  I probably wouldn’t be in this business today were it not for your kind support in my early years of teaching.

LoTi (Levels of Technology Implementation) is a framework that helps teachers to know where they stand with the use of technology in the classroom.  Answer the following 2 questions to get a ballpark idea of what level you may have reached on the LoTi scale.  Come on!  This is just for your information—no one’s keeping score. 

1. You are planning to use technology in your next unit.  Which one of the following are you more likely to include in your plan?

A.  When my students have finished their work in class, they can use a computer to play educational games, practice their skills on a site I have bookmarked, or complete technology station activities. They may also use a computer write a report or answer questions about what we've just read.

Wiki wiki in Hawaiian means quick, and that’s just what a wiki is—a quick, collaborative web page.  Today anyone with a mind to create and share content can easily set up a wiki for any number of purposes.  Take a look at some of the following wiki sites to get an idea of how they’re being used today.

Wikipedia—Most of you are already familiar with this online editable encyclopedia.  While there are arguments both for and against its validity as a research tool, its popularity has reached enormous proportions. 

We're stuck . . . right in the middle . . . a couple of TAKS days lie behind us, a few more are yet to come.  You may be expecting some great technology tip here to enhance learning in your classroom, but this time let’s just take a moment to breathe and have some fun.  My mission:  to waste your time.

Here is a list of websites from Patrick Crispen for you to try when you’re in that “I need something, but I don’t quite know what it is mode,” so that you can relax, smile, and maybe recharge for another day.  TRY THEM AT HOME (don’t blame me if you try at work and get the screen of death) and let me know if they make you smile. 

Recently I talked with another staff member about teachers and time--there just isn't enough for everything that we'd like to do.  Daily we use our time to take care of routine educational tasks including duty, housekeeping activities, planning, meeting, communicating with parents, paperwork, and yes--working with students in the classroom.  We'd like to keep up with what's going on beyond the walls and boundaries of our campus, but there never seems to be enough time.