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We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: https://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2021/12/07/unwrapping-holiday-learning-with-real-world-data/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unwrapping-holiday-learning-with-real-world-data

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

The universal language of data is a great way to let students explore the diversity of customs, traditions, and ever-changing trends during the holiday season. Discover Data resources incorporate real-world data that connects classroom experiences to what’s current in students’ lives today. 

Created in partnership between the Nielsen Foundation, the National Afterschool Association and Discovery Education, the recently redesigned Discover Data program provides standards-aligned, no-cost resources that support educators, students, and communities in timely learning and valuable skill-building. 

Celebrate the diversity of student perspectives on the holidays and discover exciting new common ground with the Data During the Holidays curriculum connector. This interactive resource offers a variety of activities that make it easy for students to apply a data lens beyond the classroom—including opportunities to involve family and friends in a fun data dive into personal traditions and national consumer trends during the holidays. 

Learn more about each of the hands-on activities designed to engage middle and high school students in data-driven STEM learning during the holidays. 

A Feast of Data
Inspire student and family connections over the holidays using the simple power of data. Giving Thanks – A Holiday Tradition explores family food preferences during the holidays along with historical trends in America when it comes to Thanksgiving meal. 

Holiday Powerup
Highlight a common item on many kids’ gift wish list with an activity exploring the most popular video games purchased during the holiday shopping season. Power Up – Video Games During the Holidays lets students use graphic representations of data to recognize emerging trends. 

Holiday Sweet Spots
Get a taste for seasonal candy buying habits with this delectable data activity. In Sweet Treats – Exploring the Candy Aisle, students use national data to learn more about the connection between seasonal consumer trends and holiday advertising strategies. 

Snowballing Data
Take students’ data investigations to the next level by combining different insights from the previous activities. Collecting Data gets students thinking creatively about how they can utilize data learning to successfully connect with others. 

You can expand on the Data During the Holidays curriculum connector with a companion data set handout, along with key vocabulary terms to support conversation. Visit Discover Data to take holiday learning even further with additional ready-to-use resources, including an empowering career profile with a female professional who uses data to make sense of the seasonal consumer shopping habits she observes. 

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2022/01/some-good-questions-to-ask-before-hiring-an-outside-helper.html

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

School resources are always limited, whether they be time, money, attention, energy, or personnel. Before you hire an outside helper for your school(s), here are some questions you might ask…

• Are we bringing in this person to actually help us do something?
• Or do we just want to dabble and/or pretend that we care about the topic? 
• Or are we just doing it because others are / it’s a hot topic right now?
• How does this work fit in with our other current initiatives?
• How will we help our employees, students, and families understand the connections with our other work?
• How much of a priority is this work compared to our other initiatives?
• What will we do beforehand to optimize our employees’ chances of being successful with this?
• What’s our follow-up plan afterward?
• What additional support structures, leadership behaviors, professional learning, expectations, timelines, deadlines, financial and time resources, personnel, monitoring mechanisms, etc. will be put into place to support this work?
• Will this work be supported at the very highest levels of the school organization? How?
• Are these new supports adequate for the work to be successful?
• Do we have a fighting chance to actually do this right now?
• Or are we just fooling ourselves?
• Do we have both the will and capacity to actually make this happen?
• What are we currently doing that conflicts with or will obstruct our success with this new work?
• What concerns will our employees, students, and families raise about this work?
• What is our plan for addressing those?

Some questions to ask the outside helper (before you hire them) include…

• Can you actually help us do something? (i.e., can you help us with the WHAT and the HOW, not just the WHY?)
• Or are you just going to tell us we should do something and then leave?
• What should we do beforehand to optimize our employees’ chances of being successful with this?
• How much time do we need with you to get started successfully on this?
• What will that work look like (and why)?
• How much time do we need after you work with us to get started successfully on this?
• What does that work look like (and why)?
• What barriers, challenges, and other concerns should we expect as we head into this work?
• How can you help us with those?
• What kinds of follow-up resources and supports can you provide us?
• What do those look like (and why)?

These are just a few to get started… What else would you add here?

