Two years ago today, Ohio had its first three confirmed Covid cases. Two days later, Ohio reported that we now had four cases. No one was saying that we had one new case; the reporting centered around the total. “But … Continue reading Tracking Covid Cases
I carry my work life in my backpack. I try to make sure it has everything I need, everywhere I go. If I’m in a school or at a meeting or in a coffee shop, my backpack has all the … Continue reading Cleaning Out the Backpack
A few weeks ago, I had a request to remove Zoom from our student devices, and block students from reinstalling it. “We’re never going back to that,” the teacher explained. Apparently the fifth graders are using the chat function in Zoom to talk to one another, which she wants to stop. By “that,” she meant remote schooling. At the start of the pandemic, we leaned heavily on technology to continue instruction. Students took their devices home. They had Zoom and Google Classroom and lots of apps and strategies and work-arounds to try to continue learning. Those first three months were … Continue reading Unzoomed
Snow days are magic. There aren’t many things that remind us how unimportant we are. But that call from the school changes everything. Suddenly, that homework assignment isn’t due for another day. The test has been postponed. The faculty meeting … Continue reading Snow Days
Years ago, my elementary schools were very fond of Accelerated Reader. Students would read a book from the Accelerated Reader list, and then take an online quiz that measured reading comprehension. If they passed the quiz, they were awarded points … Continue reading What Do Grades Mean?
As we work through plans to replace SMART Boards in our classrooms, I was reflecting today on the classroom environment that they were installed to support. In my schools, we had dabbled with interactive whiteboards for a few years, but … Continue reading Smarter Boards
Apparently, today is “National Shoot Up Your School Day.” News outlets are reporting that schools are stepping up security following a rash of viral threats circulating on the TikTok platform. The ones who have spent more than 15 seconds researching … Continue reading How Do You Know?
I received a letter in the mail from my car’s manufacturer. They’re issuing a safety recall to repair a condition involving the Smart Junction Box: The Smart Junction Box software logic may not properly interpret the signals received from the … Continue reading Software Update
“Why does the wifi go down every day?” I was caught off-guard. The wifi doesn’t go down every day. The wifi doesn’t really ever go down. Occasionally, we’ll have a problem with an access point, but one of the other … Continue reading Wicked Problems
I’ve always tried to be balanced. While my work generally focuses on technology, my personal life is centered around the arts. I was trained as a math teacher, but I originally enrolled in college as an English education major. If … Continue reading Day and Night
Last year, we spent a great deal of time crafting our portrait of a graduate. The trend in public education over the last several years has been to identify the characteristics that we would like our graduates to leave with. … Continue reading Living the Vision
In the job interview, they asked if I knew Linux. Sure. I’d played around with it a little. I used it as the operating system for a “server” that I set up in my classroom. I was running a MUD … Continue reading Problem Solving
Taste of Tech 