Instructify

Welcome to May’s random roundup. This month’s theme: Little Johnny, one-man stand-in for school-aged children the world over. After a year-and-a-half of hard work, we figured this overused cliche deserved a post of his own before he gets back to studying.

Time-savers for teachers
For other notes and resources the students need, consider giving this stuff to them as a whole, at the beginning of a session or semester. That way you only have to keep a master copy for Little Johnny who struggles to keep himself organized.

Learning exercise: Promote healthy living this school year
If you’re concerned about your students’ health, you can do something about it by extolling the virtues of healthy exercise. Ask Little Johnny how his little league team did over the summer. Do you have any joggers or climbers in your midst? Take an interest, and maybe they’ll get more active.

Search Visually, Safely with RedZee
RedZee filters out porn and other inappropriate content, so you don’t need to worry that Little Johnny will “accidentally” stumble across something he shouldn’t be looking at on a school computer.

Swap your Stuff at Zwaggle
But Zwaggle might be a good resource to pass along to parents. If you can make their lives easier by showing them where to find Christmas presents on the cheap, they might make your lives easier by encouraging Little Johnny to buckle down and try a little harder for his nice teacher.

Keep Your Grade Book Online with Engrade
If students (and their parents) can track their grades at any time, it may motivate them to stay on task throughout the class. Come parent-teacher conference time, you won’t have to deal with parents who are angry about Little Johnny’s surprise “D.”

Instructifeature: How to Stimulate Class Discussion Using Discussion Forums
In the classroom, you’re limited by clock. There’s only so much time you can devote to class discussion. Students feel the time crunch even more keenly—they’ve got to compose a thoughtful response in mere seconds. And while thinking on one’s feet is a valuable skill, how much better would Little Johnny’s answer be if he had more time to compose his ideas? Using discussion boards, students have the time they need to think of the best answer they can.

Photo credit: khalid almasoud on Flickr.

Too often, developers think that just changing the fonts on a tool to Comic Sans will make it educator-friendly, when, really, there are a lot of big things to think about when designing for K-12 education. Because the developers of Edmodo are IT folks who’ve been working in public K-12 schools, they clearly understand that font choice is not the priority when it comes to making a usable, useful tool for kids and teachers. Ease of use and excellent privacy controls set Edmodo apart from the pack when it comes to free, online learning management tools. Edmodo has been called “Twitter for schools,” and while microblogging is part of the feature set, there is a whole lot more to Edmodo than 140 character text messages.

Edmodo allows you to post (and grade!) assignments, files, images, videos, and links, as well as post messages to your class, or to certain students in your class. You can have multiple groups (perhaps you teach several sections of students, or maybe you just want to use it for a single classroom’s group projects) that students access by being provided a code — not a complicated email-required signup process. Everything you do on Edmodo defaults to private, with an option to make anything public. The public page has an RSS feed, and would be a great way to broadcast important upcoming events (Field trip! Final exams!) in another way. Users can even set up Edmodo to send updates to their cell phones.

As you’d expect from a site created by two guys who really care about both technology and education, support is fantastic. They are available for demos or troubleshooting (when you create an account, you are automatically added to the Edmodo and support groups) and it’s not a corporation with canned responses, but folks who have a personal interest in making sure the service works the way it should. For more information, you can read an interview with the founders at Open Education, and an interview with a teacher using it in a North Dakota classroom. -GRETCHEN SCHAEFER

Edmodo

Related stuff:

Professional development is just a “tweet” away

Start a video conversation with Seesmic

Social networking and social studies collide with iCue

I didn’t have a working printer when I was in school, and even if I had a working printer I would have probably never had paper or ink. I was unprepared, but I wasn’t entirely helpless. Keep in mind this was at a time when flash drives were luxury items and way before Google Docs. I had this method for handing in essays: type the paper, attach the Word doc in an email from one account to a separate email account, and finally print it out at the computer lab. Most of the time it worked…except when I would forget to attach the file and not realize it until after the 30 minute bus ride to campus.

Somebody at GradeMate must’ve heard me cursing my own foolishness, because storing files for your classes is one of their features (I don’t have an exact number on how much you can store, perhaps you might discover this during your own investigation and post a comment). Other useful features include managing your classes and setting up reminders, but the most useful by far is keeping track of your grades. That revelation shouldn’t make your mind explode - the site is called GradeMate, after all. You can add multiple assignments, exams, and projects, then set weight amounts and enter scores.

Take a moment to think about your students. Think about that student who obsesses over grades. What about the kid who can’t remember a due date to save her life? Or how about that student who was going to email himself his essay and print it out in the computer lab, but forgot to attach it to his email?
–NICK YINGLING

GradeMate

Related Stuff:
Keep Your Grade Book Online with Engrade

Welcome to the Carnival of Education Career Fair! We’ve retracted the bleachers and set up the booths on the gymnasium floor so these brave teachers can see what they might be doing if they weren’t teaching (perish the thought).

Motivational Speaker
Mr. D at I Want to Teach Forever agreed to sport a freaking mohawk as long as his students worked hard, which was about three weeks. Sadly, his motivational experiment has concluded. Long live the mohawk.

