Working Towards Sustainable Schools

Today is Blog Action Day 2009 – a day in which thousands of blogs will be posting on one topic – and I wanted to share some thoughts on education, the environment, and most importantly, sustainability. This year’s topic, as you can see, is Climate Change. Say what you will about climate change, global warming, [...]

Blog Action Day 2009

Last year, I participated for the first time in Blog Action Day – a day when bloggers write about the same topic from whatever perspective they see fit. I shared this post on poverty and what we should be doing about it in education.
This year’s theme for Blog Action Day is climate change, and I will [...]

Classroom Tech, Part VII: “Everything’s Amazing; Nobody’s Happy.”

In this, the final post of the summer-long Classroom Tech series, I conclude with a little reflection on the state of educational technology (for previous posts, feel free to click here, here, here, here, here, or here).
Our amazing librarian shared this video during a training a while back and I thought I’d share it with those [...]

Classroom Tech, Part VI: Cell Phones

I’m nearing the end of a series of posts outlining how I plan on using technology during the coming school year. I’ll share some tools, resources, and ideas that I intend to use with students in the classroom, and hopefully you, the reader, will share some advice or thoughts of your own, either in the [...]

Thoughts on “Race to the Top”

I’ve been reading lately about the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” fund and have read a couple of blog posts about it. I thought I would post my response to a post on Seeking Shared Learning, as it sums up my thoughts on this new funding/mandate from the Secretary of Education. Feel free to [...]

The Choices Teens Make

One of the blogs I read regularly, Webware, posted an article that I thought was interesting, titled “Survey: Teens ’sext’ and post personal info.” It sums up a recent study of teenagers and digital behavior, particularly focused on cyberbullying and sexting. Some of the data quoted in the article that caught my attention:
59 percent of [...]

txt ur discussion ?s now

As one of our building’s tech nerds, I get the privilege of trying out some new ideas that utilize technology in the classroom. Right now, I’m working on a pretty significant experiment in my classes: using cell phones, specifically texting, as a sort of formative assessment.
This is a particularly big deal for me, because I’m [...]

Twitter Hits the Mainstream

A recent report from Bob Condotta on the Seattle Times’ Husky Football Blog notes that
Steve Sarkisian’s “Twitter” page had an announcement from him that a new wide receivers coach had been hired.
[...] I’m told today that [Twitter] is officially his way of passing on news to the Husky nation.
If Twitter had not already hit the mainstream consciousness [...]

Apple’s Counterculture Movement

I’ve long held a grudge against Apple’s iPod. There’s really no particularly valid reason (at least, apart from using totally different formats to play music), but I just can’t stand the things. Even when I came into a 2 GB 2nd Gen Nano, I refused to buy into the greatness that is, purportedly, Apple. More [...]

Obama’s Inauguration Speech: Reflections and Implications for Education

I had the privilege of watching the inauguration this morning with my students. Our school was kind enough to extend our first period so we could finish listening to President Obama’s inauguration speech. First, a couple of thoughts on the process:

Since we don’t receive any sort of cable signal, our building tried an interesting idea: [...]