Awesome Seating Chart App

Every teacher knows that a seating chart is a cornerstone of class management.

Seat assignments can help both your chatty students and your shy ones...learners who are independent  and learners who need more attention...the ones with vision impairments or ADHD. They all could benefit from a sweet spot in the class.

Happy Class is a super cool and easy web tool that can help you quickly create a seating chart. It automatically places students who don't like each other, who can assist each other, or who need to be at the front of the room.

The free version allows 1 class set up and the $15 version allows unlimited classes. Awesome time saver and sanity saver!

Teaching With Videos

With the new trend of "flipping your class", it's become popular for teachers to create videos for their students. I am not crazy about class flipping, but I do recognize that videos engage students more than other teaching methods. Here are 4 video sites that you should consider using in your classroom:

1. Ted Ed - These aren't just TED Talks; these are videos related to various subjects with quizzes attached

2. Thinkr TV - Awesome YouTube videos of fascinating thinkers and inventors

3. Blubbr - Creates quizzes that can be placed intermittently throughout videos

4. Flipped High School - Powerpoint videos of Clintondale High School teachers explaining specific skills

"Look, I teach Math, not Reading!"

"Look, I teach Math, not Reading!" I remember this frustrated exclamation from a colleague after hearing that all teachers in our district would be required to establish silent reading time in their classes. "Reading is Fundamental"..."Drop Everything and Read"...We've all seen these slogans and initiatives, but they are often met with resistance from non-Language Arts teachers. My colleague's frustration was that teachers who don't specialize in reading should focus on their content area and not be delayed by some bogus reading activities. While I didn't agree and I understood that reading was the foundation of learning, I still didn't truly understand the mechanics behind reading deficiencies until I saw these videos from Rick Lavoie.

I've gotten chill bumps from watching them because even though I teach students to read, I now realize that I've discouraged some of them and misunderstood their difficulties. These video clips are a MUST SEE for every educator -- not just in Special Education or elementary. The video was made in 1989, so it looks dusty, but trust me, it will rock your socks. I'd love to hear what you think about it.

My English Teacher FAIL moment

I use acronyms often in class to help my students remember elaborate ideas. This morning, I wanted to create an acronym for "reading strategies" so that students can quickly remember what to do when they don't understand what they're reading. I found a cool tool called Acronym Creator that automatically makes acronyms for up to 9 words.

After combing through the hundreds of acronyms that were created, I found one I liked: CLASPERS. I thought, "Oh, this is great! To clasp something is to grab or catch it just like when they finally understand a text, they're catching it!" Brilliant, just brilliant.

Then, my brilliant self looks for a picture of a clasp to go on the new CLASPERS poster and what does Ms. Brilliant find? A strange pointy white muscle. Hmmm, I thought, a clasper must be like the paw of a fish. I research further and I find this!

Um, yeah, I probably don't want to use a fish p*nis in my classroom. Not too brilliant.

So, anyway, I created a different one called BACKWARDS. I think it may work well. What do you guys think? 

Will students finally have fun with grammar?

Grammar can be a pain, especially when you're up at 3 a.m. slashing every grammar error with your red pen. Students are often frustrated by the numerous and confusing rules of grammar and many teachers have found it difficult to teach grammar in an interesting way. NoRedInk.com aims to help make grammar fun, while also giving teachers an easy way to target students' deficiencies individually.

Created by English teacher Jeff Scheur, No Red Ink lets students set up a profile of their favorite interests such as sports and music, then uses those interests in their practice sentences. It's free (for now) and easy to sign up. I think it'll be good for quick homework or a learning station activity.

Refresh the Research Paper

Card Catalog...Microfiche...Book Index. If you have used any of these things, you are officially old school. You remember researching in libraries, combing through dusty books, handwriting all of your notes. Though tedious, this research process helped produce millions of brilliant curators and scholars.

However, today's research process is different--quicker, more colorful. As a teacher, you still should expose your students to elements of the old research process such as notetaking, but don't miss the great new tools that can make a research project fun and multi-dimensional.

