All Blog Posts (129)

I can’t believe we are more than halfway through our TRC year!  I am so proud of my teachers and the amazing projects they have created thus far.  One of our best projects was in our 5th grade class using our new iPads.  Every year since I can remember (I did it when I attended 5th grade in Hesston over 20 years…

I attended a Kansas Business Teachers Conference in Wichita last fall and came home with a new, exciting grading tool called Flubaroo.  My teachers told me, “It’s life-changing”, and “I can now spend more time watching Law and Order”. 

What is Flubaroo?  Flubaroo is a tool found in Google Docs.  It…

NASSP Names Digital Principal Award Winners

NASSP is proud to announce the three winners of the 2012 NASSP Digital Principal Award, a new award recognizing school leaders who are harnessing the…

Join the posse and ride into Dodge City, Kansas on February 11, 2012 (Saturday). Even though, Wyatt Earp, “Bat” Masterson, Gunsmokes’ Matt Dillon will not be present, the members of the Kansas Discovery Education Leadership Council will be along with a special guest that will soon be announced in a national press release on Digital Learning Day. Those interested, ride into town and meet us at Dodge City Middle School (2000 6th…

Have you ever had students who conduct great research, take notes, and complete an outline only to find they cannot write the paper because they don’t understand everything they’ve written down? Helping students with their first research paper can sometimes be a daunting task, but 5th grade teacher, Jessica Mossman,…

TRC Program-Wide Awards Include:

• TRC Teacher of the Year (New in 2012!)
• TRC Facilitator of the Year
• TRC Administrator of the Year
• Best in Show: TRC Lesson Plan
• Best in Show: TRC Teaching Video
• People’s Choice: TRC Teaching…

Presentation: Friday, January 20, 2012

"Creating and Sharing Digital Content"

Butler County Co-op

Augusta Kansas

Time: 1:00 – 2:30 P.M.

Creating and Sharing Digital Media (PowerPoint)…

One of the biggest benefits we’ve seen with

adding technology into our classrooms is the advantage of student choice. …

Looking forward to visits:

8:00-8:30 S. Kinderknecht's room

8:30-9:00 D. Collin's room

9:00-9:30 A. Schuette's room

9:30-10:00 T. Murdock's room

10:30-11:00 T. Rall's room

11:00-11:30 J. Ostmeyer's room

11:30-12:30 T. Rall's room 

This is a daily routine unless teachers are working on projects and request devoted time.  

12:30-1:00 lunch

1-4 working on other assignment but remain in building and available…

As educators, we are challenged with offering learning opportunities that engage students natural desires to inquire and discover the who, what, when, where and why.  As I look back at the work that we have done here at Colby Middle School in 2011, we have explored successful learning solutions that have veered away…

Want to motivate students?  Try adding stop-motion animations to your lessons.  Stop-motion movies are animated movies where objects are physically moved from frame to frame to create the illusion that the object is moving on its own.  Clay is often used in stop motion because of its ease of repositioning. …

Ready to give it a WHIRL and read the latest blog in cyberspace? The mission of the WHIRL blog is to inspire educators with free, web-based resources, strategies and ideas that enhance instruction and contribute to the construction of powerful learning environments for all students. The authors and contributors to…

As the instructional coach for my building I have the…

Students in Heather House's 5th grade class at Franklin Elementary wanted to assist some forgotten puppies by creating posters to help them get adopted from the Humane Society in Wichita, KS.  After students read a story in their Treasures book about a girl who relied on a therapy dog to help her function, they…

I have been flip teaching by having a student use the livescribe pen to demonstrate the math concept and post it on edmodo.  Students love it.

This seems like a simple revelation, but I have discovered that I can take attendance on my iPad while projecting a bell ringer on the Promethean board in my classroom.  I have an app for PowerSchool loaded on my iPad as well that allows me to navigate the room while monitoring and documenting student progress.

Today I would like to share a tool that maybe some of you have used, but we have found a unique aspect that makes it a great resource for the iPad.  The tool I would like to share is Create-a-Graph.  If you have never used this site, it is a great way to create graphs for any project.  With graph making and reading…

When introducing ideas on mobile learning  can be  frustrating to some educators. Especially when they know what the future of classroom learning should look like and have limited resources to provide a working classroom model. Realizing now that it is not the idea of mobile learning that they are trying to replicate. It is the ideas on how to provide those tools or resources to make it equitable for all students to have the same opportunities.

Over the past year, I have conducted…