LAN Party coming together

LAN Party coming together

I sent out an e-mail today inviting 17 people who said they were interested in joining me for the conversation. I’ve copied and pasted the e-mail below for others to use and get ideas from. Be a part of something special The first every K12online Shanghai LAN party   As some point in the last month you all have said […]

Oh the lessons just keep on coming!

Oh the lessons just keep on coming!

So we go back to school tomorrow…or rather today as it’s 12:33am as I wait to finish migrating our Moodle site. I got this e-mail from our Teentek.com administrator a couple of days ago…remember this kids 12! I’m really sorry to bother you right when you get back from holiday,Mr. Utecht, but something very bad has happened.I logged on right […]

K12 Online Conference LAN party…Update

K12 Online Conference LAN party…Update

WOW, my idea of getting a bunch of people together and taking this online conference offline here in Shanghai has been getting some attention. Glad to hear it and I hope more people around the globe will take this opportunity to show just how much things are changing. So, I thought I’d give you an update of where I am […]

Learning Communities…I already have one

Learning Communities…I already have one

Today was a PD day for our school, with tomorrow being day two. I spent most of my day today learning about Critical Friends Groups (CFG), and being trained to be a leader of a CFG. According the the web site a CFG is: ….a professional learning community consisting of approximately 8-12 educators who come together voluntarily at least once […]

A trip to 13,450ft above sea level (4100m)

A trip to 13,450ft above sea level (4100m)

My lungs are slowly returning to normal after a wonderful trip to 13,450 feet above sea level. The amazing thing to me was that I’ve spent most my life looking at Mt. Rainer in Washington State, which tops out around 14,000 ft. I was 13,450 and still looking up…way up! I’ve geo tagged the following pictures. Make sure you click […]

Going off the grid for a week

Going off the grid for a week

A student told me the other day that “going off the grid” is the new cool way to say I’m out of touch for a couple of days. It’s National Day here in China, which means starting next week we get 4 days off of school. We don’t get 3 day weekends here. Instead we save all those up for […]

1 year and counting

1 year and counting

So the Thinking Stick turned 1 years old on Sept. 19. I meant to post something then but time just hasn’t allowed. So seeing that The Thinking Stick is 1yrs old. I thought about how blogging has affected my life. First comment on post #10. One by a friend that I asked to comment. 🙂 Today 478 comments on about […]

Teaching 21st Century Skills

Teaching 21st Century Skills

Today I talked with our 6th grade team about using the new laptops that were purchased. 20 laptops for 10 teachers and 150 students. The administration is looking for “more than word processing and researching.” So today I gave them the shotgun approach to things you can do. From wikis to blogs to flickr, youtube, and podcasting. I showed them […]

5th Grade Amazing Race Project

5th Grade Amazing Race Project

So we’re just finishing up this cool project in 5th grade where the students made Google Earth files for their Amazing Race project. Download the Google Earth file here. Basically the 5th grade teachers wanted to do an Amazing Race theme and have the students plot on a map 7 different countries they wanted to visit. The students then had […]