Take a look at Qwiki and Storify for example. These free web tools allow users to cull information from all over the web such as YouTube, Yahoo News, Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr. Students can find their topics in videos, news articles, photos, tweets and produce a sleek video to demonstrate that they understand their findings. I'm trying it this year. How about you?

Digital Citizenship Resources

photo from Anchorage School District

You may be interested in these resources I found while developing a course called "Digital Citizen."

The course description is "to develop the etiquette, research, networking, and writing skills needed to build a positive online reputation vital for future college and career endeavors."

I may post the complete lesson plans later, but for now, see how you can work these sites into your class discussions of digital citizenship.


Digital Citizenship Courses
Internet Detective
My Footprint


Email Etiquette
101 Email Etiquette Tips
Colleges/Employers Are Watching
Act as college admissions officer
College Pospects Are Being Watched

From Troll to Trusted: How to Comment Online
Commenter to Columnist
Flamers, Lurkers, and Mentors 

Copyright and Plagiarism
Creative Commons

Protect Reputation
Internet Wayback Machine
Online Reputations Video

Digital Language/Literacy
Internet Vocabulary

Digital Security
Website Dangers
Email Cyber Threats 
Spot Phishing
Phishing Examples
Facebook Scams
Security on Mobile Apps
Wi-Fi Security

Sexting
Pressure to Sext
Risky Online Relationships
New York Times Sexting Article

Cyberbullying
Text Bullying
Facebook Bullying

Website Evaluation
Test This Site's Validity
Website Evaluation Tips
Website Evaluation Tips 2
Website Evaluation Tips 3

Conducting Internet Research
Strategic Searching
Web Search Handout
Advanced Google Search

Internet Predators
Criminal Case
Used Facebook to Lure

Standards-Based Grading

Remember in elementary school you received these long, detailed report cards that told your parents which skills you developed? However, in high school, all the skills in 1 class got blended in just 1 lump grade.

Well, if you've had your ear to the street, you've probably heard the wave of standards-based grading becoming trendier in high schools. After being inspired by Matt Townsley's descriptions of standards-based grading, I tried a form of standards-based grading for the past 2 years in my classroom in these ways:

1. I boiled my grades down to just 100%, 85%, 75%, 70%, or 50%, nothing in between (and yes, no zeroes; feel free to flame me for that in the comment section below);

2. I focused on teaching specific skills and then only grading those skills. So, for example, when a student turned in an essay, they may have received 3 different grades -- one for a grammar skill such as using semicolons, one for a style skill such as varying syntax, and one for a content skill such as rebutting an opposing view; and

3. I offered multiple retakes and no extra credit.

Alas, I'm still feel like I'm doing it ineffectively. If you want to try standards-based grading, check out Townsley's great description that compares it to traditional assignment-based grading. Let me know if you can fashion a better system than I have.

What Happens When Teachers Create Their Own Prof Dev?

Here's my proposal for an edcamp at my school. Any suggestions for improvement?

Before edcamp
Prepare teachers (in email or faculty meeting) by briefly explaining that they will experience a teacher-driven professional development session.  Teachers complete this "brainstorm sheet" and bring to session.
1. List 3 things you do well as a teacher.
2. List 3 problems that this school needs to tackle.
3. List 3 school-related tools, techniques, or subjects that you want to learn.

During edcamp

1. When entering, teachers choose a set of stickers that say “I want to learn” and 1 index card.

2. Describe purpose of edCamp

3. Explain rules of edCamp
   a. Share
   b. Respect
   c. Ask
   d. Leave when ready
   e. Stick to the topic

4. Explain backchannel with wiffiti.com

edcamp board

5. Teachers review their brainstorm sheet and, on their index card, they post a session that they want to lead & place it on the edcamp board. Possible sessions include:

a. Problems & Solutions

b. Best Lessons

c. Favorite Tools

d. Your Passion

e. What You Want to Explore Together

See example of topics here.