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2022/02/books-i-read-in-january-2022.html

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

Books I finished reading (or rereading) in January 2022…

• Escape Pod, Mur Lafferty & S.B. Divya (Eds.) (sci fi)
• Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan (fantasy)
• A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan (fantasy)
• The Bone Ships, RJ Barker (fantasy)
• A King’s Bargain, J. D. L. Rosell (fantasy)
• A Queen’s Command, J. D. L. Rosell (fantasy)
• Cities in Space, Jerry Pournelle & John Carr (sci fi)
• Legend, David Gemmell (fantasy)

Hope you’re reading something fun too!

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080773453/a-teacher-at-american-university-in-kabul-talks-about-his-hopes-for-afghanistan

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

Six months after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, NPR's Leila Fadel speaks to Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer at the American University in Kabul, about the path forward under the Taliban rule.

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: https://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/2022/02/09/sel-adventures-students-will-love/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sel-adventures-students-will-love

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

Find engaging ways to explore self-love, compassion, and social awareness this Valentine’s Day with the pro-social animated world of La Golda. Through the adventures of La Golda and her diverse team of friends, elementary students can investigate relevant and sometimes challenging topics with empathy and an open mind.  

Get to the Heart of Student Wellbeing 

A series of uplifting animated videos and hands-on companion activities create easy opportunities to kickstart conversation and collaboration between students around SEL essentials. Each video follows the experiences of La Golda and her friends, offering a concrete reference point that educators can use to address the real-world challenges and stress students experience daily. 

The animated series offers positive ways to get students in grades 3–5 thinking proactively about topics like inclusion, goal-setting, food scarcity, and more. Each La Golda video brings to life the importance of resilience and dedication when facing obstacles, along with the power of teamwork to solve challenges and unite unique perspectives. 

Embracing SEL Competencies 

Educators can combine experiential learning and real-world data with La Golda student activities. Each activity aligns to a concept highlighted in the video series. The activities offer students simple ways to experience the benefits of social awareness skills for themselves, using basic tools like self-reflection and group collaboration. Students are encouraged to take ideas developed in the La Golda series and apply them in real life, both in and out of the classroom. 

Caring About Students’ World 

La Golda resources encourage educators to bring timely and relevant real-world topics into the classroom, creating a supportive space for students to evaluate their own feelings about important issues both locally and globally: 

• Technology: Explore ways students can apply their own tech savviness to create real change. 
• Gender Equality: Show students how La Golda and team empower both boys and girls to succeed equally. 
• Hunger: Take students inside surprising real-world data regarding food insecurity in the United States. 
• Accomplishing Goals: Equip students with self-management skills using the SMART framework. 

The student activities are standards-aligned and flexibly designed for 45–60 minute sessions. La Golda was designed by UnitedHealthcare and Discovery Education to inspire the healthiest generation yet, through interactive resources available on the LaGolda SEL Resources by UnitedHealthcare channel in Discovery Education’s K-12 learning platform. Let students fall in love with the fun animated community of LaGolda and jump right into exciting SEL explorations that set students up for a lifetime of social connection and success. 

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2022/01/iste-certification-01.html

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

[I decided to make some new investments in my own learning this semester. One of the ways that I’m doing that is to try and become ISTE-certified. I’ve had a longtime relationship with ISTE. When we created the nation’s first graduate program designed to prepare a technology-savvy school administrator at the University of Minnesota (way back in 2003!), ISTE was one of our most important partners in that work. I served on the initial advisory board for ISTE’s Standards for Education Leaders (back then, they were the NETS-A) and in 2016 I received ISTE’s global Award for Outstanding Leadership. I have worked with ISTE in a number of other service and professional learning roles and currently am serving as one of ISTE’s Community Leaders. All that said, I never have worked toward ISTE certification until now. I’ll be sharing my thoughts and experiences as I go through the certification program this year…]

I’m part of an awesome cohort. We represent a variety of job roles and responsibilities across multiple states and several countries, including both P-12 and postsecondary. I already can tell that I’m going to learn a lot from the other members of my cohort. We meet face-to-face every few weeks and also engage together in a number of asynchronous learning activities. So far we’ve met once and have been assigned to some small groups.

Our early work has been focused on grounding ourselves in course expectations, assignments and deadlines, and introducing ourselves to each other and the ISTE Standards for Educators. ISTE also has invited us to reflect on what it means to be part of an online professional learning network.

