Giving students better, more meaningful feedback

Many people I meet in professional development sessions believe that the ‘tool’ is predominantly for the use of students to undertake some activity. This can be true, however if you are working with newcomers, it is more productive to focus on the teacher. This avoids a stream of questions in which the teacher usually tries [...]

I critically think therefore I’m confused

I am hopeless with choices. Unless I actually know what I want, being faced with new choices I find difficult. I often watch people in shops, seemingly flicking back and forth over some decision to buy or not buy with envy. I just want to get in and out, I don’t really want to be [...]

‘Here’s a blog worth checking out’

My blog was kindly attributed an award by Alexandra Francisco. Needless to say that I am really honored to have been thought of. I have a real thing right now about how important networked ideas are – and looking well beyond your hashtagged burbclaves. I am utterly hopeless at maintaining a blog roll, and rely [...]

Tales of Utopia

In the beginning part of the year, I started collaborating with Jeff in Montana on a Gifted and Talented project, where middle school students undertook a unit on Utopia. The study book was Animal Farm. We developed a series of activities to meet the standards, which ultimately had the goal of engaging students in creating [...]

How to disarm in-active staff with ICT

Following on from my previous post about taking an evaluation approach to selecting the best set of classroom tools, here is another activity that will help you get traction … it probably occurs FIRST in all reality – and is a strategy to better understand their needs. Notice here that I’m not talking about new [...]

Colin Chapman – Educator of the year 1946-1982

In the late 1940s, the world of motor-racing was dominated by a few factory-backed machines. They were well funded and chose the best drivers, supporting a belief that money and size creates better racing cars – and winners. Then one man from an ordinary background started to design better racing cars, because he started thinking [...]

How to evaluate the best toolkit for your class

How’s your Web2.0 compass? Are you panning for gold; or still looking for the stream? I often think of Web2.0 as like gold-panning in a flowing steam. One person finds a spot using a method and pan that works for them. Before you know it, everyone either wants to be in that spot or use [...]

This is how bad it’s become

I watched this, after watching Jesse Schell, talking about world of game development which will emerge from the popular “Facebook Games” era. You know what, maybe teaching people how to make videos; apps and send 140 character messages is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Maybe just living in reality isn’t such a bad thing. [...]

Cool Tools for iPhone App Development

This is a presentation and collection of resources that was shared by the Apple Distinguished Educators at ITSC. I did check that this was okay to share and he was happy with it, but please cite where it came from. It was a very brief, but interesting ‘unconference’ as the speaker put it. Personally, I [...]

Turn off the internet?

Jenny Luca (ACEC Award Winner 2010) posted a link to an article about the effects and dramas in de-internet-ing yourself, which I enjoyed. Is it possible to use technology in the classroom better – without assuming the web is a capstone? Scottish Educators seem to think so. I’ve been following the way Scotland is using [...]