Author Archives: Rachel Pierson

April, Already?

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The teachers and I here are just coming off our first “real” break since Christmas. It was a delightful time for me, a whole week off (almost…still had grad school work to do), and time to visit parents, brothers, sisters, and my nephew. I missed meeting my new nephew by only a couple days! My husband and I look forward… Read more »

Praxis II Middle School Content

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As if March wasn’t busy enough with presenting at the Metro Milwaukee Teachers’ Conference, I applied for Wisconsin licensure, too, and have to take the Praxis II in Middle School Content Knowledge test. D-Day is tomorrow! I hope my studying will pay off! I’m taking the computerized version, which will be something new for me. Prayers would be appreciated, thanks!

The Un-Conference Experience

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Last weekend, I gave up my usual Saturday-of-fun to drive over to Madison, WI, and attend my first EdCamp. It was my first experience with the un-conference style, and I fell in love with it. What is an EdCamp? It’s a grassroots type of organization for people who have an interest in all things education. In attendance last weekend were… Read more »

Final Project for “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen

There are some days where being an innovator is really cool. There are other days where you attempt to try something new, and it fails miserably. This is one of those “fails miserably” stories. In the second quarter, my 6th grade students devoured Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. I knew this book was going to grab my readers, as it has done… Read more »

Reflections: Third Quarter Slump

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Hi readers. Loads and loads going on here in my world. I’m going through the highs and lows of the third quarter slump. For those of you non-teachers who may be reading this, the third quarter (at least, at our school) seems to be the longest stretch of the school year, with not very many breaks. We had MLK, Jr…. Read more »

Mystery Skype

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Even before I had read Pernille Ripp’s article in Learning & Leading with Technology magazine this month (one must be an ISTE member to see the latest digital issue), I signed myself up on the Skype Classroom site (as well as a few Google Docs that had floated around Twitter) to participate in what is called Mystery Skype. The premise… Read more »

3B4T Chart

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Hi readers! I recently spent two days in the Wisconsin Dells with around 650 other educators, trainers, and tech enthusiasts for the Midwest Google Education Summit. It was great! I’m still decompressing, and hope to have a blog post on it in the near future. One of the things I’ve taken from many of the sites, blogs, and resources I’ve… Read more »

Claco – A Lesson-Sharing, Binder-Collecting, Collaboration Tool

I first stumbled across the concept of Claco on my PLN of choice, Twitter. I began a conversation with someone who was asking about Chromebooks and EdTech. What a fortuitous discovery! Claco, or Class Connect (as it was previously called), is a mashup of a few different types of sites that have recently come into popularity. Have you used Pinterest?… Read more »

What is Digital Literacy?

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This is a post I wrote for one of my grad classes in Digital Literacy. I am proud of it, so I thought I’d share it with you! Digital literacy includes multiple facets. The digital world around us is evolving at every moment, and the ability to be flexible in analyzing the relevancy of the selected media is a skill… Read more »

About Me (Part 2)

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Hi everybody! School has started again, and we have two days down… boy, am I exhausted! But, it’s a good exhausted. Our classroom has been abuzz for the last two days. I “stole” an idea for my room this year from one of the blog posts over at Edutopia. The biggest thing I pulled from that post was the concept… Read more »