Vicki A. Davis's Blog, page 163

Essential Information on Maker Movement

The Maker Movement is everywhere. What is it? How do you “do” it? What is the difference between “maker space” “creation station” “genius hour” and all of these other terms? How can you decide what to do in your own classroom? Here are a few essential resources for you:

Reading About the Movement

My research is summarized in these two articles I wrote for Edutopia:

How the Maker Movement is Moving Into Classrooms- This piece gives you an overview of the maker movement including some of the resea...

8 Great Email Etiquette Tips for Educators & Everybody

Every email message from a parent or colleague is an opportunity to create a powerful impression. As Kevan Lee says in How to Send Better Email, great email gets across the intended message with the desired emotion. You have to do both. But you’re so busy, how do you find time to craft the perfect email? Use these tips to plan ahead!

You don’t accidentally send awesome email any more than you accidentally climb Mt. Everest. It takes practice and planning. This year I’m working to send better e...

Make a Mark By Establishing Classroom Procedures

I’m not here to just to mark papers. I’m not here to leave a mark in a negative way. I’m in this classroom to forever make a mark on the lives of the students within my care and trust. But to get to the learning, I need to create a positive classroom environment. I have just a few rules but have quite a few established procedures so we can flow, learn, and level up together.

Sure there are lots of things not central to this theme of making a mark: grading, procedures, classroom management. All...

Extensity: The Essential Chrome Extension Everyone Needs

Extensity is one extension to rule them all. Extensitywill turn on and off other chrome extensions and keep your browser running lightning fast. So, this week in Indiana it was no surprise when I shared it as #1 of my essential tips for Chromebooks.

One way to slow down your lightning fast Chrome browseris installing TOO MANY EXTENSIONS!! My #1 tip for EVERYONE USING CHROME:Install Extensityand only turn on the extensions you need for the current task.

Extensity lets you turn on and off other...

Hey Teacher – You Can Do This!

As many teachers go back to school, it is easy to bemoan what is past. You could hit that alarm and moan and wish for another day. But I think the best strategy – at least the one that works for me – is to get up and run into the day. Get up early. Get to school early. Drink Your Coffee. Whatever it takes to hit this excitement head on.

I’ve had a fantastic start to the school year with my students. We’re learning so much and I love our new LMS – Haiku Learning. We’ve got other exciting things...

Ice Bucket Challenge Bellringer

I’ll come back and add the video and more information, but the Ice Bucket Challenge gives us a great opportunity to teach digital citizenship and all kinds of great information. I’ll talk more about this later, but here is my bellringer for today in this teachable moment.

My Ice Bucket Challenge Bellringer

You have permission to copy and paste this for your classroom and distribute it to your teachers. You don’t have permission to sell it or put it in a book without my permission.

Ice Bucket Cha...

5 practical lessons for elementary classroom inclusion

In the essay Helicopter Parent in the collection Dads of Disability I recount the events surrounding my then third-grade son Alexander’s experience dressing up as Igor Sikorsky, the father of the modern helicopter, and giving a presentation to his class. Alexander has a number of developmental, sensory, physical, and behavioral challenges. At the end of the story, I ended up with a sore nose from Alexander’s knocking his noggin into my face.

Gary Dietz is authorDads of Disability: Stories for...

Ready, Set, Teach: Thoughts on Beginning the School Year Well

And thus it begins, I am in the office listening to Josh Groban croon as I try to grapple with the music of life. In less than two hours I’ll be in the first faculty meeting of the year with my colleagues. Thursday we’ll have new faces along with quite a few returning ones.

I’ve already written my own goals for how I want to level up this year in my classroom – most of them having to do with work flow. My husband has already had me practice saying the word “no” to prepare for the year — someth...

Developing Leadership #BYOD #1to1 [Quote]

Perhaps the weakest area of the typical one-to-one computing plan is the complete absence of leadership development for the administrative team—that is, learning how to manage the transition from a learning ecology where paper is the dominant technology for storing and retrieving information, to a world that is all digital, all the time.

Leaders must be given the training to:

Craft a clear vision of connecting all students to the world’s learning resources.
Model the actions and behaviors they...

What To Do When Someone Hates You

“There is one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing. Say nothing. Be nothing.” says Aristotle. Criticism comes with breaking new ground. Criticism comes with putting yourself out there.But how do you respond when that criticism turns to hatred?

Hatred is a hard thing to handle, particularly when you feel it is unjust. But I’m writing this for you today: DON’T LET IT STOP YOU.

The Man in the Arena by Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man st...