4teachers.org

Just a QuickCast for you this week as grades are due, my girls basketball team is starting its final week of the season, and I'm sorting through our questions for Kathy Schrock and developing a few of my own.

So this QuickCast will not have our other popular features, the Daily Idiom, A Word A Day, and the Microsoft ad slogan of the week. We will resume with those pieces on our next full-featured Teachnology podcast.

We are going to take a look at the very comprehensive 4teachers site.

In an earlier podcast, we looked at one of it's great features, Rubistar. Fortunately, 4teachers didn't just stop there. They have several features that are incredible instructional resources for teachers and students! Plus, they're constantly improving those resources. So click in...

One Vision, One Feed

I'd like to ask you to check your aggregator and make sure you're subscribed to the permanent feed, which is http://feeds.feedburner.com/teachnology.

It's the one that's now available by clicking on one of the XML icons.

I was making a new feed for each show. DOH! Silly me.

Thanks to Russell Holliman of the Treo Podcast for fixing the cluster of feeds I had generated at feedburner and developing one feed for the podcast and one for the show notes. Russell, you da man!

I will delete all other feeds shortly, but we want to make sure we get all our listeners over to the new feed first.

Rewiring the Research Project

Holy smokes, it's been a busy two weeks, but it's time to get the show going! We are going to explore how to frame your essential questions for research projects to elicit higher level thinking from your students. We are fortunate in the Thompson School District to have three exceptional instructional technologists and former classroom teachers who keep us very current on instructional strategies involving technology. Traci Gile, Michelle Logan, and David Grubbs worked tirelessly to bring Rewiring the Research Project to our technology coaches and facilitators earlier this month.

The Developing Essential Questions PowerPoint:
*gives important background information about research projects;
*provides a summary of forming Essential Questions;
*supplies an example of how to do so in a 5th grade classroom.


Framing Essential Questions

Essential questions are at the heart of Rewiring the Research Project. Our Instructional Technologists did a fabulous job of explaining the qualities of essential questions, how to put power behind them, and differentiating them from the important Foundation Questions that the Essential question is built upon. Additionally, they demonstrate how to promote higher-level thinking through questioning with the section: Moving up the Bloom's Taxonomy ladder by avoiding the "What is" questions. This is a brief, yet informative, document that will help educators breath life into the questions we ask our students to solve. There are also tremendous sources listed for the document if you would like a more in-depth evaluation of the material. That said, the first source I clicked on was down at the time (http://www.fno.org/oct97/questions.html). FNO is a terrific education site. Try this FNO page if the FNO cited page still doesn't work.

The Student Pre-Search Planner is a concrete road map that helps student save time and frustration in the long run by planning their research. It's an excellent tool for students! An important Reflecting and Refining Checklist follows the pre-search plan, and it offers a quick way for students to evaluate and adjust their strategies. It also gives teachers an instant look into who may need a little extra help.

The Teacher Research Planner gives us a guide and timeline to setting this rewired research project into motion.

I want to thank Traci Gile, Michelle Logan, and David Grubbs for providing the instructional resources this week. They are fabulous, hard working educators!

Our New Features and the Notes for the Wednesday, 02.02.05 podcast

We're excited to offer a couple of new features to give the show a change of pace and someone else to listen to instead of just me!!

Each week, we're going feature one of the Daily Idioms from this site and A Word A Day (one of them) from this site.

As many of you may know, The Daily Idiom is a podcast produced by its owner, operator, and sole proprietor, Robert Diem. Robert has generously agreed to allow us to air one of the Daily Idioms on Teachnology each week. Thank you, Robert.

Thanks also to MICHAEL QUINION of World Wide Words for his historical perspectives on idioms. To read his take on how "Kick the bucket" originated, click here.

Our thanks also goes out to Anu and Stuti Garg who have been putting A Word A Day on the Internet every weekday (I believe) since 1994. WOW! To visit this very informative site, click here.

If you believe you might be afflicted with resistentialism, click here--not for a cure, just more background information. :-)

Thanks again to Robert Diem, Anu Garg, and Stuti Garg!

LearnAlberta

This week's featured site is LearnAlberta. This is an emerging website that can be used as a learning supplement to other teaching tools . Its resources have been developed by Alberta Learning. Specifically, LearnAlberta is a repository of multimedia resources and lessons for K-12 classrooms. There are a variety of curriculum areas represented here. Being a teacher, parent or student in Alberta, Canada is helpful, but by no means mandatory to use many of the resources. Non-members can simply log in as a guest to access the site. Plus, many of the multimedia resources are available in English, as well as French. Check it out: LearnAlberta has several highly engaging multimedia lessons/tutorials.

To preview what's on the horizon for LearnAlberta, click here.

Next week: We're going to take a look at some ways to rewire research projects to foster higher level thinking.