I’ve been talking for a while about the potential shift that public schools are about to experience. It was based on a gut feeling and a lot of reading. I’ve been misinterpreted as saying that I don’t believe in public schools, but I do. I just see what’s coming. I know that if teachers and …
Many schools not only are incorporating Internet safety into lesson plans but also shifting their focus from the pervasive “stranger danger” message typically given to young computer users. The idea, says Principal Chris Lehmann of Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy, is teaching students to be better “digital citizens.” But it’s not just about being digital citizenship. …
There’s so much opposition to technology. But then you encounter a story like this: It was unbelievable,” Miller said, “because it wasn’t just a few people watching the wedding because they couldn’t be there in person. In Detroit we had 300 people in a hotel ballroom; I officiated the wedding and then there was a …
Many teachers (and professors from my experience!) are troubled and paralyzed by the mobile mystery. What do we do with all of these students who have cell phones? Do we demand that they keep them in their locker? Do we put a basket out in our classes and take them up? Do we confiscate them …
Sam Harrelson has been blogging about the way that mobile devices impacted Cyber Monday sales. Turns out that mobile devices aren’t only impacting the world of marketing. They are also increasing literacy development in children: The research, to be published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning next month, found evidence of a “significant contribution …
Learning to use online forums, be they social network services like MySpace and Facebook, blogs, or wikis is not a sexily contemporary add-on to the curriculum – it’s an essential part of the literacy today’s youth require for the world they inhabit. I hear teachers and parents complain about receiving emails and text message that …
As a Twitter user, I find myself hoping to be retweetable. I hope that I say something or find a resource that someone might find interesting enough to retweet. You might say that’s not the reason to use Twitter and that’s not my main reason for using Twitter by any means. Twitter provides instant, free …
The continuing question for teachers is do you cover more less deeply or cover less more deeply? It’s a hard question to answer especially within the context of the high-stakes testing emphasis. Will Richardson is trying to challenge his own thinking in his post What Do We Absolutely Need to “Teach”: [W]e could probably do …
Actually, that’s a myth: ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand! When an ostrich senses danger and cannot run away, it flops to the ground and remains still, with its head and neck flat on the ground in front of it. The ostrich, the largest and heaviest bird, are powerful creatures and yet when they …
But these stories don’t mean anything without someone to tell them to I think Brandi Carlile has it right. The stories of our lives: what we’ve experienced; what we’ve seen don’t mean anything without someone to listen. So here’s to you! Thanks for listening to my stories and my ramblings.
