One of the most exciting things a student can experience is the proud moment when their hard work is seen by an audience beyond a teacher’s grade book.
Read MoreWhat 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…
Read MoreIf you teach at the elementary level you are more than likely familiar with the classic All About Me themed projects that students take part in at the start of the school year. A fill in the blank worksheet designed to give you, the teacher deeper insights into students lives, interests, and passions…
Read MoreVisual Communication skills. Everyone needs them. This isn’t an option for our K-8 students today. Their tomorrow will expect them to have an eye for design just like our yesterday expected us to know Microsoft Office. While short on time is an understatement, we need to find ways to get these skills inculcated into our students one way or another…
Read MoreAny 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…
Read MoreThey 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…
Read MoreWe 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.
Read MoreSo if we are open to shifting our thinking, what is the next step? It lies in a famous quote from Steve Jobs who said “creativity is connecting things”. The ability to connect things lies in how we look at the relationship between people, places, and ideas. It's in how we overcome one of the greatest obstacles to creativity - Functional Fixedness.
Read MoreWhen I was eight years old living in Southern California, my parents bought a video conferencing system to talk with my grandparents in Philadelphia. To this day I could never figure out how my grandfather, set it up on his end. The mammoth devices used a combination of wires to connect to our house phone and television delivering a blurry 200x100 image of my grandparents whose movement was delayed by 45 seconds as they their voices echoed through the telephone. It was at that moment through a mixture of “Hi Michael” , long pause, and a 45 second delayed handwave,
Read MoreWhen I was eight years old living in Southern California, my parents bought a video conferencing system to talk with my grandparents in Philadelphia. To this day I could never figure out how my grandfather, set it up on his end. The mammoth devices used a combination of wires to connect to our phone line and television, delivering a blurry 200x100 image of my grandparents. It was quite a scene. With a mixture of movement delayed by 45 seconds and their voices echoing through the telephone, I felt as if I was in a 14.4K internet induction program.
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