My lesson today focused on how history and outside influences have affected the Middle East. The focus was the modernization of three nations – Egypt, Turkey and Iran. In advance I created a presentation in PowerPoint that summarized the main ideas in the text. Finally, I wanted the students to reflect on the content and given a series of self-questioning stems, generate one question that they still needed answered based on the content. We were [...]

If you want to make your voice heard, there is still time to vote for the Top Tools for Learning 2011. The list will be finalized on November 13, 2011, so go ahead and vote! Here is the list of Top Tools for 2010. Post thumbnail image courtesy of Jody McIntyre – http://www.flickr.com/photos/scjody/6050954983/

This week I tried something different with one of the assigned textbook sections. I created a Google doc with several main ideas and then listed a few bullet items beneath each. Students were asked to find supporting details from their text, the web, etc. for each of the ideas. In the end, we would have a single, collaborative document with lots of information. My original idea was to have only one computer for each question [...]

I have been using Google Docs with my students for a couple of things and have enjoyed the sharing and collaboration they provide. Today I shared a spread sheet and asked the class to enter some data on the document. It wasn’t long before I noticed the chat feature wan in use by some students. “Hooray!”, I thought. They can work together and coordinate a strategy for completing the task without getting out of their [...]

I was sorting through papers crammed in a shelf when I found an bingo sheet that was created by a teacher years ago. On the page was a 5×5 grid with random vocabulary terms in each block an image in the center square. For a moment I laughed at the document, but then got to thinking about how I might use this as a quick review with my classes. Since the start of the year [...]

This year I have returned to classroom teaching for the first time since 2001 in a split position. Half of my time this year consist of teaching World Cultures, and the other half to instructional technology support. If you have been a regular visitor to the site you noticed that I haven’t posted for the last month. Much of that is due to the fact that I have had to re-acclimate myself with the daily [...]