Getting control over your time

“Five hundred twenty-five thousand, Six hundred minutes

How do you measure - measure a year?”

These lyrics from RENT ( Seasons of Love) popped into my mind while I watching this video. With coming new year and time for resolutions, it seemed like a good place to start. Rather than multitask or shave seconds off your routine activities, the speaker promotes focusing on your priorities and letting that drive your schedule (think about writing down the key goals for next year’s review).

Growth mindset or not?

So are you fixed or growth?  Growth mindset is a hot topic these days- I’ve been in classrooms that reflect the growth approach.  Here's a Q and A session with Carol Dweck about common misunderstanding and how she feels some teachers are promoting “false growth mindset”.  Please click here for the post.

Rx for Learned Helplessness

Here are 17 steps to help you prevent or reduce learned helplessness in our students.  I liked the format of the Middle Web article- If, Then, So do this made for easy reading and an effective tool.  Please click here for the link.

Start planning for next year

Check out this link from Discovery Education with upcoming events- from a  MLK Day Virtual Viewing Party to an Inauguration Virtual Experience followed the same month by a live NFL experience at the Super Bowl.  There are other opportunities for your students as well- which one will you select? Sign up for free now.

Looking for images?

I was reminded this morning of one of my favorite images sites- Photos for Class.  Why is it my favorite?  Well, the pictures are school appropriate and every image comes with a citation.  When you download the images, the citation will appear in the black ribbon at the bottom.  This could become your site for images.

Even more things to connect in Google Classroom

From Vicki Davis’ Friday newsletter, I saw this post on apps that connect with classroom.  (She shares 35 ways.) It is from ShakeUpLearning- and while some I knew- there were other new ones.  Even if you are not using classroom to go paperless, it is still a great place to curate resources for your students and allow them quick access to sites. I think this would be great for younger learners- teach them how to access to classroom (both in school and at home) and then just connect or link other sites.

Don't wait for a snow day to make your snowman!

Eric Curts ( of the snowman poem) has another great snow opportunity!  Use his Google slides (make a copy) and allow your students to practice both their creativity and editing skills.  In the video above, he explains everything.  When your students are done,  they can write about their creation. Go to his site here to make a copy of the Google slides.

Walking in a gallery

While I have used versions of the Gallery Walk (some of you might know it as a Discovery Education S.O.S), here’s an interesting post from Edutopia with 5 concrete suggestions to engage your students.

Putting links in Classroom

No, I’m talking about using the link icon to add a link- but in Alice Keeler’s post, she suggests way to include links in your comments to students (where there is no link to attach a url).  All you need to remember is http://  and then type the web address.  For the complete details, please see her blog post here.

How to see student progress (in Google slides)

When using Google Docs, going back to look at progress is easy- all you need to do is select File- See Revision History.  But how can you tell what your students are doing when working in slides or on a website?

Alice Keeler has created a Chrome extension that will:

1. Take screenshot every minute.
2. At the end, upload all the shots to a Google Slide presentation.
3. The student can then annotate to explain their learning.
4. The slides can be shared with the teacher.

I thought this was a novel idea, especially when the student is working on slides or sheets.

For complete information from Alice, please click her post here. To access and install the Chrome extension SlideShot, please click here.