It was 84 years ago this Halloween that Orson Welles’ adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds was broadcast on CBS radio’s Mercury Theater on the Air. The radio drama was presented as a series of news reports from Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, describing a Martian invasion of Earth. Because of this presentation method, many listeners mistook the broadcast for actual news reports. … Continue reading War of the Worlds
Last month, I was asked to talk with our new staff about their use of social media. The school district wants teachers to share the awesome things they’re doing. We have a strong online community of teachers, parents, and school supporters, and we want our new folks to be part of that. There are dangers, certainly. Some students can’t be photographed. We generally don’t identify … Continue reading Navigating the Sharing
“On the back of your notecard, please write one thing that I can do to make this class better for you.” “Don’t make it boring,” fourteen year old me wrote on the back of my card. This was the first day of my high school biology class. The teacher had never risen from his table at the front of the room, and had just spent … Continue reading Attention, Please
America has always been a country of contradiction. The European settlers came here to escape persecution, and immediately set up a society that did not tolerate ideas or values that differed from theirs. They proclaimed a country with liberty and justice for all, where all men are created equal. But that doesn’t include black men. Or first nations men. Or poor men. Or women. It’s … Continue reading Ain’t That America?
For the first six years of my career, I taught a middle school computer applications class. Nobody really cared what I taught. They didn’t say that, of course. But the administration knew that kids needed to learn about computers, and they didn’t really know exactly what that should look like, so they carved out some space and just let me do my thing. I never … Continue reading Information Illiterate
It was eight years ago now that I heard Richard Culatta speak at EduCon. At the time, he was the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education. Now, he’s the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education. In his little talk in the cafeteria of the Science Leadership Academy all those years ago, Culatta talked about pencils. … Continue reading Pencil Sharpeners
This is going to be American-centric. I’m sorry about that. The assumptions I make about how the world works are shaped by my environment. I know they’re not always global perspectives. And in this case, that shows more than usual. We should probably start with the primary source. Here’s the text of the first amendment to the US Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting … Continue reading Free Speech
One of the recent trends in schools has been the creation of a “portrait of a graduate.” This is a process through which a school district, with input from students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members, defines the characteristics we want our students to leave us with. Usually, an outside consultant is brought in to help the school through this process. The consultant helps brainstorm … Continue reading The Problem of the Portrait
I’ve been a little obsessed with Corwin’s Visible Learning MetaX since Matthew Mays shared it at a conference last month. I’ve been skeptical of Hattie’s work in the past, and to some extent, I still am. Recall that Hattie’s work centers around distilling all of the research around education, and analyzing meta-analyses to draw conclusions about what works in education. When you keep summarizing and … Continue reading What Should We Stop Doing?
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 how do we know if things are getting better or worse?” I wondered. If we’re only reporting the totals, we don’t know how fast the … 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 stuff. If I’m at home and something comes up that needs my attention, I can grab whatever I need from my bag. It works well … 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 … Continue reading Unzoomed
Taste of Tech 