Bohemian AppCity

Who else remembers DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) from their school experience… Okay, you can all put your hands down now! DEAR can be more than Drop Everything and Read, it can also Drop Everything and Reflect . The reflection process solidifies learning, give facilitators a gateway into learner's understanding, as well as, teaches others and invites a continued conversation about the content at hand.  John Dewey is quoted as saying, “We don’t learn from experiences, we learn from reflecting on experiences.” There are many great options to have learners reflect on their learning, especially those when you amplify them with Asynchronous Collaboration  through reciprocal reflection and peer feedback. Schoology  Discussions allow learners to post a reflection  on a given question(s), while allowing others in the course to respond and reflect on the explanation of learning.  (Remember that you can hide learner replies from one another until an original submission has been

"Literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy we're living in today." "In today's world, being literate requires much, much more than the traditional literacy of yesterday." The  4 Cs: Communication, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Creativity are all life skills  that will allow our learners to think of solutions to problems that exist in the unforeseeable future. These 4 interconnected and critical skills are broadly applicable to every subject area at every grade and age level. The 4 Cs can be applied through technologies both analog and digital.  Check out the linked video/article feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section on:  Why the 4 Cs are important for our kids and how we can support their usage in the classroom! In this video/article combination, you'll hear one learner's story of how the 4 Cs and 21st Century Literacy has impacted his learning. This kid gets it! Check out the linked fantastic,

As everyone looks toward the testing season, remember the key role of creativity in making lasting meaningful memories tied to content for our learners. Being able to tie facts (semantic memory) to those more personal connections (episodic memory) will increase learners chance of remembering content for the long haul and make it more meaningful.   Clips is a new app that allows you and learners to create short and just-in-time videos that can be used standalone or as part of a larger project. We all know that creating is the peak of Blooms Taxonomy, with Clips learners are creating while having to reflect, summarize, analyze and evaluate information that they learned in class. One of the best parts, it’s really simple! Open the app, point the camera, shot your video; with the click of a button you can add closed captions that are created just by you taking the video. Clips is a great way to augment or modify (SAMR) your summarizing strategy for a lesson or assignment.   ICT

The 1 iPad classroom can be confusing to teachers, which I understand. You have 1 device and X number of students. VR in education is also a confusing thing for some people. Which I also understand. It's a confusing, futurist scenario that can seem like kids playing on a device.  However, putting them together just makes sense! Allow me to explain myself. Google Expeditions  is a VR experience that allows you the opportunities to drop yourself just about anywhere around the globe in order to have rich experience exploring! We've been talking about teleportation since the advent of The Jetsons and Expeditions seems as close as we've gotten so far!  In fact, look at all the experiences and places you can transport yourself to with Google Expeditions!  This spreadsheet link gives you a list of Expedition locations, their correlating panoramas that you can stop at, along with possible lesson materials. Each expedition has interactive overlays that will allow you or your stu

The new Schoology Assessments tool was released on Sept. 20, 2017, and it has so many great features held within it! I want to take the time to highlight some of the key transformative features that you'll see in each of the question types in Assessments. Let's start with a common question type: Multiple Choice First, you can make standard Multiple Choice questions that will automatically grade, but that could be pretty boring! You can step up your game a few different ways! Use the  Rich Text Editor  which appears when you click into the field to apply formatting such as bold and italics, or to insert images or tables. Hover your mouse over the individual icons to view the tooltip explaining the function of each button. Rich Text Editor You can also add Distractor Rationale  feedback, which will give a learner and you insight into why the answer that was chosen was incorrect. Check  Distractor Rationale  under the Options to add rationales to each answer option.

We all dread the four letter word of education: TIME! I want to talk a little today about how you can get more out of your time with your kids, how to plan to hit multiple skills and domains at once. This post is the start of a series of posts that I have in mind, on how you can multiply the number of skills that you are working on with your kids as you plan for lessons. I am going to make a few assumptions: You believe that you are teacher of the whole child, not just your content area. (If you don't believe this please take some time to evaluate your position!) You believe that all skills, like content, can and should be taught.  It is our job to teach these skills in school, for example the 4 Cs (you know the 4 Cs, right? 😏, just in case they are listed below.) Communication Collaboration Critical Thinking Creation Let's say you want your kids to do a research project. When lesson planning you could simply through a rubric together or find one online, hand it