Become a Google Apps Ninja

Become a Google Apps Ninja

It looks like word finally broke on Twitter yesterday about a project I’ve been working on for about 5 or 6 weeks at my school. It started as a “I wonder what would happen if….” project and has turned into a pretty awe inspiring, self-motivated, get-out-of-their-way, dare I say fun project.    When I was going through the process of becoming a […]

Bigmarker.com leaving a permanent mark

Bigmarker.com leaving a permanent mark

  A couple weeks ago I was contacted by a representative at bigmarker.com about their product. I usually just delete solicitations like this but this one came at the right time. Kim and I had been trying to find a way to hold virtual meetings with our COETAIL EARCOS cohort. This cohort is made up of 24 teachers spread all over Asia which is […]

The Next Chapter

The Next Chapter

Earlier this week I handed in my resignation letter to my Head of School, Dr. Gerrtiz. It’s funny the two responses I’ve been getting. Those who know me well and understand the international teaching world knew this was probably coming soon. I mean I’ve been here for four years…in Jeff’s world that is an eternity. In fact these four years […]

Where was this when I was growing up?

Where was this when I was growing up?

My Brother Harvesting Dry Peas   Technology continues to reinvent every part of our lives. Even parts of our lives that we don’t think about everyday. Farming is one of these. As a field of study (pun intended) and as a practice agriculture has gone through and continues to go through some major changes. In a recent article on Read Write Web Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about the […]

10 Reasons to Trash Word for Google Docs

10 Reasons to Trash Word for Google Docs

A blog post I wrote to High School Students. As I’ve been helping students get going with their gmail accounts and blogs over the past couple of weeks I’ve been joking about the “old school” e-mail systems that some of you still use. Hotmail, Yahoo…and seriously….AOL…come on….. But there is another old school tool that I think has seen its best days […]

Personalizing Education in a Standards-Based System

Personalizing Education in a Standards-Based System

My thoughts after reading Seth Godin’s post Back to (the wrong) school and Douglas Rushkoff post Are Jobs Obsolete? The other day I was looking at a curriculum map similar to this one:                   As I was looking over it I started shaking my head and wondering how do we personalize education in a standardized system? […]

5 Gmail Tips for Teachers

5 Gmail Tips for Teachers

As we move to Google Apps for Education at my school I gave a quick 10 minute talk at a staff meeting on 5 Gmail Tips for Teachers. Here they are: 1. Archive is Your Friend  Getting use to archiving everything is a change. Google wants you, begs you, to archive your e-mails so you can search for them later. […]

COETAIL Year 2

COETAIL Year 2

A blog post I put out to this year’s COETAILers….cross posted here Some rights reserved by stevendepolo Ready or not a new school year is upon us and the CoETaIL Program continues to expand. This will be the second year of CoETaIL under this site and structure and the expansion of the program to international schools continues to grow. Here’s a list […]

Some times you need to throw out the container with the leftovers

Some times you need to throw out the container with the leftovers

It’s been said many times: If you give every student a laptop but do not fundementally change the way you teach than the power of the new technoogy will never be reached by stevendepolo OK….maybe not exactly like that but I’m sure you’ve heard quotes like it whenever talk turns to 1:1 programs.  The real question is: How does teaching […]

Virtual Bulletin Board

Virtual Bulletin Board

At ISB we’ve struggled over the past couple of years in defining our web spaces. Although we’ve been getting better at using the “Core 3” (Moodle, Google Apps, WordPress) we still need to define spaces based on purpose and audience.  One thing I’m focusing on this year is creating what I’m calling a Virtual Bulletin Board for our high school […]