Recent Articles & Posts
SmartBoard Notebook App for iPads!
One of the biggest complaints I have against a SmartBoard is that in many ways the nature of the tool reinforces a teaching and learning style where activity is centered at the front of the room, and everyone else watches. SmartBoard activities, as … [Read More...]
What TIES 2011 Tells Us about Education: iPads and Google
The recent TIES 2011 Conference in Minnesota is the state’s largest K-12 educational technology conference, with a record-breaking 3100 educators in attendance this year. This year, in particular, attendance and session data offer a great lens for … [Read More...]
Virtual School Symposium 2011 Reflections
Wow! At this point last year, right after Virtual School Sympoisum 2010, I remember debating with Jon Fila, co-founder of MoodleShare, the value of attending Virtual School Symposium 2011. In all honesty, I was nonplussed with last year’s event. … [Read More...]
Course Design Tip: Focus on Task over Tool
I was reading some articles from the #edchat Twitter feed tonight, and an article by Christopher Dawson on Adobe Premier talked about the importance of building classes around tasks rather than tools. He writes: "I’d rather see a class on … [Read More...]
Replace, Don’t Add
Teachers are often so overworked that adding something new is impossibly challenging. A colleague of mine, Richard Ognibene, once told me, “In the real world, when you put on a new coat, you take the old one off first. In education, we often just … [Read More...]
An Audience of Many
One of the easiest and most effective ways to increase the relevance of the writing process is to move away from the traditional method of having students writing solely for their teacher. Blogging is a fantastic way to connect students to a … [Read More...]
Great Teaching Quotes #1
For many teachers and students, today is the first day back to school. Over the weekend, I saw the following comment buried in the response to Charles Blow's op-ed piece "In Honor of Teachers." It was simply too good to let die there. In case it … [Read More...]
Five Tips for New Teachers
One of the worst nights of my life was the night before I taught my first high school class. I barely slept, the terror of the next day drawing closer through the night. The next morning, standing outside the door of the my first classroom, I almost … [Read More...]
Common Sense and Social Media
It's nice to see some common sense and forward thinking counter the inane laws popping up that ban educators from using social media with students and in classroom settings. A Missouri judge has suspended part of the state's new law banning teachers … [Read More...]
Why Banning Social Media is Misguided
Today, Dayton, Ohio banned teachers from befriending students on Facebook and from using non-district approved media to communicate with students. So out goes texting, chatting, and one would assume any sort of discourse on real-world blogs or … [Read More...]
