Everyday We're Scriblin'

Last week we surveyed local schools to find out about their cell phone policies. The results indicate that many districts are relaxing their policies and at the very least allow use in classrooms with teacher discretion for educational purposes. Other districts allow use in hallways, cafeterias and during study halls. Certainly this information is something to consider as we move forward.

Now, on to useful tools for the classroom. Scrible is an online text annotator which allows students to easily highlight and annotate webpages. Students install a toolbar, visit a website and highlight and annotate away.

When students have finished marking up a page they can save the page and their notes as a unique URL saved in their Scrible personal library.

The Common Core calls for a large increase in nonfiction reading, an increase in research writing and for reading and writing to take place in all content areas. Scrible is a great tool for this type of work. The tool is free and students with educational emails are eligible for account upgrades. 

Cell Phones: To b(an) or not to b(an)

Many schools grapple with the idea about what to do about smartphones in classrooms. Should we embrace this technology as an opportunity to bridge the digital divide and teach kids to leverage the tools in their pockets to enhance their education? Do we ban phones outright to avoid the privacy, bullying, and distractedness problems that they could possibly afford? Or do we somehow find a middle path which allows the best while managing for the worst?

This is a complicated question to be sure.

Here are two recent articles which explore interesting aspects of these questions.

California school district hires firm to monitor students' social media - (via CNN) An article about a California school which has hired an outside firm to monitor Tweets and Facebook postings in an interesting way.

5 (good) ways smartphones are being used in high school - (via NBC) The title of this piece sort of says it all. This is a quick primer to think about how cell phones can be used in a high school setting.

Welcome!

We teach in interesting times. Tests tied to teacher evaluations. Common Core integration. National tests loom on the horizon. The persistent cries ring out to help kids become college and career ready in an increasingly flattened and fluid world.

The technology landscape is equally dynamic. It is hard to believe that ten years ago Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube did not exist. iPhone didn't enter the national lexicon until 2007. It wasn't until this decade that the term flipped classroom referred to a teaching methodology and not to a practical joke involving moving classroom furniture on an unsuspecting teacher.

As much as the landscape has changed, students have remained fairly constant. Yes, they are more connected and arguably more distracted than before. But their nature remains unchanged. Some are eager, some are reluctant, but all are inwardly desperate for school to matter.

This blog will be kept simple. As our high school technology integrator, each week I will share two resources that have come across my screen that I think you may find useful or interesting.

Thank you for your time and attention as I know both  are valuable and finite.