Keep track of time with an online timer
By Christian Howd | October 4, 2007 | 3 Comments
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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Someone wise once said, “Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future.” I’m not quite sure where time goes, but I do know it keeps slipping somewhere, especially in a class of 30 kids. Asking questions, talking to students, preparing for the next part of the lesson…all these things can create distractions and send time slipping off somewhere.
One simple way to keep students, and teacher, on track is to use a timer. The problem with conventional timers is that, while they do keep track of time, they don’t easily allow a class to monitor the countdown as it progresses. Some companies have realized this and have created timers that can be displayed on overhead projectors. For a cool $35, you can snag one of these. Or, you can do the same thing for free.
5 Simple steps to a class mission statement you can actually remember
By Christian Howd | September 10, 2007 | 1 Comment
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Thoughts of mission statements sometimes bring up visions of stuffy cubicles and past episodes of The Office. But mission statements are not just for companies or schools. Classrooms can benefit from them as well. Teachers can use a mission statement as a yearly focus for the class, a source of motivation, and an opportunity to track some data that will hopefully show student progress.
What is it?
In a nutshell, a mission statement tells who you are, what you are doing, and why.
How long should it be?
Mission statements have a tendency to either get wordy and confusing or general and meaningless. This has prompted some to debate the value of mission statements. Or make fun of them. But when done right, they are useful. And most gurus in this area seem to say that “done right” means people should be able to remember what the mission statement says:
The mission statement is one thing that should be known by every person in the organization. You should be able to go up to any individual in the organization and he or she should be able to recite the mission to you.
It should always be brief, so that it can be remembered.
How to make a mission statement in five simple steps
Websites a la educator
By Todd DuLude | July 26, 2007 | 2 Comments
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Teachers are often asked by school districts to maintain a presence on the web. Which poses the question: Who is their primary audience? Meet Ima Parent, mother of fourth-grade Jimmy and seventh-grade Suzie. School has started and the kids are coming home with tales of woe of how much work they’re going to have this year. Ima decides to check out their teachers through the school websites they maintain. Firing up the ol’ browser she navigates to her daughter’s science teacher where she finds the class description and expectations. Surprisingly, it says nothing of the three hours of nightly homework and weekly exams Suzie has been describing. She also finds information on a more personal level which further dispels the image of barbed tail and horns painted by Suzie. Ima feels confident that Suzie will survive this seventh grade ordeal. She’s not so sure about herself.
Remember who your primary audience is: Ima Parent. She’ll visit your site frequently and sing your praises when it meets her needs. Update often!
A month into school and Jimmy casually mentions to mom that his teacher just sprung a project on him that’s due this Friday. It’s Wednesday. Jimmy also does not know much about the project as he has misplaced the sheet outlining the particulars. Thanks Jimmy. Continue reading »
Use this quick memory hack to remember when you can’t write
By Christian Howd | July 16, 2007 | 5 Comments
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Sometimes I need to remember something and I don’t have an opportunity to write it down. Maybe I just don’t have a pen and paper at the moment. Maybe I’m in the car and it just isn’t convenient to write a note. Or maybe I’m just being lazy at the moment. But when I need to remember something and I can’t immediately write a note to myself, I just use this quick trick to tide me over until I can capture the idea on paper:
Grab a random item and let that be your idea placeholder.
Here’s how it works:
What light through yonder Windows product breaks? It is Excel!
By Todd DuLude | July 11, 2007 | Be the first to comment
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The oft-used spreadsheet program Excel, when used in schools, typically doth find itself molded into a program for grading the youth. With help, methinks thou will surely manage thy data deftly. So, set thine eyes upon these five tricks if it pleases thee whilst I take liberties with certain plays of the famous Bard:
- Expand to Fit: “If thine data is not showing completely tis neither here nor there.” Select the column letters or row numbers you’d like to expand. Then, still holding down the left mouse button, slide over until it crosses the line where the next column or row begins. When the cursor changes to one with arrows pointing in opposite directions double left click. “Do not let the green-eyed monster Excel mock thee.”
- Hide : “Give me audience, friends of data! If you know not what you do please take heed.” To hide columns or rows that you do not need at the moment but still want to keep simply left click the column letter or row number and then right click, release and left click Hide. To select multiple rows or columns keep holding the left mouse button down and pass over other columns or rows. Release the left button when you have enough selected and then press the right. Select Hide and they vanish. “Beware, the Hides of Excel are still there!” All you need do is select through where those columns or rows should be, right click and select Unhide to bring them back. “Et tu Todd?”
