Read Report as of August 15, 2015

For the time being, I'm going to call my round-up of articles and blogs I read recently the "Read Report".  If you have better ideas, let me know.

First up is a post by Heather Wolper-Gawron on how to host a twitter chat with your school community.  This isn't just for the faculty, but for parent's and students.  I found it really interesting, and I might approach my principal about doing one for our school.  I think we would start "easy" with maybe one a grading period.  I may do a few on my own for my students.

Next, Alice in WonderTech discusses creating an environment that discourages plagiarism.  She makes some good points about how getting students started in class lessens the probability that they will try and take the cheating shortcut of copy and paste (not always though).  I found with the 11th-grade research project that I had less plagiarism this time around where we did most of the work in class.

Over at a Meaningful Mess, Andi McNair was talking about the question of "What If?"  As educators, particularly at the beginning of a school year, we often as ourselves that question, but in the negative:  What if I do it wrong?  What if the students make things difficult? 

Well, what if we flipped the script and focused on the positive side of "what if?":  What if I do it right?  What if the students make it the best year?

Tired of standarized style of assessments?  Take a look at John Spencers Ten Alternative Assessments.  It's a pretty straightforward list and won't take you long to check out.