Edmonds Digital Learning

In the third grade, I was involved in an uncomfortable relationship with my teacher's chalkboard. Speaking without raising a hand, accidentally tearing a blue ditto worksheet, or any number of other relatively minor infractions led to her drawing a small circle on the board. The dissident student was called to the front of the class and instructed to put her/his nose in the center. If the incident was deemed especially heinous, the student would be called to the board before the circle was drawn so the teacher could sketch it just high enough that the perpetrator would be forced to stand tip-toed to serve out the sentence. To this day, I'm not a fan of the smell or the feeling of chalk. Starting my teaching career, chalkboards made way for whiteboards and such punitive procedures were, thankfully, deemed barbaric. Nonetheless, whiteboard marker tips were notorious for getting pushed in and, if erased by human hands, the boards started looking nasty alarmingly quickly. ...

Hello, all you Google Classroom users! If you've signed into Classroom in the past few weeks, you'll have noticed a slew of changes. As a matter of fact, the entire interface looks different and, for the most part, these updates improve the overall experience for both teachers and students. As Aladdin would say, Classroom has entered, "A whole new world!" So, let's fly through some of these updates and don't you dare close your eyes! First, what's all the buzz about Topics ? Organizing assignments into Topics will make life way easier for students. You no longer need to have multiple Classrooms for each subject area. Instead, use one Classroom and create a Topic for each subject. Each Topic will have its own heading that you can drop your assignments into. No longer will you have a long stream of assignments dating back to September, now assignments will be broken into sections that will be easy for students to find! Cool, but I can't find t...

Students Create Podcasts to Communicate "Claims and Arguments" Nancy Branom, English teacher, at Edmonds-Woodway High School understands that there are multiple ways to communicate ideas and share a powerful message.  With the help of Librarian Karen Rautenberg, Branom’s Writing Workshop class engaged in the art of storytelling by creating their own podcasts.   Allowing students to use technology in this way produced some impressive results.  “The students found great interviews, they used music creatively, and all the kids said it was challenging to put it all together, yet realized how powerful the spoken word is -- so different than writing,” states Branom.  It was obvious walking into the classroom that students clearly took ownership of their learning and worked hard to tell their story.   Take some time and listen to this student made podcast about immigration . Branom was willing to take a risk with this project and it paid off.  ...