6. Teachers look at posted sessions and place an "I want to learn" sticker on the index card to show that they will attend that session. (We will try two 30-minute sessions this time.)

7. After attending sessions, teachers return for closing & backchannel review.

After edcamp

Show that you're an "Edcamp Champ" by jotting down how you used what you learned. Deposit note into the "Edcamp Champ" box in the mailroom. Prizes will be rewarded at next faculty meeting to randomly selected champs.

5 Hi-Tech Tools & 1 Low-Tech One That Will Wow Your Students

Here are a few new tools you can use in the classroom this year.

1. Clockwords Vocabulary Game

2. Spent, a simulation activity regarding minimum wage life

3. QR Codes in Education -- tool that uses cell phones

4. My Fake Wall and Fakebook allow students to create Facebook pages for characters. Remember, the characters don't have to be limited to literary and historical characters; for example, science students could create pages for elements. Here's a lesson plan to use.

5. Geocaching is great for teaching geography, history, or P.E.

6. Not into hi-tech? Don't worry. This low-tech idea of a "Curiosity Box" will add just as much rigor and funto your lessons.

So, how was your school year?

As teachers, we meet May and June with bittersweetness. On one hand, we are relieved for the summer vacation, but on the other hand we are often saddened by saying goodbye to our students.

Take a look at these 17 teachers' evaluations of the school year. Please comment on their sites if you had similar feelings. I think we can all relate to most of their sentiments.

1. MissTeacha does a student survey at the end of the year that really shapes her next semester. Take a look at her kids' interesting responses here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

2. This teacher at the "Thoughts on Teaching" blog gives a hard look at the school year and ponders changes for next year.

3. Jeff Utecht, a high school teacher in Thailand, posted his personal and professional accomplishments, failures, and goals for next year.

4. Ed consultant Angela Watson shares 8 things she learned this year in NYC middle schools.

5. Donalyn Miller, a renowned teacher who guides her middle schoolers to read 40+ novels per year, gets introspective about her last day of school here.

6. You'll be impressed by the collaborative, tech-heavy final exam that Shelley Blake Plock gives his Western Civilization class.

7. Josh Stumpenhorst accomplished a great deal with his middle school Language Arts students, including a school-wide lip dub, innovation day, and standards-based grading.

8. This Spanish teacher tackles her biggest challenges this school year, especially with projects.

9. Humanities teachers, Stephen and Chad, set goals at the beginning of the year. Here and here they revisit them to see how/if the goals were accomplished.

10. This California teacher shares what his students thought about their blogs this year.

11. To friend or not to friend your students on Facebook this summer? Leslie Healey answers here.

12. This teacher decided to wrap up his year by documenting how he spends his summer. Check out every hour he spends preparing for the next school year.

13. Look at how adorable these kindergartners are on their last day of school.

14. Brent Vasicek and Mary Blow share some tips for us to help improve our new semesters.

15. Finally, don't miss this heartfelt letter from a teacher to her students on the last day of school.

Students Track Their Own Vocabulary Progress

As teachers, we constantly require our students to learn new vocabulary and sometimes we struggle with getting students to actually learn the new words instead of just memorize the new words.

Vocabulary.com and VocabSushi.com look like cool tools for helping students learn new words and keep track of their progress.

On the sites, students are quizzed on various words by using context clues and each of their mistakes and correct answers are recorded onto a chart for them review.

The words on the Vocabulary.com site seem to be best for elementary and middle school students, while VocabSushi has various levels from middle school to graduate school.

In order to see their progress on either site, students have to be answer approximately 30-40 questions. If you want to grade students, perhaps require them to email you a photo of the screen that shows their score. (It's easy for them to take a photo or screen capture. Just press the "print screen" or "prt sc" button on the keyboard and then go into Paint or a Word document and press "Paste".)

I think this may make a good independent learning center or anchor activity.

How to Pronounce Any Word

I remember my students first reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and painfully stumbling over the Nigerian names and words. Sure, I helped them pronounce the words I knew or allowed them to make their best guess using phonics, but it still sometimes left them frustrated.