One of our first activities asked us to reflect on some of our understandings, strengths, and challenges related to the ISTE Standards for Educators. Here’s some of what I wrote:

I orient toward design thinking so am probably most confident with Standards 5a, 5b, 5c, and 6c because they emphasize the (re)design process. I spend a lot of time redesigning lessons and units with P-12 teachers, instructional coaches, and principals. I also have done a great deal of program design work at the university level, including recently redesigning our principal licensure program at CU Denver. I’m also confident in Standards 2a and 2b because I’m a school leadership professor who works with school leaders all around the world on designing and implementing new visions for learning and implementation structures for deeper learning, greater student agency, more authentic work, and rich technology infusion. As a university faculty member who tries hard to integrate technology into my teaching, I think I’m doing a decent job with Standards 6a, 6c, and 7a. My students tell me that they appreciate my efforts in this area. Finally, I’m a strong user of social media tools and online platforms and have a large global professional learning network (so Standard 1b!).

As a university school leadership professor, I don’t deal too much with data, data privacy, copyright, coding, computational thinking, and other more IT-oriented and/or media literacy concerns. Accordingly, Standards 3c, 3d, and 6b aren’t really in my day-to-day domain. Standard 7c is hard for me simply because I have seen technology systems used too often to reinforce low-level factual recall, procedural regurgitation, and assessment and I am adamantly opposed to those traditional practices dominating the deeper learning practices that we should be implementing instead.

…

I’ve been using ed tech since the mid-1990s. I’ve seen a number of learning and productivity technologies come and go, so I think I’m a pretty savvy consumer of new tools and their affordances (or their lack thereof) and the mindsets that underlie them. I’m familiar with and am a regular user of a larger number of digital tools, including some old standbys like RSS and blogs that I think still have value in today’s social media-oriented world. I’m an unafraid and unapologetic learner and am looking forward to living in community with – and being stretched by – the other folks in this certification cohort.

My primary implementation struggle is time. As a research university faculty member who also happens to care deeply about my teaching, those often conflict with each other in regard to institutional expectations and reward systems. Now that I’ve been promoted to Full Professor, I’m hoping that I can spend more time on what I want, not what the university wants!

I’m looking forward to my continued learning and growth in this certification process as I work to strengthen my understandings of learning technologies and meaningful classroom integration. I’m also interested in the logistics of how ISTE structures and facilitates this course and am hoping to pick up some good tips for my own blended instruction. 

More reflections from me in the weeks and months to come!

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2022/01/3-big-questions-to-ask-after-a-visit-from-an-outside-helper.html

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

I’ve been blogging about bringing in outside helpers…

• Some good questions to ask before hiring an outside helper
• Put your outside helpers to work

Here are three big questions to ask AFTER a visit from an outside helper:

1. Are we tangibly better as a result of their visit? [or did we just waste everyone’s time?]
2. Can we actually do something differently as a result of their visit? [or did they just take the money and run?]
3. How do we know? [what evidence do we have?]

Great times to ask these questions include about a week after the visit (when the gloss has worn off) and also about 3 to 6 months after the visit (when the work should be well underway)…

How much of your work with outside helpers has resulted in tangible, concrete, actionable, beneficial changes in your school(s)? If not much, why is that?

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/1077371645/schools-scramble-to-feed-kids-as-supply-chain-issues-persist

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

Supply chain disruptions have upended school nutrition programs. Everything from food to forks to kitchen staff aren't showing up when expected, leaving schools scrambling to feed kids healthy meals.

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1076208557/school-offers-full-tuition-to-58-students-after-a-scholarship-award-message-erro

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

A test of Central Michigan University's new messaging system "inadvertently" told 58 students they won an award that provides full tuition, room and board, money toward books and supplies and $5,000.

(Image credit: Al Goldis/AP file photo)

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach

We believe in thanking our sources! This post was sourced from the following blog/website: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2022/01/podcast-with-actionable-innovations.html

The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!

I had the pleasure of talking with some folks from the Actionable Innovations community last week. Here are the show notes and the video is below. Thank you, Lucy and Don, for the invite!

Happy viewing!

Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know. Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do! Yours In Education! Time To Teach