MSM 628: The Standards Are The Same
Summary:
Shawn and Troy talk about summer work, History Resources, and more. Dave shares the powerful advantages of Zoos and Aquariums.
Jokes:
Now that all the Horses are housed can I say they are
- Stabilized?
A towel gets wetter as it dries.
A constipated pathological liar told me he wasn’t feeling well. I could tell he was full of crap!
What creature is smarter than a talking parrot?
- A spelling bee.
Someone asked me, what’s the ninth letter of the alphabet?
- It was a complete guess, but I was right.
Can anyone tell me if you need a current license to drive an electric car?
Came home to find two guys stealing my gate.
- Didn’t want to say anything in case they took a fence.
I’ve been trying to come up with a dad joke about momentum . . .
- but I just can’t seem to get it going.
I used to be addicted to deli meats but I quit cold turkey
My local newspaper is running a competition where you can win a holiday for you and a friend in Dubai.- I was going to enter but I don’t have any friends in Dubai!
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
— Mark Twain, “The Innocents Abroad”
I’d like to do some drawings of bread, but I can’t find a roll model.
People often ask me why I wanted to be a Film Editor.
- Well – to cut a long story short…
I used to work for an origami company but they folded.
For Sale: Thick layer of dust.
- As seen on TV.
Eileen Award
- Laundon Tucker
Middle School Science Minute
by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)
K12Science Podcast: Field Trips to Zoos and Aquariums
I was recently reading the January/February 2024 issue of “Connected Science Learning” a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.
In this issue, I read an article written by Benjamin Krause Recchia and T.J. McKenna. The article was entitled, “Field Trips to Zoos and Aquariums: Solving Pedagogical Challenges Using the Next Generation Science Standards.”
Though zoos and aquariums have become increasingly focused on conservation education, their unique and diverse learning opportunities have been underused. Active learning pedagogy aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards can facilitate expansion of education at zoos and aquariums beyond their conservation education niche.
http://k12science.net/field-trips-to-zoos-and-aquariums/
Reports from the Front Lines
- History Day for my nephew
- Moodle Stuff
- Letters for Parents
- Summer is getting busier
- AI Training
- Annual Training
- Phishing Training
- Hiring
- Summer Fun
- Pedal Boat
The Social Web
Modern Men’s Guide @ModernMenGuide
Six Male Personalities of Modern Men Explained: (What Each Type Brings to the Table) Open Thread –
Word of the day is ‘bang-a-bonk’ (19th century): to sit lazily on a river bank and forget the world for a while.
How to create a ‘Sort the Paragraphs’ activity in #H5P To see the finished example and more tutorials, check out http://mrh5p.com and subscribe to the H5P Builders newsletter. https://mrh5p.com/h5p-examples/how-to-make-a-sort-the-paragraphs-activity-with-h5p/
Flipped learning for maths using H5P – interesting to see how long it takes to prepare. The pay off is a substantial increase in grades and good student evaluation as well as everything ready to go for next year #LearningatCity24
The Pac-Man rule is: “When standing as a group of people, always leave room for one person to join your group.”
The Pac-Man rule provides the actual physical space for someone to join a conversation, and it also sends a strong visual signal that *you are welcome here.*
psychsafety.co.uk/the-pac-man-
Since it’s come up again – if you use new Outlook and Mail in Windows 11, it automatically syncs all your email and contacts into Microsoft’s cloud – even if you use a third party mail provider.
There’s no option to decline.
Pretty obviously, consider the risk.
Strategies:
“I Can’t Hear You with All of Your Talking”
I was demoing a student writing conference for a group of teachers. They specifically asked me to work with a student named Estrella. Her teacher found conferring with Estrella extra challenging – no matter what the teacher tried, Estrella remained quiet and seemed disconnected. So I gave it a try, even though I doubted I could make any further inroads with her.
I modeled a strategy for Estrella, I decided to pause and say nothing for what felt like an eternity – about 30 seconds. We could see that Estrella was thinking. Then she began to take what I taught and use it. A light bulb lit up in our heads. We realized that simply saying nothing and giving each individual student the time they need to process and act could be incredibly powerful.
I’ve learned that silence is not just the absence of noise – it’s a powerful pedagogical strategy that fosters an environment of mutual respect, active engagement, and collective discovery.
“Silence is the space that allows us to listen. Silence helps to create belonging.”
https://www.middleweb.com/50917/i-cant-hear-you-with-all-of-your-talking
Ditch the Drill and Choose to Thrill: Personalization with Student Choice
Agency in the classroom is about giving students more control over their learning through greater autonomy and purpose. Many factors drive it, but the underlying premise is to move learners from a state of engagement to empowerment so that they exert more ownership over their learning. While there are many high-agency strategies to choose from when personalizing, choice stands out.
- Choice in content: Students can choose to learn the content with the teacher in small groups or independently through a flipped lesson or self-pacing task (reading, video, notes, slides, etc.). No matter the path chosen, checks for understanding along the way inform the student of their understanding.
