Teacher Appreciation week

It is said that a good teacher is like a candle, it consumes itself to light the way for others.

Teacher appreciation week is an annual celebration aim at recognizing the efforts and the impact of teachers on our children and community at large. It is an opportunity for Head of schools/principals to recognize exemplary teachers in the system and also for parents and students alike to say thank you to teachers who have touched their lives in one way or the other.

The truth is that most of us would like to do so but we are at lost for how to say thank you, apart from saying thank you.

There are some sites that offer ideas and practical tips on how to say thank beyond saying it. Such as

Teacher appreciation site

Do you need ideas and materials for Teachers’ Day, Teacher Appreciation Week or 

Teacher Appreciation Day

, whether in the United States or elsewhere? You are most welcome to this unique website devoted to teacher appreciation. We strongly believe that teachers play a key role in every individual’s development and evolution. Showing appreciation to them is therefore a fair reward and an act of gratitude that will also make you feel better. 
Along this site we shall not only make suggestions on how to show your teacher appreciation and onteachers gifts like teacher appreciation card but we’ll also collect contributions from our visitors and provide information on teacher appreciation activities such as Teachers’ Day in those countries where such celebrations exist and on different teacher quotes. Visit http://www.teacher-appreciation.info/

Education World also posted on

Sixty-Five Ways to Recognize Teachers During Teacher Appreciation Week and All Year Long

Some great ways to celebrate teachers all year long including the following:

• Host a "Thank You Breakfast" during Teacher Appreciation Week, or during another time of the year when they least expect and most need it.
• Whenever you are able, send a personally written -- preferably, handwritten -- note of thanks or appreciation to teachers "caught" caring or who pulled off terrific classroom projects. Send at least a dozen of those notes each week. Keep a copy for the teacher's file; later in the school year you will be able to draw on those positive moments as you compose teachers' evaluations.
• Call for a "Jeans Day." All teachers can dress down on that day. Or make this a special reward for teachers who have gone above-and-beyond; have stickers printed that say "I earned this Jeans Day." They can wear the sticker on whatever "Jeans Day" they choose.
• For more ideas visit http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/recognizing_teachers_all_year_long

 To all the teachers out there, Thank you for all that you do to improve education.

Girls in ICT Day 2015

Girls in ICT

International Girls in ICT Day  aims to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider careers in the growing field of information and communication technologies (ICTs). International Girls in ICT Day is celebrated on the 4th Thursday in April every year. On International Girls in ICT Day all stakeholders are encouraged to organize events with the vision to empower and encourage girls and young women to consider studies and careers in the growing field of ICTs. (girlsinict.org). 

This year it was celebrated on the 23^rd of April, 2015. To celebrate the event , a one week ICT training based on the Microsoft digital literacy curriculum was organized for high school girls from nine schools in Ijebu-ode, Ogun state. These girls were trained on basic computer opereations and terminologies, productivity programs like MSword. Excel and PowerPoint, digital lifestyle, the internet and WWW, among others.   At the end of the training the Microsoft digital literacy certification test was taken and passed.  The event also provided the opportunity for the girls to interact and make friends with girls from other schools. Special thanks gooes to Exquitec Education Technology, EasyClick Computers, Institute of Enterprise Development for making the event a possibility. Hope to have larger number of girls involvement in the next event  

Social Media in Education

A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom

                                   

  A lot of us are used into using social media just for socializing but are in the lost about how these tools can be integrated into the classroom. we know most of our students are media literate but how can their knowledge of social media be used to help their learning. Vicki Davis answers some of this in her blog post.

Is Social Media Relevant? Take the Quiz

Before we talk social media, let's talk about the relevance of social media by taking a quiz. Which of the following is most likely to be true?

• ☐ Should we teach letter-writing in the classroom? Kids need to write letters and mail them. But what if they become pen pals with strangers and share private information with them? What if their letter gets lost in the mail and the wrong person opens it? Are we opening up a whole dangerous world to our students once they mail letters to others? Surely students will send thousands of letters through the mail in their lifetime.
• ☐ Should we teach email in the classroom? Kids need to email other people and should know how to title a subject. But what if they email someone bad? What if they accidentally send it to the wrong person? What will we do? And are we opening up a whole dangerous world to our students once they email others? Surely students will send thousands of emails in their lifetime.
• ☐ Should we teach (dare we say it) social media in the classroom? I mean, they don't have to learn microblogging on Twitter -- you can do that in Edmodo, right? You can have a private blog or put them on Kidblogs or Edublogs instead of letting them post long status updates on Facebook, right? Are we opening up a whole dangerous world to our students once they are writing online and posting comments to each other? Surely students will post thousands of status updates, pictures, and blogs in their lifetime.

The Social Media Myth

The myth about social media in the classroom is that if you use it, kids will be Tweeting, Facebooking and Snapchatting while you're trying to teach. We still have to focus on the task at hand. Don't mistake social media forsocializing. They're different -- just as kids talking as they work in groups or talking while hanging out are different.

You don't even have to bring the most popular social media sites into your classroom. You can use Fakebook or FakeTweet as students work on this form of conversation. Edublogs, Kidblog, Edmodo, and more will let you use social media competencies and writing techniques. Some teachers are even doing "tweets" on post-it notes as exit tickets. You can use mainstream social media, too.

