The Dark Side of Being Findable

Being findable on the Internet can be a very productive and rewarding experience. For example, you can become part of a professional learning community. Your comments build your reputation and allow others to view you as an expert in your field. Having your own blog, twitter account, or LinkedIn profile also gives you the opportunity [...]

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Thanking Students for Their Work

When was the last time someone from outside your school thanked your students for the work they were doing?
An eighth grade English teacher, Jessie Thaler, says that being thanked was the most surprising effect of having her students blog. Her students weren’t used to being appreciated for what they do. Being visible and findable online [...]

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Are you the Keymaster?

In the 1984 movie, Ghostbusters, Rick Moranis’ character, the Gatekeeper, was looking for the Keymaster. Cataclysmic events would occur once the Gatekeeper and Keymaster met and preventing such a catastrophe was the goal of the Ghostbusters.  There are times when our online world feels a little like that.  Cataclysmic, catastrophic!
Over the course of my previous online [...]

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Social Media and Learning

So far we’ve mostly talked about social media in general, focusing on keeping it professional and preconceptions about Twitter, but this week I’m going to build on April’s post look deeper at how social media can be used in learning.
Why Social Media in Learning?
So why would we use social media in learning? Pedagogically, it fits [...]

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Unlearning my preconceptions about Twitter

Last weekend I attended a family reunion for my husband’s family. A very sharp eighty-eight year old relative noted: “I just don’t understand the point of Twitter. It seems like a bunch of nonsense.”  I laughed because actually a few months ago, I held a similar perception of the social media tool. The idea of [...]

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Ice Cream Social Media

What is social media? The Wikipedia article on social media explains it this way:
Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It’s a fusion of sociology and [...]

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Taking the Constructivist Path to Teaching Writing

As Pam, noted in the previous blog post we have a new course that focuses on the teaching of writing. Writing Across the Curriculum Online ® (WAC) features an in depth look at implementation and practice of the “Writing Workshop,” also known as “Writers’ Workshop.” Students of this course will have the opportunity to [...]

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Two Approaches to Course Revisions

Each week for the rest of May we’re going to look at some of our upcoming new and improved courses. In addition to our usual development of brand new courses, we’ve all been working on updating and revising some of our older online courses. Over the last six months, I’ve had the opportunity to work [...]

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It takes a Village

Years ago I taught math for my local high school. The math teachers on my wing would gather in the hall between classes to discuss what worked and, more often, what didn’t. This was especially helpful when we had new textbooks or were implementing new strategies. We learned from each other.
I missed the opportunity to collaborate, [...]

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Online Reading Resources

You don’t have to be a reading teacher to include reading activities and strategies in your classroom. If a student has to read content, whether its computer languages to zoology, they’re reading. Period. The PLS online course Reading Across the Curriculum addresses the issue of, well, reading across many topics, not just in “reading” class.
To [...]

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