To Learn Twice

The research I have done in the past does not quantitatively on a large scale connect on-line communication to student achievement. However, there are plenty of other studies out there that connect what parents do to student achievement. There are plenty of others that look at what schools can do to help parents do those things that will help their kids learn. What I have attempted to do is make logical relations between these concepts. This is my most "academic" post ever... Relationships are the Key to Achievement A classroom environment consists of an atmosphere shaped by relationships and instruction. Without one or the other the learning experience is incomplete. I believe that the two come together to create an environment where a student feels that they belong. “To create schools that function as personalized communities of learning rather than anonymous institutions where some students feel they belong and others feel ignored, we must know our st...

Sitting here at home reflecting on a great week at the IL-TCE Conference and specifically what I learned as I prepared and presented my presentation. Of course I had the advantage of being the teacher, so I learned the most out of anyone in the session. The presentation itself was on tagging. Well, not exactly tagging. It started with the act of tagging and using it on the low end of Bloom's Taxonomy to categorize and sort information. My goal was to move beyond that and use the technology to get kids to get to higher order thinking in comparing and contrasting, analyzing, and synthesizing information. One of the examples I used was comparing 2 tag clouds of past presidential speeches : Easy to see some shifts in focus over the course of a presidency. My point was - which is more interesting and impactful for a kid? Telling them what happened during a presidency or giving them some clues to the mystery and letting them find out for themselves? I don't want to go through t...