Vicki A. Davis's Blog, page 27
April 5, 2022
10 Tips for Instructional Technology Coaches
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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The best Instructional Technology Coaches are partners, culture leaders, encouragers, and easy to work with, says Dr. Katie Ritter. She covers ten essential points for being a successful education technology coach based on her research and her personal coaching of instructional technology coaches and teachers. This blog post includes a full transcript, a pinnable (or...
April 4, 2022
Virtual Museum Tours: Ready to Take Kids on a Field Trip?
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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For those of you who want to go on virtual museum tours, the Museums for Digital Learning may have the perfect answer for you. The list of museums is long and growing and is a joy to see. For years, as educators, we've had to cobble together our own resources. But, now, we have museum-created resources around topics and objects. In this post, I'll show you how I got started. First, you sign up, then learn how to mak...
March 31, 2022
The Neuroscience of Surprise and How It Improves Learning
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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Surprise can increase learning and change the lives of our students in positive ways. Today’s guest researcher, Dr. Michael Rousell, studies the neuroscience of surprise and has some interesting points for educators and presenters.
The Johns Hopkins’ article, The Element of Surprise Helps Babies Learn Significantly Better, points to a phenomenon that impacts all age...
March 23, 2022
What is classroom culture? How do I create classroom culture?
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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Classroom culture defines your classroom. You can feel a classroom culture, but what is a classroom culture? How do you build a positive classroom culture? In this show, Andrew Sharos, author of Finding Lifelifes: A Practical Tale about Teacher and Mentors, shares how to create a thriving classroom culture. He also talks about creating positive classroom habits. Furt...
March 21, 2022
First Day Back to School Activities: First Day Back Stations
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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You can have the first day back to school activities any day of the year. We all need classroom management tips and first-day back stations are one of those you can use any time of the year. Right now, this is more important than ever as classrooms return from quarantine, teachers handoff substitute teachers, students come back to school from spring break, or a...
March 16, 2022
SEL Games: Learning Life Skills Through Games
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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The harsh reality of classroom life is that students and teachers both report lower motivation and morale right now. We must reengage students! Games can help us! SEL games can help you teach social-emotional learning skills and life skills. Today’s expert, Dr. Matthew Farber, gives us an interesting twist on games by integrating them with SEL. He has practical...
March 14, 2022
How Does Acceleration Research Help Schools and Kids Rebound?
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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How do we accelerate learning? The US Department of Education Roadmap for Reopening Safely says that “accelerated learning provides opportunities for students to learn at grade level rather than through tracking or remediation….” Simply put, acceleration “builds on what students know as a way to access new learning.” (Roadmap p 18)
This report also says that th...
March 5, 2022
UNLV “Digital President” – Have We Considered the AI Implications?
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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Keith Whitfield, president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, is available to chat with all 31,000 students at any hour of the day or night—as long as they don’t mind talking to a digital version of him. The public research university recently unveiled the digital President Whitfield , an artificial intelligence and online avatar that can answer more than 1,000 questions about hundreds of university-related t...
March 4, 2022
College Enrollment is Dropping: Here Are a Few Observations I’ve Made Talking to Recent High School Graduates
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment year over year fell by 3.6 percent in fall 2020 and by 3.1 percent in fall 2021. Total undergraduate enrollment declined 6.6 percent from fall 2019 to fall 2021, representing a loss of just over a million students.
In fall 2020, 20.7 percent fewer students than in 2019 enrolled directly in college from high school, and more than...
March 3, 2022
How Much RAM Is Enough RAM in 2022?
From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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So if you can afford it, 16 GB of RAM is not an unreasonable baseline for your 2022 machine. You might not take advantage of all that power right now, especially if you don’t use your computer for intensive tasks. But these are expensive machines that should last us longer than the upgrade cycle of a smartphone, and an extra $200 for RAM today is much be...
