When I was in high school, I had a calculus teacher who would sometimes disparage some of his fixed-mindset colleagues. “In her lesson plans, there’s a week-long gap at the end of November,” he’d say. “It just says ‘No School — Kennedy was shot.’” Of course, he was exaggerating. This was 25 years after the Kennedy assassination. His point was that some teachers seem to … Continue reading Prepared for Anything
Generative artificial intelligence has been with us for a little over three years now. At the time, I called ChatGPT “astonishing” and “revolutionary.” That’s high praise from me. It’s one of the very rare disrupters: it has the potential to change both the why and the what of school. Just like ubiquitous Internet access and Smartphones changed the purpose of school 15 years ago, AI … Continue reading Should We Stop Using AI in School?
“Has your district implemented any AI literacy materials for staff and/or students?” It’s a reasonable question. I was in a virtual meeting with about 60 other educators earlier this week. We were talking about artificial intelligence, and how schools are working to embrace it, manage it, leverage it, govern it. It’s a working group. We’re trying to figure things out. There are no right answers. … Continue reading AI Literacy
Last week, this image showed up as a memory online. I tweeted it at the beginning of 2012 with the caption “This might be our nextgen learning / tech planning process.” I remember drawing this. I recall a long conversation with my superintendent about it. Just the two of us, sitting at the table in his office. I wanted to redefine public education. He was … Continue reading The Grand Plan
Yesterday, 206 students walked across the stage, accepted their diplomas, shook hands with a bunch of people they didn’t know, and walked off into their futures. They’re an impressive group. Eight of them are National Merit finalists, putting them among the top 1% of American students. An additional 11 are commended scholars (top 4% nationally). Collectively, they took 136 advanced placement courses and 255 college … Continue reading Are They Ready?
On Monday, March 9, 2020, Governor Mike DeWine announced that three cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed in Ohio. Two days later, he reported that Ohio had four cases. I was confused. Does that mean Ohio now had seven cases, or does the second announcement include the three previously reported? When I figured out that seven was the total, I knew we had a problem. … Continue reading Detecting AI
It’s been 20 years since I bought my first car with an in-dash navigation system. It was magic. Type in a destination, and it’ll show you a map with turn-by-turn directions telling you how to get there. “This will make you stupid,” one of my colleagues exclaimed at the time. “You don’t need to know anything.” And it’s true in the sense that I don’t … Continue reading Recalculating…
We’re not hungry. Over my career, I’ve often used the metaphor of feeding the hungry in my approach to technology use in the classroom. Some teachers and school leaders are eager and ready to try new things. We certainly want to support that. Others are struggling just to keep their heads above water. We need to support them, too, and perhaps through them a lifeline … Continue reading Appetites
“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
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
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 will be rescheduled (or, maybe it won’t). Basketball practice won’t be happening. Depending on the home situation, Mom and Dad might go into a panic. … Continue reading Snow Days
Taste of Tech 