Prof+Dev+Links

= PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT LINKS =

= = 100 Awesome Classroom Videos to Learn New Teaching Techniques - Smart Teaching
 * With so many good teachers out there, it’s fortunate they can share their knowledge via video on the Internet. From the funny to the poignant, these glimpses into the lives of teachers and their students will keep you entertained while learning a little something as well. Whether you are a new teacher storing up tips and tricks or an experienced teacher who could just use a fresh perspective, you are sure to find something helpful among these videos.

All High School Graduates Should Have These Skills - On Education
 * Blog from US News & World Report

Applying Bloom's Taxonomy Assessment Terminology A Glossary of Useful Terms  Blooms Taxonomy Tutorial FLASH   Center on Insruction
 * Here you will find a list of terms that are used to describe current education assessment practices. This guide is intended not to promote the use of jargon, but to establish a clear and common understanding of what these terms mean.
 * The tutorials on this page include the //"Bloom's Taxonomy - An Overview"// and //"Bloom's Taxonomy - Designing Activities"//. Scroll down the page or use the table of contents' links to access the tutorials.
 *  Welcome to the Center on Instruction, your gateway to a cutting-edge collection of scientifically based research and information on K-12 instruction in reading, math, science, special education, and English language learning. Part of the Comprehensive Center network, the Center on Instruction is one of five content centers serving as resources for the 16 regional U.S. Department of Education Comprehensive Centers. Explore the links to the left for topic-based materials, syntheses of recent research, and exemplars of best practices.

Dear Dr. Kirk: How To Give Feedback To Students?
 *  Use the acronym **THIRD...Timely, Honest, Improving, Relevant, Direct**

Differentiated Instruction
 * Essential Question: How do I effectively and efficiently reach all students in a heterogeneous environment

Differentiated Instruction - Compacting Strategies
 * Compacting the curriculum can help teachers streamline the curriculum, reduce the amount of redundant work, and focus on new information their students really need to learn. Assessment is critical in this style of differentiation.

Direct Evidence Of Role Of Sleep In Memory Formation Is Uncovered
 * Article from Science Daily - ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2009) — A Rutgers University, Newark and Collége de France, Paris research team has pinpointed for the first time the mechanism that takes place during sleep that causes learning and memory formation to occur.

Dr. Jeff's Blog on the Universe - The Art of Teaching
 * What teacher do you remember most vividly? Why?

Education Week - Blogs
 * Education Blog List

Effective Questioning in the Classroom
 *  Picture this... You are sitting in a classroom of 20-something other students. The room is hot and humid and you would rather be anywhere else in the world but where you are sitting at that very moment. The teacher just goes on and on. With no change in his voice, with no change in speaking pattern, the teacher just keeps lecturing. What is he even saying, you wonder? You wish there was a way you could get back into the classroom discussion but the teacher's lecturing prevents your participation. You feel your learning is stunted and has stalled. What can you do, your learning seems to be in the teacher's control?
 * Now picture this... a room full of students interacting and responding with the instructor. Students are excited and eager to answer the professor's throught-provoking and inspiring questions. Even if you tune out for a moment, the teacher throws another question in the air as bait, you grab onto it and are back in the swing of learning again. The questions are all based around the content material for the day, but for some reason, you are just captivated by the day's learning and feel that your participation has not only added to your own personal learning, but the classroom question and answer session helped other students learn from one another. You think to yourself, this is what learning should be!

Esheninger's Bookmarks on Delicious

Footnotes of a Retired "Teckie Teacher"
 * Blog by Stacy Bodin - The Importance of Technology Integration in the Classroom

Google-ize Your Staff Development
 * The integration of technology into the classroom is an important tool in today's world. One of our jobs as teachers is to model lifelong learning and using the most current resources and teaching practices should be a part of every teachers daily practice.
 * However, for many of us technology is foreign tool. We did not grow up with it, rather is has slowly infiltrated our lives and provided us with access to tools and resources that were never thought possible. But in order to use these tools and find their relevance in our classrooms, staff development needs to be a part of our lives as well. If we want to teachers to integrate technology, we must provide them with the training and support they need to make it happen.
 * Google has a number of great applications that can assist you with the technology staff development efforts in your school and the best part about it, is that they are all free and easy to use.