If you, too, are teaching a novel with foreign words, introduce your students to Forvo, a site that pronounces words in nearly any language in the world. Just type any word in the search engine and turn up your speakers to hear the correct way to pronounce it.

Vocabulary Soap Opera

High school teacher, Nancy Barile, recently shared a cool way to engage students in vocabulary. Her students create a weekly soap opera that uses 14 vocabulary words. They even videotape the scenes and show to other classes. She says,

Since this assignment was so successful, my students plan to continue writing and filming High School Uncut. I am hoping that they develop their characters more thoroughly and that their dialogue and situations get more sophisticated as they continue the process. Most importantly, I am looking forward to increased scores when my students take the PSAT tests next year. I truly believe this lesson will have powerful effects that will endure long after high school.

Click her link to see more details.

Teachers & MBA Students Hiring Ghostwriters?!

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article by a ghostwriter who earns $66,000/year writing essays, theses, proposals, college admissions statements, etc. for undergrad and graduate students. I must be naive to be stunned by his account, but one sentence really struck me. He says that he earns so much money writing because "colleges are utterly failing the ESL and the hopelessly deficient."

What say you?

What do you think about his article? What do you think about your accomplishments as a teacher (or lack of accomplishments) with ESL students and functionally illiterate students?

Here's a link to the article or read below.

The request came in by e-mail around 2 in the afternoon. It was from a previous customer, and she had urgent business. I quote her message here verbatim (if I had to put up with it, so should you): "You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?"

I've gotten pretty good at interpreting this kind of correspondence. The client had attached a document from her professor with details about the paper. She needed the first section in a week. Seventy-five pages.

I told her no problem.

It truly was no problem. In the past year, I've written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won't find my name on a single paper.

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.

I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I've worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.

In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company's staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.

You would be amazed by the incompetence of your students' writing. I have seen the word "desperate" misspelled every way you can imagine. And these students truly are desperate. They couldn't write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school. They really need help. They need help learning and, separately, they need help passing their courses. But they aren't getting it.

For those of you who have ever mentored a student through the writing of a dissertation, served on a thesis-review committee, or guided a graduate student through a formal research process, I have a question: Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research? How does that student get by you?

I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I never struggle to find work. And as my peers trudge through thankless office jobs that seem more intolerable with every passing month of our sustained recession, I am on pace for my best year yet. I will make roughly $66,000 this year. Not a king's ransom, but higher than what many actual educators are paid.

Of course, I know you are aware that cheating occurs. But you have no idea how deeply this kind of cheating penetrates the academic system, much less how to stop it. Last summer The New York Times reported that 61 percent of undergraduates have admitted to some form of cheating on assignments and exams. Yet there is little discussion about custom papers and how they differ from more-detectable forms of plagiarism, or about why students cheat in the first place.

It is my hope that this essay will initiate such a conversation. As for me, I'm planning to retire. I'm tired of helping you make your students look competent.

It is late in the semester when the business student contacts me, a time when I typically juggle deadlines and push out 20 to 40 pages a day. I had written a short research proposal for her a few weeks before, suggesting a project that connected a surge of unethical business practices to the patterns of trade liberalization. The proposal was approved, and now I had six days to complete the assignment. This was not quite a rush order, which we get top dollar to write. This assignment would be priced at a standard $2,000, half of which goes in my pocket.

A few hours after I had agreed to write the paper, I received the following e-mail: "sending sorces for ur to use thanx."

I did not reply immediately. One hour later, I received another message:

"did u get the sorce I send

please where you are now?

Desprit to pass spring projict"

Not only was this student going to be a constant thorn in my side, but she also communicated in haiku, each less decipherable than the one before it. I let her know that I was giving her work the utmost attention, that I had received her sources, and that I would be in touch if I had any questions. Then I put it aside.

From my experience, three demographic groups seek out my services: the English-as-second-language student; the hopelessly deficient student; and the lazy rich kid.

