Educational Readings

Welcome back from Thanksgiving Break!!

It was extremely restful, long weekend for me. It's always good to spend time with family and friends.

After gorging myself on Thanksgiving dinner, I came across a timely post from A.J. Juliani (co-author of Launch) about what we feed our brains as educators. I can appreciate his approach to reading and writing as it applies to the goal setting strategies many teachers discuss with our students. He reads "at least 25 words a day" which allows him to finish a book a week. The idea of setting small goals resonates with me. I can easily read 25 words a day, and this practice will hopefully push me to read more than that most days.

Also, he provides several ways to find books to read, blogs to follow, and podcasts to listen to. It's a great list if you're not sure where to start when finding materials to learn more about the profession of teaching.

Student Feedback

This school year, I'm focusing (we call it our Personal Growth Plan) on providing students with feedback within each lesson, every day. It's a daunting task, so I'm working to collect as many resources as possible to assist me in creating a plan for feedback.

So far, I've listened to a recent episode of the TeacherCast podcast. Within the episode, Jeff Bradbury, Sam Patterson, Jennifer Judkins, and Matt Buchanan discuss:

1) Using Google Apps, specifically, Google Classroom and Google Docs to provide meaningful feedback with the writing process.  These could really be used in any subject area but they focus on writing.

2) Using the Google Add-On, Orange Slice, to create interactive rubrics that can be easily scored.


What other resources are teachers using to provide students with feedback?

InnEdCO Call for Presenters

I've had the fortune of attending the InnEdCO (formely TIE) conference a few different times when it was held in Copper Mountain, Colorado. After a hiatus due to the ISTE conference being in Denver last summer, InnEdCO is back in the beautiful Colorado mountain town of Keystone from June 12-15, 2017.

InnEdCO recently released their call for presenters for this innovative conference. You can go to InnEdCO's website to learn more about how to submit an application for review. Applications are due November 28th. I'll be submitting an application with a colleague with the idea of creating a workshop for attendees. Fingers crossed!