Move beyond index cards: 12 ways to organize information online
By Christian Howd | July 10, 2007 | 2 Comments
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Wavy lines, wavy lines. Now we’re in full flash-back mode. See the card catalog over there? Students are taking notes on index cards, only one idea for each card. Some are looking through book bibliographies to hunt down books for further study. Some are tracking down articles through those proprietary research databases. Just insert your copy card to print them out. Wavy lines, wavy lines.
Okay, we’re back. Collecting information and research sure is different than it used to be. In fact, it’s a lot different, according to a recent survey:
Seventy-one percent of teens say the Internet is their primary source for information for completing their most recent school project or report. Research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that teens are increasingly using the Web as an essential study aid outside the classroom. For instance, 78 percent say the Internet regularly helps them with classroom assignments…
While this doesn’t mean completely eliminating the old methods of research and organization, it does mean that students should be taught how to effectively use the web for research. They are already doing it, so let’s help them do it better. But that’s not the only reason. Accessing information online will only grow in the future, and it will be imperative for their future careers to be able to effectively collect and organize information online.
If you are planning on your students doing any type of research in your class(es), then why not also introduce them to a way to organize that information online? You will not only be targeting language arts standards, but technology standards for information literacy as well. Here are 12 resources for information collection and organization:
Get rid of stuff with free online classified ad sites
By Christian Howd | July 9, 2007 | 2 Comments
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We’ve blogged before about the hidden locations in which clutter can reside in a classroom. But what happens when you locate clutter? How do you get rid of it? In the vein of “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” give it to someone else. And by give, I mean, sell.
You could go to eBay. But you have to pay listing fees and deal with the hassle of shipping your items to their purchasers. For a quick, easy and free way to sell your stuff online, try a location-based classified ad site instead.
These sites allow users to post classified ads to a specific geographic location. While the pool of potential purchasers is smaller than with eBay, the advantage is that the listings are free and the inconvience of shipping is usually eliminated as your purchaser can just swing by to pick up their item.
If you want to give this a shot, try these two free online classified ad sites:
Schools and the hard IT choice
By Todd DuLude | July 6, 2007 | Be the first to comment
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People generally have a strong preference when it comes to their desktop computer. However, bulk purchasing meant to cut costs determine the platform educational institutions use. Microsoft and Apple have been notoriously unfriendly to the bottom line of school districts for years.
In the back rooms of many school districts sit servers that have worked uninterrupted for years. They’re veritable workhorses that rarely need maintenance or have suffered infiltration by some vicious hacker. It’s a good chance that some form of Linux resides on those machines.
With pressure to upgrade, Linux is beginning to venture out of the back room and onto the desktop. Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 could very well be the answer to the school system at an operating system crossroad. It labels itself as 90% the functionality of Windows Vista for 10% the cost.
With pressure to upgrade desktop stations, Linux is beginning to look good to many schools.
If that’s too steep try the completely free Ubuntu and its variety of sub-distributions such as Edubuntu (the educationally pre-packaged version). This system customarily installs in about twenty minutes and is fast becoming the wunderkind of the Linux world. They’ll even send you a fully bootable CD of the system at their cost if you don’t have the time or the connection to download a copy. Don’t want to install it over your current OS? Run the complete version from the CD!
To be sure, the choice is one for the future as districts begin to look at ways to save the almighty buck.
Here are six compelling reasons to consider Linux as an operating system in your school district:
Save time and money with the Staple Free Stapler
By Christian Howd | July 2, 2007 | Be the first to comment
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“The stapler’s jammed!” a student shouts from across the room. Argh! Now you have to stop everything, fix it for them, locate more staples, go ask the office because you are probably out of staples, and hope that the staple cache lasts to the end of the year. Staplers are one piece of classroom tech that is used frequently, but can oftentimes underperform, causing frustration and time wasting. But being able to staple papers together is an organizational must. So what to do about this little problem?
4 Things technology can’t replace
By Christian Howd | June 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
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Don’t get us wrong. At TeachClever, we’re all about using technology to make us better, more productive teachers. For the most part, we are faster, more efficient and effective due to technology. But Andrew Kantor from USA Today points out that technology can’t, or shouldn’t replace everything. Here are four things that technology doesn’t effectively replace and what it means for teachers:
Spelling. Sure spell check is a wonderful tool for editing, but it’s easy to become dependent on it. Rather than learn to spell words correctly, we just wait for the spell check to tell us we’re wrong. So we never learn to spell those challenging words, like dependent, which I spelled wrong typing this article and let spell check fix it. And I’ll probably spell it wrong again next time.
Teaching students spelling and word study are still valuable skills. Most students will create content digitally in their futures, but there will still be a place for writing by hand. And pausing to think about the correct spelling of a word is a waste of time.
