Be It Resolved to Delight, Puzzle, and Astound in 2009

Listen to 2009 is here from Listen and Learn Music, a site with music for schools home and play. We need to sing more! I love starting sessions about teaching in medicine with The Drug Song(language caution).

Website of the Month

The Green Monkey Homes website was created by 6th grade students at Jesuit Middle School of Omaha as the culminating project for a green energy unit. Students researched and created the content (including the quizzes and pictures) on their pages.


Technology Find of the Month

Anki is a spaced repetition system (SRS). It helps you remember things by intelligently scheduling reviews, so that you can learn a lot of information with the minimum amount of effort.


Stories From the Field

Tourmaline Bear shares A quote for all the teachers in the world. I concur with her resolution whole heartedly.

Collablogatorium says “…a fantastically simple idea can be of a huge impact for people. The Flickr Love Project is such an amazing example of a connector.”

A Thanksgiving Memory is a great example of active learning from a Sidetracked Mom’s childhood.


Thinking about Teaching and Learning

Using the wider web to encourage critical thinking is a series of exercises designed for classroom or seminar use, aimed at sixth formers and first year undergraduates. Intended to develop students' analytical abilities, these resources use the Web – which offers unparalleled opportunities for comparative study of different types of writing and argument – as source material.

Thomas West writes about music, but his ideas cross disciplines. He says,

“When I inevitably have a student tell me that a song they are striving to play on their musical instrument is too hard, I always give them the perspective that "hard" and "easy" are completely subjective terms relative to one's level of experience with any given task.” in his article The Myth of Difficulty and

"Many students of music go through their entire career as a member of a public school music ensemble and never achieve true independence of ability on their instrument. They can only play their part if someone else is playing along with them, and even then there are still parts of the music that they have to either leave out or water down. Can an average music student ever develop true mastery?"

The Reading Workshop reports “Rambunctious (energetic, boisterous, lively) Reading is a method of reading aloud where students work in pairs to improve their reading.”

Britannica Blog in Study Skills ought to include an understanding of memory says “Schooling in the United States—especially beginning around the sixth grade—requires that students do a certain amount of memorization. Sometimes the demands on memory are overt and narrow, as when students are given a spelling list to learn, and other times the memory demands are implicit and broader, as when students are asked to compare a poem they are reading in class to one that they read a week ago.”

Your Teacher Links submitted three articles that I am pleased to share Teaching test taking skills doesn’t mean you are teaching to the test , Scissors and Glue and Glitter, Oh No!, with resource links for projects and Teach Success Part II, a great article about preparing students for assignments.

Crosswords for fun promotes “Word puzzles such as crosswords are a great example of an active learning strategy. They assist students in developing their general knowledge, research, concentration and logic skills. They can be an individual or a group activity, which is great in the classroom. Once they have finished the puzzle, they will really feel a sense of achievement; and realize they have either remembered information they already knew or have learned something they didn't know before.”

Perspicacious.org from Alaska shares How to teach children/anyone why we have seasons.


Educational Research

Brain Blogger says, “It used to be accepted as fact that boys are naturally better than girls in math. With time, what was taken as a fact has become an assumption that boys are more inclined to do math than girls.

Britannica Blog reports on the importance of checking the accuracy of second hand research in Buyer Beware.


Student Resources

The Wise Curve shares 4 strategies to improve your memory and 70 tips to become a super student.

Learn-gasm found the 100 best blogs for fashion and design majors.

Tutor.fi suggests Six steps for success in school.

Richard Shelmerdine writes about the Link Method of improving memory.


Next Carnival
Thank you to all the people who submitted articles this month. Submit your blog article to the next edition of active learning blog carnival using our carnival submission form before February 6th.