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Ed Tips

How to Write a Great Lesson Plan, Part 2: The How

This is part 2 of our 2 part series on lesson planning. In Part 1: What & Why? we went over the first steps of lesson planning: title, audience, objectives, and materials. Now that we’ve got the foundations laid, we&...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

Classroom Management = Classroom Culture

Other than you, the only person who is more aware of your weaknesses in classroom management is the worst kid in your class. He or she knows where your blind spots are, how to distract your attention, and exactly how to push yo...
by Nathaniel Stewart
 
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Ed Tips

How to Make Reading Difficult Texts More Accessible in the Classroom

There was a time when literacy was a rare and prized skill. These days the ability to read isn’t so rare but it’s not so prized either. We use technology to distill great amounts of information down to the tiniest bite-size...
by Eric Lewis
 
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Ed Tips
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How to Write a Great Lesson Plan, Part 1: What & Why?

 So, for whatever reason, you need a lesson plan. Maybe you’re a volunteer teacher in some far-flung corner of the world trying to help young people grapple with English for the first time, maybe you’ve been hired ...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips
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Gamification versus Game Based Learning in the Classroom

With warm weather approaching, we see students interest begin to drift toward playgrounds and summertime. Luckily, more and more classrooms have been employing methods, including game based learning and gamfication, to encourag...
by Amy Sevegny
 
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Ed Tips

Great Teaching: Concept Checking Questions

Anyone who’s taught a class has been there: you give the test, or say “go” after providing instructions, and stand by shocked and dismayed at how little of what you’ve painstakingly explained actually go...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

Free Trick to Boost Test Scores? Try a Dose of Failure!

Want a fool-proof way to boost test scores?  Tell your students it’s okay if they fail.  Tell them it is a natural part of learning, and that everyone fails sometimes.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but studies show i...
by Jessica Wheeler
 
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Ed Now

One Laptop Per Child Stumbles and Regains Footing through “One Education” Program

Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Similarly, give children laptops they have laptops, but teach them to use computing effectively and they develop useful skills. One Laptop ...
by Jonathan Davidson
 
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Ed Tips
Children at a rural school in coffee country, Nicaragua

What Rights do Kids Have?

I’ve been learning about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and have been inspired to apply it to my thinking about education. Working in Nicaragua, I’ve often been frustrated that the teaching of skills or subjec...
by Sara Van Note
 
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Ed Tips

Mind Blowing Plant Math; Fantastic, Free Fibonacci!

Want to unlock the secrets of the universe in your math class? How about for free? You can’t help but get ideas for great free math and science lessons from watching these videos. Just showing the videos themselves in cla...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

Meditation Helps Teachers Regulate Emotions

Feel stressed out and anxious?  Overworked and under-appreciated?  You must be a teacher! Being teachers, it is especially important that we are empathetic and aware of how our students are doing and feeling – someth...
by Jessica Wheeler
 
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Ed Tips

Opting Out is Not an Option, Part Two

Part two in a two-part series!  Last week we looked at a powerful technique popularized by educator and author Doug Lemov called “No Opt Out” that is used whenever a student is either unable or unwilling to provide the cor...
by Nathaniel Stewart
 
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Ed Tips
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Make an Educational Cartoon in Any Language!

It’s no secret that there’s a shortage of educational materials in the languages of many of the countries we work in. This becomes doubly difficult when we’re teaching students whose native language uses non-R...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips
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Math Without Breakdowns: A Spoonful of Sugar Makes the Algebra Go Down

The fear of manipulating or even looking at numbers and symbols is so prevalent that researchers have a name for it – math anxiety. By Richardson and Suinn’s (1972) definition, math anxiety equals “feelings of...
by Tiffany Tsai
 
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Ed Tips
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A Kind Gesture …

Ever wonder why we gesture when we talk?  As teachers, we are perhaps more aware of our style of speaking, and whether we gesture when we speak.  Don’t worry – your gestures aren’t a distraction.  It has be...
by Jessica Wheeler
 
