Thing 3

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/130020413.html
NeverEnding Search: PowerPoint Reform - A First Chapter


"High school librarian Joyce Valenza shares highlights from her presentation for senior English classes on how to stop making miserable PowerPoint presentations. 
I found this blog entry to be helpful. I work with my classes to encourage more professional and interesting PowerPoint presentations. I like the creative emphasis mentioned here. I linked to Dave's Utube presentation outlining qualities of interesting PPT presentations. I liked the artistic look that he encourages. More fun to create and more effective in telling the story you want to tell.
We will definitely use some of these ideas for the girls' multigenre presentations.
 
 
http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=349/
 
Bit by Bit by Bob Sprankle was also interesting. Love the TV image with rabbit ears reference. Integrating digital components into teaching is what we have been doing at ASH for a long time. It will be fun to see what comes next along these lines. Good job tech department.
 
http://itc.blogs.com/patrick/2005/02/5th_grade.html
 
Patrick's update - Grade 5
What a neat kid. I just love that he wrote that he was having trouble getting good grades in spelling and thought he might be "felling". Ahh - I know the pain - I am such a mediocre speller myself.
I wonder how many great writers will start by sharing their thoughts on blogs?
I hope parents are reading the Posts in response to make sure kids don't get hurt by inappropriate responses. How about the guy bragging about his IQ  and then also feels perfectly comfortable swearing in a response to a fifth grader. Yikes!
 
http://wanderingink.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/how-to-prevent-another-leonardo-da-vinci/
 
Kris writes about how schools limit creativity and the pure learning and inquiry based pursuits of true great thinkers. Interesting. We have been talking about how we have to many seperate classes in the MSG. Combining and integrating some would be much more learner friendly and less anxiety producing for the children. Nicely written piece and apparently offered many readers something to think about. That can't be bad.
 
 
http://sddc.blogspot.com/2009/02/upside-down-pop-quiz.html
The Upside Down Pop Quiz
Hmm. I will be using a new text book on the Constitution and Constitutional rights found for us by Alan E. The girls will be reading the text prior to the lessons and I think this Pop Quiz as a way to reinforce the reading/compreshension process will work well with my 7th graders. We have quite a mix of student strengths and weaknesses and this positive psychology approach will be very supportive for them and will help to clarify some difficult material. Also,encouraging kids to read, reread, analyze and make connections are important learning strategies to reinforce. Sounds good.