How can we measure teaching and learning in mathematics?
 * Great Prezi presentation created by Maria Andersen

How to Become a More Effective Learner
 *  1. Memory Improvement Basics
 * 2. Keep Learning (and Practicing) New Things
 * 3. Learn in Multiple Ways
 * 4. Teach What You've Learned to Another Person
 * 5. Utilize Previous Learning to Promote New Learning
 * 6. Gain Practical Experience
 * 7. Look Up Answers Rather Than Struggle to Remember
 * 8. Understand How You Learn Best
 * 9. Use Testing to Boost Learning
 * 10. Stop Multitasking

How to Grade Student-Centered Assignments while Maintaining High Standards
 * One of the big concerns with teachers beginning this type of teaching is how to use this method without lowering their standards of learning. The secret is of course, rubrics. (see also [|Starting Layered Curriculum])

How to Differentiate Instruction
 * After having read what the research has to offer on differentiated instruction, specifically, brain-based research on learning, learning styles and multiple intelligences, and authentic assessment, you are now ready to plan.

Integrate to Differentiate
 * This page covers: Introduction to Integration, The theory of Differentiation, Styles of Learning vs. Multiple Intelligences, Strategies used to differentiate instruction, Assessment Tools used for Differentiation, and Resources for Differentiated Instruction

Instructional Strategies for Engaging Learners
 * Activating Strategies Purpose: To activate students' prior knowledge through the use of engaging strategies designed to focus learning
 * Summarizing Strategies  Purpose: To promote the retention of knowledge through the use of engaging strategies designed to rehearse and practice skills for the purpose of moving knowledge into long-term memory
 * Cognitive Strategies Purpose: To provide a structure for learning that actively promotes the comprehension and retention of knowledge through the use of engaging strategies that acknowledge the brain's limitations of capacity and processing

Instructional Strategies Online
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Instructional strategies determine the approach a teacher may take to achieve learning objectives. Five categories of instructional strategies and explanation of these five categories can be found within this site.

Joe Fatheree's Blog - Classroom 2.0 - Will You Listen

Resources on Cooperative Learning, Group Work, and Teamwork
 * <span class="wiki_link_ext">This page provides a wide range of resources on Resources on Cooperative Learning, Group Work, and Teamwork including websites, articles, and bibliographies. This web page will be updated periodically. If you have any suggestions for additional resources, please email Matt Kaplan at CRLT (mlkaplan@umich.edu).

Teacher Training Videos
 * Free on-line training in using technology in teaching

The Teacher Tap: Professional Development Resources for Educators
 * The **Teacher Tap** is a free, professional development resource that helps educators and librarians address common questions about the use of technology in teaching and learning by providing easy access to practical, online resources and activities. Check out the [|Project Overview.] for more information.

The Three essential elements of Teaching -
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Microsoft Sans Serif',sans-serif;">__**Relaxed Alertness**__**:** The optimal state of mind of the learner and social/emotional conditions for the learning environment, grounded in low threat and high challenge. __**Immersion of learners in complex experience**__**:** The optimal environments, including the physical context and social relationships, within which standards need to be embedded. __**Active Processing of experience**__**:** The essential, ongoing process of practice, questioning and reflection that leads to high standards as defined by performance knowledge.

Understanding and Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Improve Instructional Practice<span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">Bloom’s original taxonomy (developed in the 1950's) divided the way people learn into three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">In the 1990's Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom revised the original cognitive domain. The original Bloom's taxonomy is still relevant, but under the new revisions the six major categories of the cognitive domain were changed from noun to verb format and some subcategories were reorganized.
 * <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left;">The revised taxonomy is preferred by some educators as a more authentic tool for curriculum planning, instructional delivery, and assessment. Many educators also believe that the newer taxonomy is more applicable to all levels of schooling and better aligned to the 21st Century Skills we are seeking to instill in our students. In an effort to address the needs of all educators, I have included information on this site that will give you an opportunity to work with the original cognitive categories as well as the revised cognitive domain categories. Use the tabs found at the top of the page to explore the various domains and the levels identified by Bloom and his colleagues.

Web 2.0 Vermilion Parish Curriculum Links <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Microsoft Sans Serif',sans-serif;"> = Classroom Dynamics = 11 Techniques for Better Classroom Discipline <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Resources on Cooperative Learning, Group Work, and Teamwork
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Fantastic web site - check out the 100's maybe 1000's of links.
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">This page provides a wide range of resources on Resources on Cooperative Learning, Group Work, and Teamwork including websites, articles, and bibliographies.

School Refusal - Kids Who Don't Want to Go to School <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Teaching as a Dynamic Activity - Student Centered Teaching

Teaching Every Student - Writing Prompts May be Obstacles to Quality Writing <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> <span class="fn" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Top 6 Keys to Being a Successful Teacher
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"><span class="fn" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">T he most successful teachers share some common characteristics. Here are the top six keys to being a successful teacher. Every teacher can benefit from focusing on these important qualities. Success in teaching, as in most areas of life, depends almost entirely on your attitude and your approach.

<span class="fn" style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Top 10 Tips for Classroom Discipline and Management
 * Classroom discipline and management causes the most fear and consternation in new teachers. However, classroom management is a skill that is not only learned but practiced daily. Here are ten tips that can lead to successful classroom management and discipline. These tips can help you cut down on discipline problems and leave you with fewer interruptions and disruptions.

Top 12 Classroom Management Dos and Don’ts
 * You labored all night creating a thoughtful, engaging lesson. You were confident that your students would enjoy it, only to have your excitement—and theirs—dashed by the antics of a handful of students. You spent all your time writing names on the board, calling out troublemakers’ names, and “ssshh-ing” them. You’re exhausted, irritated—both with them and yourself—and dispirited because you didn’t get through everything you needed to. Crushed, you don’t even want to think about planning for the next day, let alone doing it all again in your next class.

Twenty Tips on Motivating Students
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Few teachers would deny that motivated students are easier to teach, or that students who are interested in learning do, in fact, learn more. So how do teachers motivate their students? Here are some practice, tried-and true strategies to get (and keep) your students interested in learning.

Why Group Norms Kill Creativity

Why Is Teacher Development Important?: Because Students Deserve the Best

= Develop a PLN - Personal Learning Network = 5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network
 * Many educators in successful schools are involved in their school's professional learning community and perhaps they even collaborate with other schools in the district, city, state, country or beyond, but Innovative Educators also have personal learning networks (PLNs) enabling them to connect with other learners around the globe.

A Geeky Momma's Blog: A PLN School
 * Lee Kobert's blog

Professional development is just a “tweet” away
 * Most of us have heard of [|Twitter]. The micro-blogging tool has become relatively famous for it’s users [|coverage][| of the earthquake in China] and the [|terrorist attacks in Mumbai], but what you may not be aware of is its power as a tool for educational professional development. My district was in the same boat as many throughout the world — we had a budget in ruins. This lack of cash meant that, unfortunately, professional development was put on the chopping block. This is when I discovered the power of [|Twitter].

Professional Development Network
 * Professional Development Network is designed to help teachers, school districts and organizations meet their needs for professional development and best practice instruction.

Teachers Learn Too: Developing a PLN
 * Blog by Cassie Herd

Teachers on Target
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Free Professional Activities and Strategies

= EVALUATING, GRADING, RUBRICS = <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Microsoft Sans Serif',sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Evaluation Tools

General Rubric Generator

Grading for Learning
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> So much of what we teachers say about grading refers to a personal context that is generally not shared fully during a discussion about a particular aspect of grading. We all know our own “big picture,” but the person on the other end of the conversation may have a different frame of reference.

Rubric Gallery
 * from RCampus.com- Open Tools for Open Minds
 * 1000's of rubrics arranged by Subject, Type or Grade Level

Rubrics and Evaluation Resources

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> RubiStar
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Want to make exemplary rubrics in a short amount of time? Try RubiStar out! Registered users can save and edit rubrics online. You can access them from home, school, or on the road. Registration and use of this tool is free, so click the Register link in the login area to the right to get started now.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Types of Questions based on Bloom's Taxonomy
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">As teachers we tend to ask questions in the "knowledge" category 80% to 90% of the time. These questions are not bad, but using them all the time is. Try to utilize higher order level of questions. These questions require much more "brain power" and a more extensive and elaborate answer. Below are the six question categories as defined by Bloom.