Posts in Experimental
If school closes tomorrow don't panic! Here are some ways technology can help kids learn during the coronavirus outbreak

What if school closed tomorrow? We aren’t prepared to go fully online! What can we do?!?!

This message, from a head of school, popped up on my Facebook page this week. He asked for a phone call and while I did my best on the spot to imagine how a school would address the challenge of closing for a day, a week, or even a month, I had no idea how a school could go fully online on the stop of a dime…

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Using Adobe Spark Page To Create A Dynamic Syllabus Or Lesson Plan

I sat there looking at my Syllabus. Google Docs will black text and bullet points on a white background. The outcome seemed standard. Is that what I wanted for my students? I want my student to get excited about learning new things. I want them to be curious, inspired, and energized in my class…

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3 Ways To Use Smore As A Platform For Students To Become Authors And Develop An Eye For Design

Any platform that empowers students to become authors and curators of content gets me excited. When Smore reached out to me to review their platform, I was excited to see two very powerful features. 

First, is the "Educator Hive" database of created and shared content, authored by educators for educators. You can check out my vlog review of that here

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10 minus 1 awesome ways to App Smash Adobe Spark and Flipgrid

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so how many words is a video? About 1 billion hours worth, or so says the latest Techcrunch survey of Youtube usage. Video is dominating the way in which we consume content and create it too. Today, nearly all social platforms have embraced the creator side of things, encouraging users to create content that rich with video, images, and text. In comes Adobe Spark Video…

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Using The "Bad Idea Factory" To Help Build Creative Courage

Years ago I heard about the "Bad Idea Factory" like any buzzword I try to plumb the depths of Google to find the creator of these actives. The best I could do is find a 2012 article by Kevin Brookhouser tilted, 20% Project: Bad Idea Factory. In the article he shares that he learned about this activity from Ewen McIntosh at NoTosh but the link to his article is broken. I reached out to him on Twitter to get more information so hopefully he will respond and I can embed the tweet…

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Why We Can't Fail Forward If We Don't Know Where We Are Headed.

We leave almost zero time for reflection in education today. Outside of a student sitting and wondering why they didn't get at least a 90% on the big test, how much time is allotted for reflection? The challenge we face is that reflection is not a “measurable” data set when you compare to data hungry areas of growth like reading and math literacy. So how can you measure reflection? While a student summary on the experience might be a good method to assess understanding, it will do little to evaluate their ability to take this failed experience and do something more significant because of it.

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