Over the past couple of days I’ve had one simple question that I can’t get out of my head. Why do we believe that every teacher having a computer on their desk will benefit teaching and learning, but giving one to students wouldn’t? It’s a simple question isn’t it? I mean….when I started teaching in 1999 I walked into my […]
As our fourth COETAIL course (Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy) here at ISB is drawing to a close. The students (33 teachers at our school) have one more course to complete next semester. The last hurdle in getting their certificate. The last course calls on them to overhaul one of their units of study and embed our TAIL (Technology […]
Well….maybe not yet, but in the coming year if you are a private or international school you better be monitoring and using these new social tools to engage new students and families. A Bloomberg report came out earlier this week titled: One Bad Twitter ‘Tweet’ Can Cost 30 Customers, Survey Shows. A negative review or comment on the Twitter, Facebook […]
So maybe I’ve been reading to much Lifehacker lately. But I got to school this morning and some how got thinking about how I could hack-up the Google Doc Application that you get from Google when you install Google Gears to work with our school educational Google Apps domain. So here are the steps on how to do it for […]
I had a great day today. I got to talk about web design with 5th grade students. Ms. Bulsza invited me in to talk to the class about their blogs. Over the past couple of weeks someone (OK…maybe me) taught them how to install embedded widgets on their blogs sidebars. What I found interesting is that I taught one girl […]
So I read Dean Shareski’s post Why Audience Matters earlier today and just finished reading Clarence’s follow up post and thought I’d add to the conversation as well. Dean does a great job talking about the different roles an audience can play and I’d like to extend his list. Audience as Community Your audience becomes a community when audience members […]
Last week David Carpenter and I kicked off season 3 of the Shifting Our Schools podcast. It’s taken us a while to get this season going and I’m not short on the excuses why, so I won’t even bother getting started. Needless to say we are started and we’re excited to be back for a third season. As usual I […]
Teachers face a dilemma with Facebook. Do you or don’t you become fans with students past and present? It’s a topic that has come up in some of my sessions and a discussion that we’re having here at our school at the moment. But, I think I’ve found the answer to having your private Facebook stay private with your friends […]
I believe that part of my role, or any role of a teacher with a Personal Learning Network, is to use that network to spread the word when good things happen with your students. The Operation Smile group here at ISB continues to find ways to spread their message about their trip, about what they learned, and what you can […]
I thought I would share an e-mail that was sent from our department today to a parent who had raised a concern about Facebook being unblocked at school. A very well thought out e-mail from the group. Chad Bates did most of the work with Dennis, Kim and I adding our two cents in as well. Dear Parent, Thanks for […]