A vision for the future of education What will our world look like in 15 years? When looking ahead to next year on a Google Calendar, the ultimate warehouse of our professional, and personal schedules, one may see a few dates occupied by important things like weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays, an occasional conference to optionally … Continue reading Year 2030 →

How would a paperless class change your role as a teacher? The idea of never using the photo copy machine again is one of undying appeal! I can only imagine the many ways stress would be removed from my life at school without fighting with that monstrosity in the library closet on a weekly basis! … Continue reading Considerations of having a paperless classroom →

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, a book by Will Richardson, contains a chapter dealing with “Big Shifts” as a result of the read/write web. The tenth of these shifts outlines the responsibilities that will fall upon the classroom teacher to help make transitions away from the “chalk and talk” model education … Continue reading Re-envisioning Practice in the Classroom: The “Big Shifts” →

We used to have those around here! For a teacher who cares about their students, sometimes taking a day off can be a struggle between staying home to get better from an illness, or going to school in spite of being sick just to make sure that their students get what they need. Lately this … Continue reading No Substitute Teacher! Again!? →

Skype has been a highly useful “go-to” tool for connecting and maintaining communication with people in my professional network. In the district where I teach, there is a distinguished alumni program which honors graduates of our district that have made substantial contributions to the world in their careers and personal lives. One such alumni, named … Continue reading Skype: What’s the Hype? →

First, what is Connectivism? It is an idea that, although suffers some detractors, may basically be considered a learning theory that says the sum of our learning is related to and dependent upon sources from which a learner may obtain knowledge, or skills. These are all related to one another in a network of connections … Continue reading Connectivism- Does it support our students? →

Have you ever had the Substitute Lesson Plan Quandry? I know I have! As a music teacher, It isn’t always easy for me to plan lessons for another teacher to execute. I’m a pretty creative teacher who is likely to bring some ideas to a lesson and then take a lot of the student responses … Continue reading Classics for Kids Podcasts →

Using Flickr in the classroom both F2F and online is something I've been doing and will continue to do into the future. The Creative Commons licensing and availability of media has made accessing and using someone else's work, albeit under copyright, possible because they have offered it for use by anyone who would agree to comply … Continue reading Flickr in the Classroom →

The past few days I've had a lot of Wikis in my life. Two rather prominent Wiki presences that bear mention are Wikispaces and Wikipedia. First, a Wikispace in my mind is a collaborative works pace of varied forms and shapes that provide content to be added and changed by multiple users in an online … Continue reading Wikis in the Classroom →

In this article, "Wikipedia:Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia," written in on that site in celebration of their 10th anniversary and amidst what continues to be controversial times for this online entity, some points with real staying power are brought forward. Zooming in on a few of these, the vision of Wikipedia becomes more relevant … Continue reading Wikipedia: 7 Things to Respect →