Using Your Voice To Type

I thought I would use this blog to follow up something we spoke about at our last staff meeting.  Here is the link to the support document from Google for the talk to type feature.  Read through all the pull downs so that you have an idea of what they add on can do.  I would encourage you to explore the answers below by exploring some of the features.

Steps to start
1.  Open a new google doc
2.  Click tools and voice typing
3.  Read a paragraph from a book you are reading so that it is "typed" on your document.


Questions to consider:
1.  Compare what you read to what is on the screen.  What areas didn't come across correctly?  What may be some glitchy spots in the translation for students?
2.  While you are reading use the punctuation commands.  How do those work for you?
3.  Select some of the editing tools and try them out.  They are all voice activated and work pretty smoothly.
4.  What student can you share this with?  Who would knowing how to do this benefit?

Differentiated PD???DI For Teachers?

Recently I was asked by High Schools To Work to write a short article about something that is going on at PHHS that I thought was innovative.  Right away I knew what I wanted to write about.  I can't stop smiling about our last full day PD.  Teacher driven, teacher delivered---hopefully teacher appreciated PD.  Teacher PD is most often (and sometimes even in OUR district) a one size fits all.  District leadership has heard your feedback in the past and has tried to make our PD time more useful for all of you.  A prime example was that "EdCamp" style day, where you picked the sessions you wanted to go to and learn about.  Designed by teachers and carried out by teachers....This takes me back to the title of this post....can we differentiate PD?  If you designed learning in your classroom in the manner that we all designed and created our last PD day....we would definitely call it differentiated.

Here are a few items to keep in mind that make PD like this possible.
1.  Teachers/Staff willing to share great practices
2.  The use of Public School Works to fulfill the mandated training that we don't have to spend time on in our PD days.

Here is the article that really got me thinking about this idea.  It comes from a great resource called edutopia.  I would suggest a follow on Twitter or Facebook if you use either for personal PD.

Questions to consider, or even respond in a comment to this post....
1.  Did the last full day PD fit your learning style?
2.  How would you make that better?
3.  Could you present the next time we do something like that?
4.  What types of sessions would you like to have but weren't available?

If They'd Only Do Their Work! Part 3

We will be viewing sections of an article in the Educational Leadership magazine put out by ASCD.  The title of the article is If They'd Only Do Their Work.  The article examines homework, motivation and research behind why students don't do homework.  It is a rather long article.  I will break it up into a few different blog posts with some questions.

Click here to see this week's section of the article.

Here is the link to the article:  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb06/vol63/num05/If-They'd-Only-Do-Their-Work!.aspx

Questions To Consider:

1.  How do you/we make sure that assignments we give are authentic and engaging?

2.  One of the people quoted in the article talks about homework being meaningful when it is used the next day in class.  How does this work in your classroom?

3.  The very end of the article talks about homework that requires students to prepare.  What does that mean to you?  Do you do that in your classroom?

If They'd Only Do Their Work!

We will be viewing sections of an article in the Educational Leadership magazine put out by ASCD.  The title of the article is If They'd Only Do Their Work.  The article examines homework, motivation and research behind why students don't do homework.  It is a rather long article.  I will break it up into a few different blog posts with some questions.  Click here to read the section for this post.

Here is the link to the article:  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb06/vol63/num05/If-They'd-Only-Do-Their-Work!.aspx

Questions to Consider:

1.  Have you ever thought about "Why students don't do their work?"

2.  Have you ever thought that students are protecting their self esteem or protecting some other personal reason for not doing homework?  What example can you think of?

3.  "Accepting failure as an option to not have to do work"  How can we combat this feeling for students?