Education World has been around on the internet since 1996. This great website has been recognized with many awards for its timely offerings of lesson plans, professional development and technology integration for busy teachers and administrators. One valuable feature (among many!) of Education World is a search engine right on their home page that allows you to search for ONLY education related websites, which could be quite a timesaver as you may know if you have ever made a fruitless search on the internet that produced countless hits for non-education sites. According to the “about” information on their website, “Education World’s goal is to make it easy for educators to integrate the Internet into the classroom. With 98 percent of the nation’s public schools connected to the Internet, the need for a complete online educational guide is evident.”
Here’s a quick look at a few recent articles from three areas of Education World:
Professional development:
Teachers Must Earn Students’ Respect by Professor Joe Martin.
This article deals with an issue that is a concern of many teachers, mainly how to earn the respect of their students, or more to the point, how to have your students behave respectfully toward you as a teacher. It is Professor Martin’s contention that you cannot expect today’s students or parents to go along with the idea that a teacher is to be routinely respected without question. I am from and era of students that did follow that idea, so it is still surprising to me when I see behavior in today’s students that is less than respectful and is sometimes more than difficult. As teachers and educators, we have all learned that there can be many reasons for any particular student behavior in a classroom and we have become adept at helping students to move forward and become better able to become good citizens of this world. Frankly, I think today’s classroom teacher’s are amazing people, considering the situations they face on a daily basis. I truly appreciate the efforts that my co-workers put forth each and every day to help their students achieve in every way that they can.
That said, I appreciated Professor Martin’s suggestions for gaining respect in this article. It is good to be mindful that students who are meeting me are also “sizing me up” when we meet in the classroom. If I want a student’s respect I must assure him or her that I am going to teach something that is important and that I mean what I say. I especially agree with his contention that “as teachers, others should want what we have.” With this statement, Professor Martin is talking about good character, which in his words is “something money can’t buy, but everyone admires and respects –even if they don’t like you personally.” We all recognize the teachers who are genuine, and students do as well. Good food for thought here.
30 Ways to Show Students You Care! by Marty Kirschen
This article was written by a career television executive who became a teacher of autistic children in LA. I am a media specialist who sees pretty much all of the students in my building every three days. I appreciate the reminder here that it is important to show students that you do care about them, as I do not see them each and every day, but I do get to know them quite well over time. For me it is the hectic switch of classes every 45 minutes during any given day that can often hinder the “caring” process. Here are some of the “takeaways” that came to me from this article.
Professor Martin suggest that compliments are good, especially for students who do not get noticed positively very often. Acknowledge effort, try to remember little things about a student, take time for a student who is upset. Small gestures, such as rewards for no particular reason, accommodations to particular needs and personal contact with parents are all positive goals to have.
He also suggest that you show your caring in non-verbal ways, and that you should pause when ending a conversation with a child and make eye contact so that child knows you aren’t just rushing off to the next thing you need to do. Wow, this is an area I could work on. I often feel as if I have a stack of kids lined up for my attention, and it would be wonderful to actually attend to each student and give them the feeling that their needs were met.
The suggestion to “seek and express the good” was helpful as it reminded me to check in with the classroom teacher for more information about challenging students before a negative pattern develops with that student.
Lastly, I appreciated the suggestion that you should “allow your weaknesses to show”. I think that it’s always a balancing act with students, but I agree with Professor Martin that when your students know that you are a person who can make mistakes, just like them, it helps to create a climate of caring in your classroom.
Technology Integration:
‘s another timely website for busy teachers. What I like about it is that it has links to autumn-related websites for primary and intermediate grades that allow the students to do research and have fun. What better combination could there be?
Autumn Leaves had printable templates that helped students identify types of leaves while making their own booklet. Very nice. Awesome Autumn looks perfect for some guided leaf research with grades 3 and 4, and Primary Games-Fall Fun had interactive games and some cute fall stationery that you can print out and use for writing activities in your classroom. In addition to highlighting these websites, this column listed several more autumn related websites to visit and use.
FIVE for FUN by Doug Johnson
Doug Johnson had a column in the Technology Integration part of Education World, and his name immediately caught my eye as he is a well respected technology director (and media specialist at heart I believe) from my state of Minnesota. It was great to read his column and try out the free online image generators that he recommended for online “fun”. I am fortunate to have Adobe Elements in my computer lab, and I am able to at least introduce my students to some of the aspects of digital imagery and editing. Doug Johnson presents five FREE online tools that help you to do interesting things with digital images, that as he says in the end “perhaps it’s enough that they are just plain fun!” That said, it might be best to go directly to his article to read his take on each of the tools, but I will also list and link his favorites here:

Motivator allows you to quickly and easily create motivational posters. OK, I love this one and want to use it soon. I can think of so many ways to have students use this online tool. It allows you to upload photos and create your own motivational text to go along with it. If you want to put out a few dollars, you can also purchase a professional poster print online. It’s not terribly expensive either. Here is a photo from a trip I made this summer, just to try it out.
ImageChef is another multimedia offering. There are a variety of effects to achieve that have some similarities to the Fodey Generator.
Cameroid is great for all kinds of special effects from your webcam. I did try a few different images, but the alien head me seemed compelling somehow.
Use the BeFunky Cartoonizer to create cartoons from photos.
The Fodey Generator is similar to ImageChef and allows you to add text to your images. I had some fun creating a newspaper banner at this site. All of these websites are new to me, and I look forward to trying some of them out with students who will also benefit. Thanks Doug!
Lesson Planning:
Constitution Day
Ever since I read that it is a mandate for teachers to teach about the United States Constitution on September 17, I have felt a responsibility as a media specialist to be sure that I have provided materials for the teachers in my building to do just that. I already had some books, but I did buy a few more at different grade levels, and I also purchased two videos, one at the primary level and another at the intermediate level. So, it was really nice to see this column in Education World on Constitution Day, because if offers internet links to even more constitution related information that teachers can use to teach this topic, and it also reminded me to tell the teachers in my building about what is available to them. For the first time, I am also thinking that this would be a good lesson for me to introduce or teach at some grade level. Particularly with the election coming up in a few weeks, I think it’s just an excellent opportunity to expose our students to the current events of the day and the important foundations that our country is built upon.