Camp Counselor
As a kid, my wife got to go to Space Camp and Marine Science Camp. Had Tisha Kulak and American Consumer News been around back then to point out how to save money on tuition to summer research camps, I might’ve been able to go, too.

Productivity Consultant
Instructify-favorite studenthacks.org has some great tips for students who want to learn how to write a research paper.

Pro Athletes
The Jose Vilson uses Derek Jeter as an example of how nurturing students’ talent and leadership ability early on can reap great results.

And over at Jay P. Greene’s Blog, the author talks about the importance of identifying students’ talents, whether they’re a left tackle or potential honor student.

Economist
ESL teacher Larry Ferlazzo knows that money is the international language.

Translator
Melissa B. at The Scholastic Scribe provides a handy-dandy English-to-Eduspeak dictionary.

Director
Mathew Needleman at Creating Lifelong Learners takes a proactive approach to managing disruptive students during a class movie project.

Advice Columnist
Let’s Play Math! has some advice on teaching math to a struggling student.

Detective
OverwhelmedMom gets to the bottom of problems that gifted students face.

Investigative Reporters
The proprietor of a voice from the middle knows the means to discovery is asking the right questions.

In addition, eduwonkette responds to a Wall Street Journal article about the criteria used to evaluate teachers.

Game Developer
Alvaro at SharpBrains shares a few games to stimulate your temporal lobe.

Diplomat
Coach Brown tries to reach an understanding with hostile parents.

Nutritionists
At Homework. Dinner. Life. Angela points out that good nutrition habits ought to be maintained year-round, not just a few days before the test.

Meanwhile, Chanman at Buckhorn Road says all that caffeine students drink can’t be good for them.

Cartographer
Dan Callahan, a.k.a. geek.teacher, harnesses Google Maps for a lesson in community mapping.

Librarian
@EDU takes the work out of student research by pointing them toward Google Alerts.

Politician
Jane Artabasy at Golden Apple Teaching Excellence Network unloads the loaded word of the day, “elitism,” showing it’s nothing to be frightened of - especially in schools.

The folks at Golden Apple also mull over the differences in races and learning styles.

Astronaut
HowDoWhy asks, what is a solar system, anyway? Furthermore, just how big is ours?

Human Resources Specialist
Over at Right on the Left Coast, Darren discusses the sticky situation of a teacher dating an 18-year-old student at a different school.

Mentors
Allison Jones at Entry Level Living wants to revamp the way young people think about leadership.

The folks at the Efficient Leadership Files have some ideas on that as well.

Statistician
Lead from the Start crunches the numbers about the disconnect between teachers and EdSector.

Strategist
Seth Pearce at NYC Students Blog has an intriguing idea on how to overcome schools’ non-stop test preparation.

Lobbyist
PZ Meyers at Pharyngula has some news about a disturbing bill in the Oklahoma legislature regarding religion in schools.

Road Grader
As the great homework debate rages on, Shabam School makes a good case for grading homework.

Kindergarten Teacher (sorry, I couldn’t come up with anything else)
Kiri at Elbows, Knees, Dreams shares her thoughts (and asks for others’ opinions) about early entrance to Kindergarten.

Photo credit: ou_ags on flickr

In a May 4 article titled “I Know What You Did Last Math Class,” the New York Times explores one unfortunate side effect of technology in schools. The article examines how parents are taking advantage of services that connect them with student progress reports, including attendance and grading information. And though no one can deny that better-informed parents can be tremendous allies for teachers, the Times notes that parents who take this information to extremes can end up causing significant stress in their children’s lives:

Denise Pope, a Stanford lecturer who consults with secondary schools, worries that these programs can aggravate student anxiety. “When the focus is on the grade so much, you’re saying to kids, ‘It’s more important to get the grade, by hook or by crook, than learn the material,’” she said. “And that leads to the rise in rampant cheating.”

The article raises interesting questions about the ethical use of tools that allow parents more access to the classroom, but may provide less context than an actual visit or conversation. According to the article, ” Many districts do not educate parents about how to use the programs in a measured, judicious fashion with their children.”

Is your school or school system using a service like Edline, ParentConnect, or PowerSchool to connect parents to classrooms? If so, drop us a note in the comments section and let us know how it’s working. –ROSS WHITE

I Know What You Did Last Math Class via The New York Times

The semester will end soon. That means you’ll be bombarded with questions about grades, make-up assignments, and the rigors of grading itself. If these thoughts give you a headache, consider Engrade your aspirin.

Engrade is basically an online grade book that lets you record and share grades. You can set up a grade book in just a few minutes. Best of all, it’s totally free.
Engrade also keeps track of attendance with an online attendance book feature. Even better, Engrade can fight truancy electronically by automatically emailing the parents of absent students. You can also set up homework calendar, so parents and students will know what’s coming up.

If students (and their parents) can track their grades at any time, it may motivate them to stay on task throughout the class. Come parent-teacher conference time, you won’t have to deal with parents who are angry about little Johnny’s surprise “D.” -BILL FERRIS