Here we go for roundup number five. Hope you're finding them useful, and if you have something that should be on my radar, please send it my way!
PEARDECK TUTORIAL
Was discussing class with a teacher last week who was trying to figure out the best way to keep tabs on student performance on the fly, and asked if they used Peardeck. They said not really, because they found it sort of intimidating, so I asked if they'd find a tutorial video helpful. Since they said yes, thought some others might benefit from a quick explainer for how to turn an existing slide deck into a formative assessment tool that will simplify your life immensely. Let me know if you have questions about other tools!
THE BEST BOOK I'VE READ THIS SCHOOL YEAR
Far and away, it's "I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom," which captures all the cultural tropes of the last 8 years or so into one highly entertaining cross-country caper. Review here.
FUN WITH WORDS
Can't get enough of this list compiled by Ricki Heicklen that identified word pairs comprised of synonyms that nonetheless have divergent meanings. (Note that some are NSFW but there's a toggle switch up top to turn those off if you use this in class discussion.)
BACKGROUND MUSIC
Some wonderful nerd has put together a playlist of all the classical music referenced in the novels of Haruki Murakami, if you're looking for some background noise.
GENETIC DISCRIMINATION?
Intriguing post up at The Atlantic with the title "Genetic Discrimination Is Coming for Us All," which might make for a worthwhile discussion on the idea of unanticipated second-and third-order effects of innovation.
MORE ACCIDENTAL OOPSIES
Speaking of unanticipated effects, you might also get some mileage out of this article which asserts that the iphone killed punctuation through suboptimal UX design.
"By hiding the comma and period behind a symbol switch, the iPhone keyboard encourages the biggest grammar fiends to be lazy and skip punctuation"
HOW TO "GRADE" DISCUSSION
Came across this lovely little tool called "Dialogic," which enables teachers to track, analyze, assess, and offer feedback on classroom discussions. If you're a socratic-seminar sort of teacher, this may be extremely useful for you.
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