Wikispaces who has always been a great supporter of wikis in K-12 Education giving away some 980,000 free ad-free wikis for classroom use over the years will announce next week that not only will it continue to support K-12 Education, but will also be opening up it’s free service to higher education as well. The features in these free educational […]
Just wrapping up from ITSC11 in Portland and a previous conference send me a link to a survey from participants. This one frustrated me a bit: Here’s the thing…first of all I’m never going to run a session that goes “Click here, now click here, now type here” I’m sorry, that’s not my style and if that is the reason […]
The ITSC conference kicks off today and in just a few hours I’ll leave for the airport to make the….yes….45 minute flight to Portland, OR. I’ve been really impressed by the web based mobile app they created for the conference. It’s built on HTML5 (the new code of the web) which makes it run smooth, fast, and on any modern […]
I’m a few hours away from calling a taxi and starting the 17 hour trip to Portland, Oregon (via Seattle of course) for the ITSC11 Conference e. I’ll be doing three sessions. Blended Classrooms, Blogs as E-Portfolios, and 10 Digital Tools for Digital Educators. It’s this last session that I always have the hardest time with. What 10 digitals tools […]
This is something I’m pretty passionate about and something I think most schools don’t fully understand yet. In a socially connected world where communities trump content schools need to continue to monitor and adjust where their community is moving to, what tools are they adopting, and what content they are creating, talking about, and using to connect to each other. […]
Back from a week in Northern Thailand where I took twenty-one 10th and 11th grade students on a week long journey into manual labor, teaching, and self-reflection. We arrived on Sunday afternoon and the first order of business after arriving at the lodge was to disconnect. As promised I made the students turn in all electrical devices. Cellphones, iPods, etc. […]
This coming week I’ll be disconnected from the world…and will be enjoying it. Each year our high school students take a week off away from the walls and classrooms and head out into the world to learn. Our Global Citizen’s Week (GCW) is a great opportunity for students to see the word, interact with others, and get to know school […]
“How many of you have done the 18 minute, right before class, copy and paste, plagiarized, bullet point, turn and read off the screen PowerPoint Presentation? Be honest.” Every hand in the room goes up. We know it as educators, kids know it as students. The presentation really is about finding information, putting it on some slides, add some transitions […]
Two quick great websites I came across today that deserve more than a tweet. Jewel Beat: Check it out…some great sounds, songs, and effects. All royalty free and all they ask is you link back to their website. Great resource for student videos, podcasts, and use in projects. EmbedPlus: Take YouTube videos to the next level. Just copy and paste […]
My favorite part of the CoETaIL program that Kim and I run is coming up this semester. The 5th and final course for the certificate includes teachers having to apply what they’ve learned in the first 4 courses in their classroom. Last week I met with Donna Hurst one of our EAL and IB TOK teachers and we hashed out […]