Category Archives: General Education
3 reasons I use technology every time I teach
I recently co-taught a graduate course for inservice teachers. One of the modules I was leading was about educational technology. So, given the limited time (about 4 instructional hours), I had to do some hard thinking about what I wanted … Continue reading
4 Ways to Respond to Students
When I was a preservice teacher, I repeated almost everything my students said whenever I taught. One day, my professor observed me teaching and pointed this repetition out and suggested I not do that. Because I was still overly defensive … Continue reading
Polar Bears
We went out for dinner last night for my oldest son’s birthday. Then, we drove around to look at Christmas lights. As we drove around, our youngest son (4 years old) started talking about the north pole and whether or … Continue reading
Posted in Science Education, Science Saturday, Teacher Actions
Tagged camouflage, cash, polar bears
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Getting older (age graded school)
Today is my 36th birthday. While my age has ticked a new mark, I’m only one day older than I was yesterday. Keeping track of years to mark age is not a very precise way to measure age. I think … Continue reading
Don’t forget to smile
When I am working with preservice teachers, we talk a lot about the importance of asking questions. We develop interaction patterns we want to work toward and talk about how we can use student comments to ask our next question … Continue reading
What will become of teacher education?
Schools/programs such as Iowa BIG and Waukee APEX reflect efforts to reform education going back more than 100 years. While the people running these programs might not agree, there is a lot of similarity to vocational programs many of us grew … Continue reading
Posted in Education Reform, Learning, Nature of Teaching, Teacher Actions, teacher education
Tagged dewey, PBL, teacher education
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Teaching is Designing: Outcomes
Designing and engineering is sometimes referred to as outcome oriented. That is, designers are working to solve a particular problem or create products with particular abilities. Given the proliferation of standards documents and value-added measures, clearly education is working to … Continue reading
Posted in Design, Goals for Students, Nature of technology
Tagged common core, goals, NGSS, Outcomes, purpose
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Creating Doubt
One of my preservice teachers asked me what I would do when students are working in groups and one group seems to be “right on”. I told her, “I do everything I can to get them to doubt their thinking”. … Continue reading
Posted in Goals for Students, Science Education, Teacher Actions
Tagged doubt, questions, symmetrical responding
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Trying to Make Educational Technology Applicable
In past versions of my educational technology course, I’ve had students complete “tech projects” in which they learn about specific technologies and discuss ways they would use the technologies (or preferably have students use the technology) in their classroom. This … Continue reading
Teaching Responsibility
I’ve been using standards-based grading in my courses for several semesters and run into a recurring issue regarding student responsibility. While many SBGers use weekly quizzes to determine student proficiency, I’ve opted to have students demonstrate proficiency via projects/papers (some … Continue reading
Posted in Assessment, Student Views
Tagged Assessment, assignments, course evaluations, responsibility
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Teaching as Dynamic 