For the last, colleges are a perfect launching ground—they are built to reward the rich and to forgive them their laziness. Let's be honest: The successful among us are not always the best and the brightest, and certainly not the most ethical. My favorite customers are those with an unlimited supply of money and no shortage of instructions on how they would like to see their work executed. While the deficient student will generally not know how to ask for what he wants until he doesn't get it, the lazy rich student will know exactly what he wants. He is poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.

As for the first two types of students—the ESL and the hopelessly deficient—colleges are utterly failing them. Students who come to American universities from other countries find that their efforts to learn a new language are confounded not only by cultural difficulties but also by the pressures of grading. The focus on evaluation rather than education means that those who haven't mastered English must do so quickly or suffer the consequences. My service provides a particularly quick way to "master" English. And those who are hopelessly deficient—a euphemism, I admit—struggle with communication in general.

Two days had passed since I last heard from the business student. Overnight I had received 14 e-mails from her. She had additional instructions for the assignment, such as "but more again please make sure they are a good link betwee the leticture review and all the chapter and the benfet of my paper. finally do you think the level of this work? how match i can get it?"

I'll admit, I didn't fully understand that one.

It was followed by some clarification: "where u are can you get my messages? Please I pay a lot and dont have ao to faile I strated to get very worry."

Her messages had arrived between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Again I assured her I had the matter under control.

It was true. At this point, there are few academic challenges that I find intimidating. You name it, I've been paid to write about it.

Customers' orders are endlessly different yet strangely all the same. No matter what the subject, clients want to be assured that their assignment is in capable hands. It would be terrible to think that your Ivy League graduate thesis was riding on the work ethic and perspicacity of a public-university slacker. So part of my job is to be whatever my clients want me to be. I say yes when I am asked if I have a Ph.D. in sociology. I say yes when I am asked if I have professional training in industrial/organizational psychology. I say yes when asked if I have ever designed a perpetual-motion-powered time machine and documented my efforts in a peer-reviewed journal.

The subject matter, the grade level, the college, the course—these things are irrelevant to me. Prices are determined per page and are based on how long I have to complete the assignment. As long as it doesn't require me to do any math or video-documented animal husbandry, I will write anything.

I have completed countless online courses. Students provide me with passwords and user names so I can access key documents and online exams. In some instances, I have even contributed to weekly online discussions with other students in the class.

I have become a master of the admissions essay. I have written these for undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs, some at elite universities. I can explain exactly why you're Brown material, why the Wharton M.B.A. program would benefit from your presence, how certain life experiences have prepared you for the rigors of your chosen course of study. I do not mean to be insensitive, but I can't tell you how many times I've been paid to write about somebody helping a loved one battle cancer. I've written essays that could be adapted into Meryl Streep movies.

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.

With respect to America's nurses, fear not. Our lives are in capable hands­—just hands that can't write a lick. Nursing students account for one of my company's biggest customer bases. I've written case-management plans, reports on nursing ethics, and essays on why nurse practitioners are lighting the way to the future of medicine. I've even written pharmaceutical-treatment courses, for patients who I hope were hypothetical.

I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it's hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I'd say education is the worst. I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

As the deadline for the business-ethics paper approaches, I think about what's ahead of me. Whenever I take on an assignment this large, I get a certain physical sensation. My body says: Are you sure you want to do this again? You know how much it hurt the last time. You know this student will be with you for a long time. You know you will become her emergency contact, her guidance counselor and life raft. You know that for the 48 hours that you dedicate to writing this paper, you will cease all human functions but typing, you will Google until the term has lost all meaning, and you will drink enough coffee to fuel a revolution in a small Central American country.

But then there's the money, the sense that I must capitalize on opportunity, and even a bit of a thrill in seeing whether I can do it.

And I can. It's not implausible to write a 75-page paper in two days. It's just miserable. I don't need much sleep, and when I get cranking, I can churn out four or five pages an hour. First I lay out the sections of an assignment—introduction, problem statement, methodology, literature review, findings, conclusion—whatever the instructions call for. Then I start Googling.

