I started this blog experiment 15 years ago. I was looking for a way for my teachers to quickly and easily share information with students. They wanted web sites. We didn’t have a good way of doing web sites. WordPress … Continue reading Reflecting on Reflecting
Twenty-one years is a long time. I wore a pager to the interview because we were expecting a baby any time. That child is entering her senior year of college this fall. I was asked if I knew Visual Basic. … Continue reading Five to Seven Years
As I was writing the first part of this, I got to the section on keeping instruction brief and realized I wasn’t doing a very good job of that. So we took a little break. We were talking about how … Continue reading How to Teach Online, Part 2
I faded away from Twitter a couple years ago. Looking back, I seem to tweet when I’m at conferences, when I’m on vacation, and when I publish a new blog post. That’s mostly it. I read Twitter even less often. … Continue reading Twitter Worth Watching
About a week ago, we were having a discussion on Slack about the upcoming state educational technology conference. I’m sitting this year out. A couple members of my personal learning network weren’t happy. The conference isn’t necessarily about learning. It’s … Continue reading Focused Presence
I recently attended EdCamp NEO, hosted in the fantastic new Paradigm facility at Mentor High School. I’ve been to about a dozen EdCamps now. It’s always fun to watch the schedule evolve as the event goes on, and people create … Continue reading The Scheduled Unconference
This is an excerpt from a post I wrote in February, 2008: In the fall of 2005, I had read about podcasts, and was very interested in them. I drive 40 minutes each way to and from work every day. … Continue reading Remembering Bob Sprankle
I’m a believer in personal learning networks. I’ve often said that I have learned far more from my colleagues than I have from any graduate course or workshop or conference. I’ve connected with people from all over the world, exchanging … Continue reading Are We There Yet?
You didn’t go to Grandma’s house without eating. There were always baked goods: cookies, coffee cake, donuts. As soon as you sat down, she’d put on a fresh pot of coffee and start cooking. What can I make you? Want … Continue reading Feed the Hungry
These are NOT resolutions. I don’t do resolutions. But I was cleaning out my head the other night, and started making some lists. One of them was a list of things I want to do differently in the new year. … Continue reading 5 Changes for 2014
Several people have asked me recently about building personal learning networks. They’ve seen the promise of networked learning. They understand that connecting and collaborating with other professionals on common goals and challenges can be beneficial for everyone. But how do you find those people? In my case, I took the slow road. I blogged. I read others’ blogs and commented on them. I listened to podcasts, and eventually got mixed up in a webcasting community of educators. It’s funny that I eschewed Twitter for so long that when I finally signed up in late 2007, everyone said, “where have you … Continue reading If You Come, They Will Build It
The two-week break in the #change11 MOOC has given me an opportunity to catch up a bit, and to reflect on the experience so far. It’s now sixteen weeks since the start of the course, which has included thirteen weeks of content, a week of introduction, and a two-week winter break. According to Stephen Downes, the course has 2,000 registered participants. The course web site has had 38,000 visits. There have been 1300 blog posts tracked with the #change11 tag, and there have been 2500 tweets with the same tag. On a personal level, I’ve spent about 25 hours on … Continue reading What’s not to MOOC?
Taste of Tech 