- Choice in the process: Students can choose scaffolded and relevant tasks to complete in a must-do/may-do format, choice board, or playlist. While they work, the teacher uses data or evidence to pull individuals for intensive support.
- Choice in product: With a well-designed rubric, students choose how to demonstrate learning through creating a product. For examples, click HERE and HERE.
https://esheninger.blogspot.com/2024/06/ditch-drill-and-choose-to-thrill.html
Resources:
Comic Book +
Welcome to the main page of our massive public domain comic book archive. True gems to download or read online. So many, it is impossible to read them all!
The majority of our books belong to what has been termed the Golden Age of Comics. This began primarily with newspaper reprints and then “went up, up and away” with the introduction of Superman. Styles changed, new genres superseded old and then a new era dawned, the Silver Age of Comics, of which we also have many examples.
For what was once a massive industry, the publishers and their successors often took little care of their work. Many of the comics were either not copyrighted correctly, or the copyright was not renewed. Through this oversight thousands of comic books lapsed into what is called the “Public Domain”, which means that there is now no legal owner. That is why we can bring you all of these FREE and LEGALLY!
So take our word for it, if you browse around you are certain to spend a great many happy hours here!
https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1507
Journeys In Film
We transform entertainment media into educational media by designing and publishing cost-free, educational resources for teachers to accompany carefully chosen feature films and documentaries while meeting mandated standards in all core subjects. Selected films are used as springboards for lesson plans in subjects ranging from math, science, language arts, and social studies to specific topics that have become critical for students to learn.
Journeys in Film’s programs engage students in meaningful examinations of human rights, poverty and hunger, stereotyping and racism, environmental issues, global health, immigration, and gender roles. Our teaching methods are successful in broadening perspectives, teaching for global competency, encouraging empathy, and building new paradigms for best practices in education.
We also develop discussion guides for films that don’t necessarily lend themselves to academic standards, but cover topics and themes that are valuable for classroom discussions and in other settings, such as after school clubs, community screenings and University classes.
DARESAYCheck-in generator
Open RSS
Amnesia
Amnesia is an interactive learning experience. You can choose to learn about a specific topic, which will take you to a relevant time and place, or you can directly enter a time and place to explore. Select an option to start your journey.
AXIS: The Culture Translator
Tall Order
What it is: Socks that come up to your shin are the true marker of a stylish individual, according to Gen Alpha and Gen Z.
Why it marks a generational divide: Many readers might remember that in the early 2000s, socks seemed to get shorter and shorter, until “no-show” socks became the norm. Today, many agree that the most stylish socks hit much higher on the leg. Visible white crew socks extending over a pair of black leggings, sometimes even paired with a gigantic pair of open-toed slides, are worn by teens without an ounce of shame—a look that Millennials would have probably called “cringe.” Crew socks have become a sign that the wearer is aware of current trends. But while Gen Z might say they’ve grown used to never seeing their ankles, many Millennials seem to be attached to the socks of their youth.
LRT – Song Festival
Centenary studio of song fest. “Dainų diena Kaune „Miškais kalnai žaliuoja“. Ved. Gerūta Griniūtė. Tiesioginė transliacija iš Kauno Dainų slėnio (subtitruota, su vertimu į gestų k.).” Day of songs in Kaunas “Mountains are green with forests”. Lead Geruta Griniūtė. Live broadcast from the Kaunas Valley of Songs (subtitled, with translation into sign language). https://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/tiesiogiai/lrt-televizija
Web Spotlight:
How France Adopts An Open Source-Based Education Strategy – Free of Big Tech
France’s move towards a comprehensive open source-based education strategy, 2023-2027. The aim is to achieve digital sovereignty and reduce dependence on big tech companies like Microsoft and Google, which are widely used in education systems, including in Denmark.
Kauffmann said that France has never officially embraced big tech in schools, which makes the project easier, and that the public generally is skeptic towards monopolies and the abuse of private data. The country is thus undergoing a cultural shift in the digital education sector, promoting the use of free, open, and interoperable code, data, and content, referred to as “digital commons”. This approach encompasses not only free licenses but also community involvement and governance.
“One of the key actions is to offer authoring tools to our teacher and tools based on open source software. No Google Classrooms. Not Microsoft Teams. We have chosen Moodle Elea as a learning management system,” explained Alexis Kauffmann who also pointed to other tools to learn to code and mathematics like Jupyter. They have there an app platform with open-source tools like Nextcloud, Big Blue Button, and Collaboration. They even have their own ‘github’ (owned by Microsoft) called La Forge, where teachers share code.
“I am not saying it is easy. The biggest obstacle is political courage to resist the lobbyists both at a national and European level,” he said and pointed to other risks like the quality of big tech’s products, being isolated in Europa, and artificial intelligence.
https://dataethics.eu/how-france-adopts-an-open-source-based-education-strategy-free-of-big-tech
Random Thoughts . . .
[BFTP] The one question I’m asking at ISTE 2013
https://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2024/06/bftp-the-one-question-im-asking-at-iste-2013.html
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