Using Two Mice with Your Mac

This is a quick share, but I wanted to share this quite easy and helpful accommodation for the Mac. In my classroom we have a student who does not use his right hand. Now, most of his aides (and myself) all use our right hand, so this creates some logistical issues when we try to help him (and try to do it quickly and seamlessly). So I thought I'd plug in a mouse to the other side of the keyboard, just to see if it would work with both mice at the same time, and... it worked!

It reminded me of drivers ed, where you use a car that has two brake pedals.

Hope this helps some folks out there!

Jigsaw - a teaching strategy for the deadpool

I'm a huge fan of Doug Buehl, as evidenced here, and this is his writing on the Jigsaw Strategy.

If you follow his guidelines for this strategy than you will find success in your classroom, no doubt.

However, I rarely have been involved in or have seen this strategy used as nothing more than a quickie way to brainstorm, or have students "teach the class," which is unfortunately not usually the result.

I've been witness to seeing this strategy failing *over* and over and over again. Sadly, I've seen it fail in my own graduate classes most! I have never seen a teacher or professor use this strategy effectively. If you are one of these teachers, than you are very, very special. Teachers often think that "gee - students can teach the class!", so they hand out a reading and break kids up in groups, and have them become "experts" on that chapter, so they can share the high points of that chapter. While I think that putting students in a facilitator roles is a super-important thing to do, which is why I also like the idea of students creating tutorials, don't expect the end user to learn something.

The process of having the student present their chapter or "expertise" in front of everyone is the real benefit in this strategy- it's to the presenter. The process of the facilitator role is where the learning happens, which for this strategy, leaves all of the other groups in the lurch.

Almost every time I see this strategy implemented, it's in a poorly thought out, last minute attempt to get kids (or adults) to disseminate a whole lot more information that they probably can take in at one time.

Maybe this should be added to the teaching "deadpool."  Handle with caution.

Google Apps in the Class: Text Coding in Google Docs

One of my favorite reading and comprehension strategies is the text coding approach from Doug Buehl's Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning. I love this strategy because it forces the student to pause and think about what they are reading about, therefore, helping them with meta-cognitive skills as well as their reading comprehension.

What occurred to me recently is that text coding can be done quite nicely in the Google Docs environment, and can even take on a new life when you share the document with 2 or 3 students and they code simultaneously. This way- students are also becoming cognitive of how other students are reading a document. Very nice.

In this, the second "episode" of Google Apps for the Class, I show how text coding can be done in Google Docs. Hope it's helpful!