Being a former high school Social Studies teacher, I love when I get a great interactive website outside of my area of expertise that still engages me! The Human Body Interactive, put out by the BBC, does just that.

Learn about organs, muscles, skeleton or the nervous system through an interactive placement game.  I envision this being used in the classroom as either a review session or, better yet, as a collaborative small-group inquiry session on an iwb.

Thanks to my former colleague Shannon Cederstrand (an excellent high school Biology teacher at Oilfields High School) for the awesome link!

Vanessa

P.S. As I publish this post to my blog, I'm getting ready to head out to my 5th teachers' convention in as many weeks [for those at the Central East Alberta Teachers' Convention stop by and say hi!]

Previous Comments (from old blog site):

 

We're all familiar with the different forms of assessment:

• diagnostic
• formative
• summative

Many teachers spend a lot of time and effort creating "good" assessments that accurately assess what the students know.  I myself have spent copious amounts of time painstakingly creating exam blueprints to ensure that curricular outcomes are assessed -- and I'm not alone. A large amount of professional development days in schools are devoted to improving assessment techniques.

As such, education is becoming more data focused than ever. Everyone I speak with has their own, usually strong, opinion on whether or not this is a path that they want to head down. However, I would argue that there is one thing that most of us can agree on: the results collected do not always translate into a teaching response in the classroom. There are a variety of reasons for this lack of connection -- over-packed curriculum, lack of time, worn out teachers, a misunderstanding of correlation vs. causation, political initiatives with a separate focus -- the list could go on and on.

The following cartoon illustrates this disconnect beautifully -- we spend so much time and energy focusing on how best to collect data that we often forget the most important component is the follow up.

I'm always on the lookout for new resources to help support teachers integrate various pieces of technology into their classroom practice.  While I love spending time with teachers at workshops, the reality is that sometimes they just need a quick 'demo' of some basic features to get them started.

Enter ">5 Tips and Tricks for the SmartBoard:

If you're new to SMART Notebook, I highly recommend taking a look at the above video.  Funny enough, despite tons of experience with a SMART Board, I was completely unaware of Tip #5 until my SMART certification this past Fall!  Just goes to show that sometimes you don't know what you don't know!

I hope this helps those SMART newbies out there!
Vanessa

Previous Comments (from old blog site):

 

Good morning,

Due to a number of circumstances beyond my control yesterday, I was unable to access the internet to publish this post yesterday.  So here is the next installment of Fresh Look Fridays...on a Saturday morning:

Modeling how to write an essay is always an essential part of any English class.  The Essay Map website is basically an interactive, digital essay organizer.

The past few weeks have been crazy! I've done tons of awesome workshops with teachers, both in person as well as via Bridgit & videoconferencing. It's also teacher convention season, which means that every Thursday and Friday I get to hang out with teachers, admin, tech people and our sales guys at our booth.

Alas, this busy season also means that I sometimes don't get the proper time to write a blog post.  Or at least not a blog post that I'm willing to publish on the world wide web!

Since it's mid-week and I know that many teachers are buried in report card season, here's another great tech cartoon that I found.  Obviously, this points out the skepticism that some people have regarding whether or not too much reliance on technology can have a negative impact on social skills: