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 […]

3 keys to a flipped classroom

  If you are planning to use the ‘flipped classroom’, then you might want to think about a few key ideas. Background: On Connected Principals Jonathan Martin has written a couple posts on the Flipped Classroom. In his first one, Reverse Instruction: Dan Pink and Karl’s “Fisch Flip”, he says: Increasingly,  education’s value-add is and […]

Open Educator Manifesto

[Version I: Just the Manifesto] My Open Educator Manifesto ‘We’ educate future citizens of the world Teaching is my professional practice I Share by default I am Open, Transparent, Collaborative, and Social My students own their own:   (Learning) • learning process • learning environment • learning products • learning assessment My students belong to learning […]

Do schools really need an AUP?

Internet woes continue to haunt me here in China. I just read a great post by Andrew Churches about Acceptable Use Agreements in Junior School (often referred to as AUP’s or Acceptable Use Policies as well). Andrew questions the value of these documents. I wrote a comment response, clicked the ‘post’ button & got another […]

Connected Principals Elluminate Session – The Power of Social Media

Please join us on Sunday, December 5, at 5:30 PM EST (find your time zone here) for our December Connected Principals’ Session focusing on the variety of ways administrators can use social media to positively impact their learning organizations. Akevy Greenblatt, Janet Avery, Patrick Larkin, and David Truss will be our featured presenters for the […]

Moodle Schmoodle and no point to Sharepoint

I love the scene in Shrek where Shrek explains to Donkey that, “Ogres are like onions, they have layers”. It’s a great analogy that plays upon itself since Donkey interjects guesses as to what this means, adding unnecessary layers to the conversation. Often, technology adds layers of complication by the nature of adding something new […]