12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now

1. Tweet or post status updates as a class. Teacher Karen Lirenman lets students propose nuggets of learning that are posted for parents to read.
2. Write blog posts about what students are learning. Teacher Kevin Jarrettblogs reflections about his Elementary STEM lab for parents to read each week.
3. Let your students write for the world. Linda Yollis' students reflect about learning and classroom happenings.
4. Connect to other classrooms through social media. Joli Barker is fearlessly connecting her classroom through a variety of media.
5. Use Facebook to get feedback for your students' online science fair projects. Teacher Jamie Ewing is doing this now, as he shared recently.
6. Use YouTube for your students to host a show or a podcast. Don Wettrick's students hosted the Focus Show online and now share their work on a podcast.
7. Create Twitter accounts for a special interest projects. My studentMorgan spent two years testing and researching the best apps for kids with autism (with the help of three "recruits"), and her work just won her an NCWIT Award for the State of Georgia.
8. Ask questions to engage your students in authentic learning. Tom Barrett did this when his class studied probability by asking about the weather in various locations.
9. Communicate with other classrooms. The Global Read Aloud, Global Classroom Project and Physics of the Future are three examples of how teachers use social media to connect their students as they collaborate and communicate.
10. Create projects with other teachers. (Full disclosure: I co-created Physics of the Future with Aaron Maurer, a fellow educator I first met on Twitter.)
11. Share your learning with the world. My students are creating anEncyclopedia of Learning Games with Dr. Lee Graham's grad students at the University of Alaska Southeast. The educators are testing the games, and the students are testing them, too.
12. Further a cause that you care about. Mrs. Stadler's classes are working to save the rhinos in South Africa, and Angela Maiers has thousands of kids choosing to matter.

This post was ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: FEBRUARY 27, 2014 | UPDATED: FEBRUARY 19, 2015 by EDUTOPIA  FOR THE FULL PUBLICATION CLICK HERE http://www.edutopia.org/blog/guidebook-social-media-in-classroom-vicki-davis

How would you define “Limited Technology”?

Recently I read an article on Mind/Shift titled Think Big: How to Jumpstart Tech Use In Low-Income Schools. The title did get my attention and so I decide to read the article, I am always interested in adding to my bank of ideas aimed at helping low income schools. The article was about  Daisy Dyer Duerr, Prek-12 Principal of St. Paul Public Schools in St. Paul, Arkansas. While it did make an interesting read and I would readily recommend it, my focus of interest was at the point where the technologies available at her school were listed. 

When Duerr started at St. Paul Schools three years ago, ………… The technology available to teachers was limited to a·         few smart boards,·          two computer labs with shared PC desktops
·         and a laptop cart with 10 Mac Books still in their boxes. 

What is amazing about this is that, this is meant to be a public school with “limited technology”. Where I come from or live and work a school that boast of such access to technology would not be referred to as one having Limited technology but a school to be desired, cause most the schools  having such access or more to technology are mainly private owned schools with high paying fees.

Most public schools in my region , if at all can only boast of a computer Laboratory with a few desktop computer, to which students have little or no access to, except for computer science classes when they need to be taught about computers. Most of our public classrooms are built without the plan for technology use. In most of my interventions with this schools, a power generating set and extension wires where used to bring electricity to the classroom because no functional sockets where available. 

So the questions is “how would you define Limited Technology” I guess the definition would vary depending on what part of the world you live in, from country to country and region to region even in the same country. Based on my experience, I would define Limited technology as a few computers seated on some computer tables, lock away in a computer laboratory. 

Recently, I have been asked by a school to help integrate technology into their learning system. What technology do I have to start with?

•         2 desktop computers
•         13 mini laptops ( 8 not functional, have one technical problem or the other)

Is this limited technology? Yes and No. Yes if you are counting hardware, but no, if you are considering ways in which this few computers can be used in the classroom. I have come to know that having technology in schools doesn’t translate to using technology in the teaching and learning process. I believe limited technology is not how many computers or laptops or devices a school has but in the limited ways this devices are used in the teaching and learning process. I know of schools that can boost of over 100 devices but yet the students have little access to them. That to me is limited technology.

 It is not in ‘how many we have’ but in ‘how well we use what we have’. “It’s not about what you have, it’s about being awesome,” Duerr says. 

Building Bridges

“For too long, information, opportunities, and resources have been constraints; they need to be the bridges.” 

                                                                               ― Sharad Vivek Sagar

“The wisdom of bridges comes from the fact that they know the both sides, they know the both shores!” 

― Mehmet Murat ildan

I haven’t always being an educator, started out with a university degree in Industrial Design and then went on to do a Master’s degree in Visual Arts but I have been one to love school and the classroom and didn’t mind teaching (conducted a lot of tutorial classes while at school). My detour into the field of education happened on a particular afternoon, I was flipping channels on TV and happened to tune into a station showing a video on “Chemical Bonding” ( still remember that clip till date). It was amazing to me how a concept that seemed so abstract to me, then, was brought to life by the use of multimedia, and I imagined the difference it would have made to my grades if only I had access to such educational media, in addition to our textbooks. So I decided I need to do something to help students learn better using the skills I had acquired in my previous fields of experience. Thus, my return back to the classroom, to study this time around, Educational Technology, even to the Doctoral level.

Every child, regardless of parental income or background can and should benefit from the gains of technology-enhanced learning. Teachers and educational institutions need to provide life transforming opportunities to their students, preparing learners for the challenges of the 21^st century, providing in every possible way equal chances to succeed both in school and beyond.

What are we doing to bridge the gap between education and the global work force? Knowing it is all about what skills are required for any given vocation. I do encourage all of you to submit your comments, links and share how you are changing your classroom and how access to technology in your classroom (no matter how limited) is making a difference in how students experience and engage in school.