I haven't been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don't know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there's Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I've taken hundreds of crash courses this way.

After I've gathered my sources, I pull out usable quotes, cite them, and distribute them among the sections of the assignment. Over the years, I've refined ways of stretching papers. I can write a four-word sentence in 40 words. Just give me one phrase of quotable text, and I'll produce two pages of ponderous explanation. I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph.

I've also got a mental library of stock academic phrases: "A close consideration of the events which occurred in ____ during the ____ demonstrate that ____ had entered into a phase of widespread cultural, social, and economic change that would define ____ for decades to come." Fill in the blanks using words provided by the professor in the assignment's instructions.

How good is the product created by this process? That depends—on the day, my mood, how many other assignments I am working on. It also depends on the customer, his or her expectations, and the degree to which the completed work exceeds his or her abilities. I don't ever edit my assignments. That way I get fewer customer requests to "dumb it down." So some of my work is great. Some of it is not so great. Most of my clients do not have the wherewithal to tell the difference, which probably means that in most cases the work is better than what the student would have produced on his or her own. I've actually had customers thank me for being clever enough to insert typos. "Nice touch," they'll say.

I've read enough academic material to know that I'm not the only bullshit artist out there. I think about how Dickens got paid per word and how, as a result, Bleak House is ... well, let's be diplomatic and say exhaustive. Dickens is a role model for me.

So how does someone become a custom-paper writer? The story of how I got into this job may be instructive. It is mostly about the tremendous disappointment that awaited me in college.

My distaste for the early hours and regimented nature of high school was tempered by the promise of the educational community ahead, with its free exchange of ideas and access to great minds. How dispiriting to find out that college was just another place where grades were grubbed, competition overshadowed personal growth, and the threat of failure was used to encourage learning.

Although my university experience did not live up to its vaunted reputation, it did lead me to where I am today. I was raised in an upper-middle-class family, but I went to college in a poor neighborhood. I fit in really well: After paying my tuition, I didn't have a cent to my name. I had nothing but a meal plan and my roommate's computer. But I was determined to write for a living, and, moreover, to spend these extremely expensive years learning how to do so. When I completed my first novel, in the summer between sophomore and junior years, I contacted the English department about creating an independent study around editing and publishing it. I was received like a mental patient. I was told, "There's nothing like that here." I was told that I could go back to my classes, sit in my lectures, and fill out Scantron tests until I graduated.

I didn't much care for my classes, though. I slept late and spent the afternoons working on my own material. Then a funny thing happened. Here I was, begging anybody in authority to take my work seriously. But my classmates did. They saw my abilities and my abundance of free time. They saw a value that the university did not.

It turned out that my lazy, Xanax-snorting, Miller-swilling classmates were thrilled to pay me to write their papers. And I was thrilled to take their money. Imagine you are crumbling under the weight of university-issued parking tickets and self-doubt when a frat boy offers you cash to write about Plato. Doing that job was a no-brainer. Word of my services spread quickly, especially through the fraternities. Soon I was receiving calls from strangers who wanted to commission my work. I was a writer!

Nearly a decade later, students, not publishers, still come from everywhere to find me.

I work hard for a living. I'm nice to people. But I understand that in simple terms, I'm the bad guy. I see where I'm vulnerable to ethical scrutiny.

But pointing the finger at me is too easy. Why does my business thrive? Why do so many students prefer to cheat rather than do their own work?

Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat.

You know what's never happened? I've never had a client complain that he'd been expelled from school, that the originality of his work had been questioned, that some disciplinary action had been taken. As far as I know, not one of my customers has ever been caught.

With just two days to go, I was finally ready to throw myself into the business assignment. I turned off my phone, caged myself in my office, and went through the purgatory of cramming the summation of a student's alleged education into a weekend. Try it sometime. After the 20th hour on a single subject, you have an almost-out-of-body experience.

