Recent articles
Learning Connections The Adventures of the 109'ers
Topics:
Wireless computer labs, the Internet, and blogging allow students to connect with the world, help foster curiosity, and create real-time learning. Students are empowered to look beyond the familiar, ask questions, and discover. This past school year, my fifth grade students, the 109’ers, were…
Learning Connections Testing Kurzweil 3000
Topics:
How can technology play a role in helping students with special needs learn? That’s the question a group of graduate students from Lesley University sought to find out. The graduate students, who were enrolled in a course called Technology and Special Needs, tested the…
Learning Connections Telling Stories with Video
Topics:
The English language arts, often conceived of as reading, writing, speaking, listening, performing, and thinking, are shifting in response to emerging technologies and the new literacies they inspire. As everyday literacy practices outside the classroom change rapidly,…
Learning Connections Tech Integration in Social Studies
Topics:
Web-based archives of primary source documents, student-produced podcasts and documentaries, content review games, and more provide social studies teachers with opportunities to integrate educational technologies into their teaching in student-centered ways. Yet, despite increasing access in…
Learning Connections Succeeding at Math
Topics:
Motivating students to want to learn math is a challenge many teachers face on a daily basis. As a teacher for a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating opportunities for at-risk children, I am challenged to instruct those students deemed unreachable. Integrating…
Learning Connections Podcasting 101
Topics:
When I first started working with middle school students to create a class podcast, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. That was in 2005, before iTunes became a podcast aggregator. Few student podcasts were available at that time, so I didn’t have anyone to rely on for support…
Learning Connections Mathcasts: Show-and-Tell Math Concepts
Topics:
Ten-year old Jessica perfects her fraction model while Ben gets ready to solve a geometry problem. Down the hall, excited third graders draw base-10 blocks to demonstrate place value. Today is mathcast day, and students can’t wait to share their thoughts about math and…
Learning Connections Let Them Choose Their Own Books
Topics:
Scholastic Reading Counts! is a software program that allows students to choose what they read from among 43,000 titles and enables teachers to test the students’ reading comprehension. Students can choose from a wide variety of topics, including animals, sports, science fiction, history, humor,…Learning Connections Global Collaboration
Topics:
This journey started when Bob Lyons read an L&L article written by Greg Taranto on “Internet Safety: A Whole School Approach” (March 2007). The article described the Internet safety survey given to all seventh graders at Greg’s school. At the time, Bob was…
Learning Connections Game Play Is Important for Learning
Topics:
How can you engage students and trick them into learning math? We did it using an instructional video game called DimensionM by Tabula Digita.
It’s no secret that kids love games. Today’s popular titles, such as World of Warcraft, Halo 3…