The Social You vs The Professional You

The Social You vs The Professional You

The last couple of working days and the rest of this week I’ve been talking with high school students about why we (ISB) have given them a blog to start building their ‘Professional You‘. When I put it in terms of Facebook is the ‘Social You’…the you with your friends, and the you while hanging out. Then your blog is […]

Picnik.com launches back to school ideas

Picnik.com launches back to school ideas

A friend of mine who now works for Picnik (or should I say Google seeing that Picnik was recently purchased by them), the online photo editing website passed along these little suggestions this week. New for Back to School We just launched some handy tools that make it easy to create photo-personalized blog headers, newsletters, desk name tags, and class […]

Facebook

Facebook

It’s time to face the facts Facebook is the new Google It has become both a noun and a verb With over 400 million users it is the largest social-network on the web Everyone, including parents and teachers are already using it Parents are getting younger……they get it Facebook has replaced e-mail for many people Facebook has more privacy settings […]

Tracking Independent Reading in high school

Tracking Independent Reading in high school

As I started talking about in my last post, we’re in the process of setting every high school student up with a blog to use as an e-portfolio. To help you wrap your head around why we’re using blogs as our container for this, I suggest downloading and reading the Free PDF I produced at the end of last year. […]

At the speed of a click

At the speed of a click

(Scribefire, my blogging platform finally updated to work with Firefox Beta 4 so now I’m back!) I had the most incredible experience today. First of all I’m loving working with the high school kids. They just ‘get it’. I don’t have to explain things at a very deep level and we can just fly through the technology stuff and get […]

Using Search Stories to Teach Search Skills

Last year one of the best ads released during the SuperBowl was this simple ad by Google Shortly after the release of this video Google asked you to make your own search stories. Simply go to http://www.youtube.com/searchstories and start creating your story. What a great way to teach students search skills. Give students and start and end point. For example […]

A New School Year Begins!

A New School Year Begins!

Tomorrow marks the start of a new school year. My job title might have changed but the focus remains the same. How do we prepare student for today’s digital world? I had a chance last week to introduce myself to the high school staff. It happened to be right after a discussion on cell phones in the classroom. A discussion […]

Finding Common Ground

Finding Common Ground

One of my biggest challenges this year is going to help the High School as a whole find some common ground on expectations for class work and interaction using our Moodle site. We use Moodle as an extension of the classroom. A place to handout work, to turn in assignments, and to have discussions via forms and chats. This will […]

Getting Started in Ed Tech

Getting Started in Ed Tech

Everyone has their signs for when summer is over and a new school year is upon us. For me that sign is a 17+ hour trip from Seattle back to Bangkok. Plenty of time to change your state of mind and a clear sign that the new school year is just around the corner. This summer while in the States […]