My client was thrilled with my work. She told me that she would present the chapter to her mentor and get back to me with our next steps. Two weeks passed, by which time the assignment was but a distant memory, obscured by the several hundred pages I had written since. On a Wednesday evening, I received the following e-mail:

"Thanx u so much for the chapter is going very good the porfesser likes it but wants the folloing suggestions please what do you thing?:

"'The hypothesis is interesting but I'd like to see it a bit more focused. Choose a specific connection and try to prove it.'

"What shoudwe say?"

This happens a lot. I get paid per assignment. But with longer papers, the student starts to think of me as a personal educational counselor. She paid me to write a one-page response to her professor, and then she paid me to revise her paper. I completed each of these assignments, sustaining the voice that the student had established and maintaining the front of competence from some invisible location far beneath the ivory tower.

The 75-page paper on business ethics ultimately expanded into a 160-page graduate thesis, every word of which was written by me. I can't remember the name of my client, but it's her name on my work. We collaborated for months. As with so many other topics I tackle, the connection between unethical business practices and trade liberalization became a subtext to my everyday life.

So, of course, you can imagine my excitement when I received the good news:

"thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now".

Holy Smokes! Look at this kindergarten class!

Look at this kindergarten class engaged in authentic, project-based learning. They create an airport, they plan a bug's funeral, they become public speakers, they use an interactive whiteboard. (By the way, if you want to see the cutest, most hilarious thing, watch 4:00-4:13 in the video).

I don't remember my kindergarten class being this interactive, but maybe I'm wrong. Are most kindergarten classes similar to this? If you do anything similar with your young students, I'd love to hear about it in the comment section.

Turning Your Curriculum into a Game

Historical Scene Investigation (HSI) can turn your History class into a CSI episode.

If you teach History in high school, you are familiar with document-based questions (DBQs) or just having your students make conclusions from primary source documents. HSI has created 13 historical scenarios based on topics such as slavery, Jamestown, and the 1970s and framed them as criminal cases. Your students' job is to crack the case

by using the documents in the case file. It's really cool.

Another cool game to model your coursework after is Urgent Evoke. Urgent Evoke offers missions for students to complete and the missions are tiered into Learn, Act, and Imagine categories.

In the Learn category, the base level, students research the mission's topic. In the Act category, students apply the information they learned by creating some type of product such as an ad campaign or a garden. In the final level, the Imagine level, students synthesize everything and create a new idea based on that mission's information. For each level completed, students earn points.

Nearly 20,000 people took part in Urgent Evoke. Check it out!

Even if you don't teach Social Studies, how might you frame your curriculum as a puzzle to be solved or as a real-world application?

Do your students understand their digital footprint?

MyFootprintSD.org is an awesome site to help young people understand how online encounters may be harmful. This site would be great to show your students the do's and don'ts of interacting on the internet. On the site, teenagers share true stories and research about

• online bullying
• copyrights and intellectual property
• online cheating
• identity and credit card theft
• compromising photos
• tech addiction
• spyware and viruses
• online manners

You could also have your students create a similar site about their own online presence and activities. Click here to see what one teacher learned about her students' online behaviors after having them complete a project similar to MyFootprintSD.

Quickly Create Literacy Lesson From Any Article

LessonWriter.com is an awesome tool that allows you to quickly create the following activities for any article or story:

• graphic organizers
• vocabulary dictionaries and questions
• grammar examples and questions
• comprehension questions

LessonWriter essentially creates a worksheet, which many teachers don't appreciate because worksheets are not usually rigorous. However, I think that LessonWriter might be a good activity for your students to create assignments based on articles they read. This tool can be effective not only in Literature/Composition classrooms, but also in any classroom that reads texts from the web. Try it out and tell me what you think!

Awesome Writing Tool to Keep Your Elementary School Kids Busy This Summer

Here's a quick note about a tool I found through colleagues on Twitter. StoryMaker is an awesome tool for elementary school students to write adventurous stories. StoryMaker creates images and sentences to help students create zany tales. Try it out.