It’s been a tough year for education. There’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty. We’re seeing abrupt changes to practices and policies. Many of those appear to be rooted in fear or political priorities. Others seem to focus on discrediting educators and pushing the narrative that public schools are inept or ineffective. There are constant attacks on funding sources, and increased measures to funnel public dollars … Continue reading The Most Important Thing
We did some traveling this summer. Embracing the idea that life is an adventure, along with some questionable planning, we ended up in 10 airports on four continents over six weeks in June and July. Our travel spanned 17 time zones. We encountered five languages. I took about 6,000 photos. It was an embarrassingly fantastic summer. We talked to people in England and Indonesia and … Continue reading Common Goals
I’ve been thinking about Y2K lately. Back in the late 1990s, the technology industry faced a serious problem with how computers stored dates. The societal norm was to use two digits for the year. Pearl Harbor was attacked on 12/7/41. The first moon landing was on 7/20/69. MTV started broadcasting on 8/1/81. As the 1990s progressed, people started realizing that we had a problem. Because … Continue reading Ready for Anything
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
What an unsettling time. In a couple weeks, our world has dramatically shifted. It’s like 9/11. It’s like JFK. It’s not, really. Those were sudden national tragedies when the world changed in an instant. This is slower. Our world changed over the course of a week, not in minutes. And, at least for now, it’s temporary. But it’s like those other events in the sense … Continue reading The Opportunity of Crisis
When I was 25, I believed that the anonymity of online discussions would allow the exchange of ideas without prejudice, and raise the level of human discourse. I’d been communicating online for five or six years. The web was brand new. Most of the forums were text based. There was lots of Usenet and mailing lists. And it didn’t matter who you were or where … Continue reading Beliefs
The media specialists were describing how the elementary schools are using technology. Because the first graders did a lot of work in Google last year, the second graders aren’t having any trouble at all with Google Classroom. They log right in, and can access the resources that their teachers are sharing with them. It took a couple days at the beginning of the year to … Continue reading Changing Standards
I’ve had several conversations recently about school libraries. As schools evolve to meet the needs of next generation students, the role of the library is increasingly unclear. If the model of textbooks and teachers as the source of all knowledge is outdated, then the idea that a school media center can contain all of the instructional resources the school could ever need is equally obsolete. … Continue reading 5 Reasons We Still Need School Libraries
I think I first became aware of the school game in middle school, though I was certainly playing it long before that. Do what the teacher expects of you. Don’t cause trouble. Complete the work that’s given to you. It doesn’t have to be your best work, but it has to be on time and “good enough” for the grade you want. Do your homework, … Continue reading The School Game
Taste of Tech 