August 2012

It’s August 2nd which means we are two days in to Connected Educator Month. Created by the Department of Education, Connected Educator Month celebrates “educators at all levels, from all disciplines, moving towards a fully connected and collaborative profession…”. The New York Times is honoring the occasion by asking 33 educators the following questions:

1. What is one important thing you’ve learned from someone in your Personal Learning Network (P.L.N.), however you define that network?
2. What one person, group or organization would you recommend every educator add to his or her P.L.N.?

Here are a few of the responses:

Carolyn Ross | Hightstown High School

Reader Idea: Personal Inquiry Projects With The Learning Network

1. My first year as a high school English teacher, I had a colleague who encouraged me to consider daily dilemmas and stressors through a simple lens: “Is this the hill you want to die on?” I owe my propensity to pick my battles (with students, colleagues, administrators and my inner demons) to this mantra.

2. The newest addition to my Google Reader is the NCLE SmartBrief. Twice a week, NCLE compiles an education brief: news stories, resources, blog posts I would otherwise have missed and fresh teaching ideas (like using e-mail spam to teach persuasive writing).

Stephanie L. Meyer | Wisconsin Public Schools

Reflections on the Third Annual Found Poem Contest

1. One thing I’ve learned from the authors of novels that I’ve taught, including Laila Lalami (“Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits”), Sarah McCoy (“The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico”) and Brando Skyhorse (“The Madonnas of Echo Park”) is that they really do want to hear high school students’ reactions to and questions about their books. They will usually write the students back whether by snail mail or e-mail.

2. All educators should be familiar with Toondoo.com, a Web site that allows students to create comic strips. I usually assign students different scenes from a particular book, print the scenes out and have the kids try to put them in chronological order, among other things.

Heather Barikmo | LaGuardia Community College

Reader Idea | ‘One in Eight Million’ for English Language Learners

1. Tumblr, as a whole, has been invaluable to me as an educator. The platform really lends itself to visual communication, and I believe language educators in the digital age can really benefit from bringing infographics and similar multimodal texts into their teaching.

2. I get so many ideas from ReadWriteThink.

More responses can be found here.