I once had a teacher say to me after a training on using internet resources to enrich and expand teaching and learning, "You're a technology integration specialist. You should assemble a list of all the good website out there! Classroom teachers don't have time to find all this good stuff." I agreed, but shared how …
Engagement (for teachers)
It may be the season of engagements and weddings but I'm not talking about that kind of romance--although I am talking about a kind of love affair. More and more teachers are having a love affair with their new technology tools-- more specifically their interactive whiteboards (IWB). Many of these teachers have been teaching for …
Twitter Postings: Petroglyphs of the 21st Century
So what do petroglyphs have to do with twitter posts? Our spring break this early April was amazing. Normally, in Minnesota, spring break means late winter slush with melting snow and muddy trails. But this year was showing, spring was definitely in the air. I decided I needed a prairie fix. I'm attracted to the …
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To Multitask or Not, That is the Question!
I was in a classroom recently where students were using laptops, doing an activity that required a relatively low level of intellectual engagement. They were typing up essays they had written earlier in the week so they could enter them in their online blog site. All the students had headphones on and were listening to …
The Talent Code
I just finished the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. The subtitle for the book is "Greatness isn't born, it's grown." To put it simply, Coyle's premise is deep practice + motivation + skilled coaching = talent. Notice talent is not equated with innate aptitude but rather a skill that can be developed through a combination …
Winnowing the Internet Chaff
How can a teacher who only has a few minutes here and there in a busy day ever find and evaluate the best internet resources for teaching and learning in her classroom? Unless she is motivated to search for internet content sources outside her busy school day, she clearly has to rely on others to …
21st Century Media Specialists
Provocateur Scott McLeod (otherwise known as Scott McLeod, Iowa State University associate professor and head of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education) came to the Minnesota Education media Organization fall conference to shake up the status quo. His provocative keynote challenged media specialist and librarians to examine the core of …
