Article of the Week - Kelly Gallagher

I have never read Kelly Gallagher before, but I really like his ideas on the article of the week activity. I will certainly integrate this activity.

There is a short video about it here: http://www.stenhouse.com/html/article-of-the-week.htm

There is a list of articles he is using here: http://www.kellygallagher.org/article-of-the-week/

Here is a podcast about his grading policies. I have to read more of his stuff.

Introvert?

I have not posted in a while, but I saw this great article on educating with the introverts in mind. I see a lot of connections to the technology integration I have done in the classroom. Particularly the synchronous blogs. I am intrigued by the ideas on small groups or pairs.

See the article at How to Teach a Young Introvert

Applies to Education?

Multimedia Aspect of Research

Research is a big part of academic life, and this project was created to explore how the massive amount of information available through multimedia can be used to justify and bring a new perspective to a claim. All of these presentations started off with a yes or no question to be answered, and the question could be on whatever topic the author was interested in. They were created along with a formal, cited written paper.

The rubric for the project calls for interviews, connections to book club books, background music, connections to video clips, recorded audio tracks, and information from recognized, non-biased, and cite-able web-pages. They were also designed to relate to the unit theme of social justice. I also offer extra credit for anyone who got some usable outside filming related to their topic.

Of particular interest is how students use different ways to tackle the same claims. Motivation was a big question this year (2013), and while one student put together a series of audio recordings relating to psychological studies he read, another student recorded an interview on Skype with an authority with lots of life experience.

There is a great sample below from a student interested in the evolution of football, and you can see the variety that comes from offering students choice by looking through them all at the blog I put up here.