John Green, notable YA fic­tion author, has put together a series of three videos that offer a crash-course to the French Rev­o­lu­tion.

They are enter­tain­ing and accessible–perfect addi­tions to any curriculum.

I’ll label them as 7th Grade & Beyond. (Your thoughts on grade/ability level?)

Would you use these videos in your class­room? Have you already shown them?

View them by click­ing below.

Con­tinue reading »

I came across a jour­nal idea by Mrs. Pearce–

Shots from Mrs. Pearce’s Journal

She cre­ates a com­mu­ni­ca­tion jour­nal for her stu­dents wherein they write a let­ter to their parent(s)/family every other week. The stu­dent takes the jour­nal home over the week­end and the parent/family reads the child’s let­ter and then writes their own let­ter back to the child.

This not only works on let­ter writ­ing, but it fos­ters a deeper rela­tion­ship between the stu­dent and his/her par­ents. The kids really look for­ward to read­ing the responses each week. [via]

I bet! What sort of jour­nalling do you and/or your stu­dents do?

Proloquo2go is a new pro­gram in the aug­men­ta­tive and alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion (AAC) tech­nol­ogy field. And I think it is awesome!

Proloquo2go–in your pocket

Made by Assis­tive­Ware, Proloquo2go is designed for iPhone, iPod touch, and the iPad. Users will find a very friendly inter­face, and the avail­abil­ity on such devices as the iPod touch makes this pro­gram remark­ably portable and con­ve­nient. With an app price of $189, it is also an extremely afford­able option com­pared to other AAC programs/devices. Also offered is a $650 bun­dle pack­age, which includes an 8GB iPod touch.

I would love to find schools/classrooms that are using this.

Is yours?

In this video from The Chron­i­cle of Higher Edu­ca­tion, South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­sity Dean Jose A. Bowen pro­poses pro­fes­sors take the lec­ture (or at least the bulk of it) out of the hall and into down­load­able media such as pod­casts.

I would have loved for my pro­fes­sors to have con­ducted class in this man­ner! Allow­ing stu­dents to learn at their own pace and on their own time out­side of the man­dated lec­ture meet­ings does pre­cisely what Bowen says: leaves those pre­cious 50 min­utes to real ques­tions and fur­ther topic exploration.

There are 22 days until the start of the 2010–2011 school year. I am left stunned at how quickly time passes!

This sum­mer I have been in an edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy course, which is wrap­ping up next week–and is partly the rea­son for the seemingly-short sum­mer vaca­tion. I’ve been learn­ing a lot about assis­tive tech­nol­ogy for the class­room (and tech in gen­eral), and am com­ing across some amaz­ing videos and devices. I plan on shar­ing my find­ings, so keep an eye open for a pos­si­ble bar­rage of technology-related, geeky postings!

Although, with three weeks left, I should just try to sit back and enjoy it!