Who are your friends? Digitally vs face-to-face.

“…this ‘friend as co-learner’ role is not an automatic thing for students… It is a learned thing, and something we need to help students with. Schools are ideal places for this!” Many friends have inspired me to write blog posts in the last year. I’d guess that if you went back over any given year’s […]

First Day of School 2010 – a Google Search Story

I had some fun this morning creating a Google Search Story. The tag line (description) for this video is, “If you are just looking for activity worksheets, then you are missing the point!” I took advantage of my own high search-ability to do a little self-promotion in the search results, but the link that shows […]

Parenting in the digital age

Three weeks ago I did a couple presentations to parents about Parenting In the Digital Age: This FREE workshop is for parents, both the tech savvy and the less technically inclined, who would like to develop family expectations around the use of technology to play, learn and connect. For this presentation I created a wiki: […]

Choose Your Battle

Choose your position: Are you a gatekeeper, policemen, guard… or teacher? All these jobs are necessary, but which one belongs in schools? Choose your battle: Filters that also filter learning -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Banning POD’s -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Teaching without technology -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Make no mistake, having […]

Teachers as Lead Learners

One of my favourite sayings these days is: ‘Teachers should be the lead learners in the classroom.’ I think that if a teacher goes into a class believing first and foremost that they are ‘model learners’ and that they will learn with their students, then that teacher will create a meaningful and engaging learning environment […]