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Ed Tips

Ed Tip: Opting Out is Not an Option

Part 1 in a two part series. Stay tuned for Part 2 next week! Can you imagine going through your entire academic career and never once answering a question correctly in a class? For many children in schools around the world thi...
by Nathaniel Stewart
 
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Ed Tips

Teacher Silence: The Holy Grail of Student Centered Learning

Student centered learning is all the rage these days, and we agree whole-heartedly. Silent elicitation is an amazingly (free!) useful technique for reducing “Teacher Talk Time” as well as keeping students at the cen...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips
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The Challenge

It could be said that the single hardest challenge educators face in every setting is how to effectively teach learners of differing levels. Student disparity can take many forms: ability levels, language barriers, home support...
by Nathaniel Stewart
 
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Ed Tips

The Power of Resilient Thinking for the Global Classroom

Whether you teach villagers, islanders, city dwellers, or mountain tribes, your students are bound to come across different cultures in the span of their lives. They will have to understand and assimilate the ideas of the other...
by Tiffany Tsai
 
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Ed Tips
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Teachbuzz: Lessons for Anywhere!

It’s a very exciting day for us. Teachbuzz, our resource site designed to provide teachers all over the world (even the poorest places on earth) with fantastic free lesson plans, is ready for the public! We’ve been ...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips
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How to Manage Your Most Precious Free Resource: Time

I think it’s fair to say that every teacher’s most precious resource is time. Further, it’s perhaps the only resource that a teacher in a developing nation has in comparable (if not greater) abundance as one i...
by Nathaniel Stewart
 
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Ed Tips
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Using Exercise to Realize Your Students’ Potential

Stuff You Should Know Movement motivates, enhances memory, and improves learning. This means that it enhances your power as an educator, and your students’ potential as students. Maybe you’re sitting back and saying “duh,...
by Jessica Wheeler
 
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Ed Tips
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Five Fave Games (and Two Tricks) for Teaching English

I use games and songs as much as possible in my classroom. Here are some of my (and my students’) favorite games, from ESL classes in the U.S. and Nicaragua. “Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar”: A classic for many o...
by Sara Van Note
 
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Ed Tips

Free Video Series Explores Human Learning

Born To Learn is a thought provoking new series on how humans learn, and why we should reorganize schools to compliment that learning. From the site: Your brain is the planet’s most powerful learning machine. But our current...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips

Cheating: Is it a Question of Cultural Difference? If So, is it OK?

Firstly, let me start out by saying that Chinese students work their butts off. They don’t have free time, or hobbies, or sports, or what you would call a social life. All of this is sacrificed at the altar of their futur...
by Deb Myers
 
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Ed Tips

China/America: Stop Looking Over Each Other’s Shoulders

  A back-and-forth is developing wherein China looks to the West and the West looks to China for ideas about education reform. This is not necessarily a bad trend, as I believe we should both be open to learning from each ...
by Deb Myers
 
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Ed Tips
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Open Equal Free Nerds Out at TEDx Phnom Penh

There’s nothing we love more than sharing ideas to make education better around the world.  So, we jumped at the chance to talk about the future of education with people in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Open Equal Free’s E...
by Travis Thompson
 
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Ed Tips

Ten Free Things to Teach in Computer Class Besides Typing

Sure, typing is important.  It’s how we interact with these amazing machines called computers.  However, typing is the sort of skill that can be introduced and then practiced through any number of exciting activities. Y...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips
Often, failure can do more for a student than success.

Failure is Awesome!

Failure is awesome. No matter what we do with grades in the next century, increasing our students’ resiliency to failure is crucial. Success in learning and everything else is largely a product of our failure immunity sys...
by Michael Jones
 
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Ed Tips
 

Learning About Learning

How does memory work and how is that we can learn without even knowing it? Are there really limitations on learning, or do we just use them as excuses?   Learning about Learning View another webinar from Nerd Nite Siem Rea...
by Michael Jones
 
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