One of the best (and by "best" I mean "most practical") parts of grad school has been the opportunity to share (and steal) ideas from classmates, classroom teachers and professors. If you're anything like me, though, you're brain can't possibly remember all of these marvelous activities and certainly not recall just the one you need when you need it. One teacher suggested starting a filing cabinet (the real, physical kind) where each activity gets a manila folder. On the folder you can write notes about the last time you used the activity and thoughts about how to adapt it, improve it, etc...
I like this idea. I like the idea of keeping the physical worksheets themselves there to flip through and I like the ability to take that file with me into the classroom and make notes as I'm using it. But so far I haven't started it. I collect these worksheets, and then they never make it home. Or they make it home and get "filed" in the pile next to my desk.
What I really need is a place, not for the activity itself, but for the *idea* of the activity.
I've been using a nifty productivity utility called "Things" to manage my daily tasks, classroom assignments, etc... and am beginning to get into the groove of inputting new tasks and then (this is the hard part) CHECKING Things regularly to see what's coming up and what's missing.
While reading about Things, I've seen that other people also use Things to collect ideas, not just concrete "To Do's, which gave me this idea: I've created a Project called "Teaching Ideas" and then a series of tags: Productivity, Character Development, Comprehension, Vocabulary, Technology, Communication, Cooperation, Writing etc... As I hear of a cool classroom activity, I put it in the Teaching Ideas project with a brief description and then tag it with all the appropriate tags. So, for instance, in class a fellow student talks about epals.com (a secure site where students from around the world can connect with one another). While in class, I open up Things on my iPhone, go to Teaching Ideas and create a new Item called: EPals.com: global pen pal. I then tagged it with "communication", "cooperation," "writing."
I like this idea. I like the idea of keeping the physical worksheets themselves there to flip through and I like the ability to take that file with me into the classroom and make notes as I'm using it. But so far I haven't started it. I collect these worksheets, and then they never make it home. Or they make it home and get "filed" in the pile next to my desk.
What I really need is a place, not for the activity itself, but for the *idea* of the activity.
I've been using a nifty productivity utility called "Things" to manage my daily tasks, classroom assignments, etc... and am beginning to get into the groove of inputting new tasks and then (this is the hard part) CHECKING Things regularly to see what's coming up and what's missing.
While reading about Things, I've seen that other people also use Things to collect ideas, not just concrete "To Do's, which gave me this idea: I've created a Project called "Teaching Ideas" and then a series of tags: Productivity, Character Development, Comprehension, Vocabulary, Technology, Communication, Cooperation, Writing etc... As I hear of a cool classroom activity, I put it in the Teaching Ideas project with a brief description and then tag it with all the appropriate tags. So, for instance, in class a fellow student talks about epals.com (a secure site where students from around the world can connect with one another). While in class, I open up Things on my iPhone, go to Teaching Ideas and create a new Item called: EPals.com: global pen pal. I then tagged it with "communication", "cooperation," "writing."
Now, next time I'm looking for an activity to help students practice their writing skills, I can just search Things by the tag "writing" and it should return "ePals" as one of my options.
Now, I just need to attack the pile by my desk...
