Remember 21st Century Skills? Back at the turn of the century, we were all abuzz about the needs of our students as we moved into the new millennium. We knew we had moved from an industrial society to a service economy, and we were transitioning into the information age. We knew that schools had to adapt. And we had some pretty good ideas on what … Continue reading Blended Hybrid
I don’t attend many professional conferences. In a normal year, I’ll make it to one state-level educational technology conference, and maybe 2-3 smaller one-day regional conferences. Once every 4-5 years, I’m able to attend a national event, as long as it’s not too far away. It’s not that I don’t find them valuable. I’m nearly always able to walk away with new ideas and new … Continue reading Two Places
It’s been a year, now. It was going to be a couple weeks, but we all knew it wasn’t going to be a couple weeks. We told ourselves what we needed to hear to get through it. We did get through the worst of it, and it’s looking now like there’s a path to normalcy. We know “normal” is relative. To some extent, it’s a … Continue reading It’s Been a Year
I’ve been thinking about learning spaces recently. The environments in which our students learn are directly related to the kind of learning that happens. Looking at a classroom, you can see what types of activities take place in that room. Is the space designed for one person to impart knowledge to a group of learners? Is it designed for the students to talk to each … Continue reading Online Watering Holes
As we work through the tenth month of the pandemic, we’re starting to talk about schools returning to normal. I have to be careful here. The school that I work in hasn’t been remote (or even hybrid) since the start of the school year. Procedures have changed. Schedules are different. We spend a LOT of time dealing with the pandemic. But we’re much closer to … Continue reading The Race to Normal
It’s time to face reality: school is not going back to “normal” any time soon. There are a lot of factors at play here. But looking at the reality of the pandemic, anyone who is advocating for “business as usual” is not putting public safety at the top of the priority list. At the state level, we did really well in Ohio this spring. We … Continue reading We’re Not Going Back
My wife and I have been doing jigsaw puzzles lately. In April, we finished a puzzle that had been languishing in its barely-started state for years. Then, we moved on to others, and have just completed our third puzzle. We have a lot of strategies that we use to fit the pieces together. We group pieces by color or texture. I’ll take a group of … Continue reading Puzzle Pieces
Schools are trying to figure out what fall looks like. Are we going to be back in the classroom like we were last fall? That seems very unlikely. Will we still be completely online like we’ve been for the last two months? That’s possible, but it’s more likely that we’re going to try to get teachers and students back in our buildings this fall. Most … Continue reading Designing Hybrid Learning
Taste of Tech 