Tag Archives: education

Start Me Up: Dispatch from Startup Weekend Washington DC EDU

Over the weekend, I had the privilege to attend a portion of the second Startup Weekend event focused on education. Startup Weekend is itself a startup organization that organizes gatherings of developers, designers, business and marketing experts, and investors to … Continue reading

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Writing for Your Peers Makes Your Writing Better Than Writing for Your Professors

A fascinating tidbit of research from Cathy N. Davidson’s recent column in The Chronicle: Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged … Continue reading

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Smart Twenty-Somethings (and Matt Damon) Explain Federal Education Policy in Electoral Politics in 8 Minutes

Pro tip: whenever you get overwhelmed by the over-achieving TFAers surrounding you who were born far later in the 1980s than you were, just remember that Ezra Klein, Washington Post blogger/reporter, is only 27, and he moonlights as an MSNBC … Continue reading

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Classroom Vision: Language is a Toolkit of Power

So one of the pieces of TFA pre-school work that I find really exciting is the “vision” we’re expected to lay out for the year. This is your classroom manifesto, your big call-to-arms for what you want your students to … Continue reading

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Read, Write, Rock Gets Preliminary Green Light (That Means iPads in Mr. Pratt’s Class!)

I met with my principals today and got spectacular news. They’re going to let me use some of the Gholson cache of iPads for implementing the Read Write Rock project for daily instruction. I owe a lot of folks thanks … Continue reading

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Crowd-Sourced Funding Gap for the Critical Middle

Middle school is a critical time for students, particularly those in high poverty schools. The stats are stark: by 4th grade, students in low-income communities are 2-3 grades behind higher-income peers; graduating seniors in low-income communities average 8th-grade achievement levels … Continue reading

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The Areas of Our Expertise (30 Days of Creativity, Day 28)

When I told the colleagues and contributors I used to work with through Science Progress that I was leaving my job to teach, they’d usually assume that I was headed to a science classroom. “I wish,” I’d say, “But I … Continue reading

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ShowMe Text Features (30 Days of Creativity, Day 27)

So a few weeks ago, I got invited to beta text a nifty little iPad app called ShowMe. The developers bill it as the pathway to creating your own Khan Academy. And indeed, the functionality is deceptively simple. Essentially, ShowMe … Continue reading

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Bad Jokes for Distracting Middle Schoolers

Sometimes middle schoolers get really wound up, and there’s nothing rational you can say to them to calm them down. Distracting them with really awful jokes works for derailing arguments from time to time. To whit: green_four_wheels A social studies … Continue reading

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Tomorrow is the Last Day of School (30 Days of Creativity: Day 16)

(Obviously copyright infringement…leave a comment record company, if you’d like a take down…)

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