July 2013 Blog Posts (10)

I am participating in the national plan to promote Connected Educators’ Month (CEM) for this year. I was very honored to even be asked to participate on this committee, because I am committed to collaborative learning for all educators. I believe that social media and technology afford our profession the best opportunity to date in order to connect educators for collaboration and exchanging ideas to develop and maintain relevance as professional educators. Technology offers our best tools to…

Online opportunities run the educational gamut, from K-12 schooling to higher ed to adult ed to professional development. These options are becoming more and more common because demand for them continues to rise. As more of us choose an online option for ourselves or our children, we are putting our trust in online instructors and facilitators to guide us through an educational experience that

photo credit: AMERICANVIRUS via photopin cc

This morning I read a thought-provoking blog post by John Bernia, "…

“Every person who writes a document published on the internet, who creates a graphic or icon, who scans his own photograph or records his own voice into a digital file, who sends an electronic mail message, who creates a document for a newsgroup, or who designs a web page owns the copyright to his creative work.”

-Carol Simpson, “Copyright for Schools”

Read the full story: …

You or your users may have seen the prompt “Your Video Contains Copyrighted Material” on YouTube or some other video-sharing network when using copyrighted music in your video.  Regardless of the type of video network, the legal, ethical and technical ramifications are basically the same.

Read The Full Story: …

“Preparing kids for the Real World” is a phrase that many educators and schools use without regard for the consequence of what they selectively choose as reality for their students. Both educators and institutions in many cases are still choosing for students by educating them traditionally, or more progressively using technology tools for learning. This probably begins with educators’ misconception of the real world.

We cannot prepare kids for the Real World when we still have a…

One of the best ways I've found to communicate with my students has been to create a class web page on wikispaces.com.  It is www.worldhistory706.wikispaces.com.  I use it to post my daily classroom agenda, link to the online textbook, troubleshoot why students can't access the online textbook, upload or link to all assignments and rubrics, handouts, etc.  Anything we do in the class can be found on the website.  There…

The title of this post probably carries more weight with educators who use Twitter as a key component of a professional learning network than those who don’t. At this point in time there are more educators not using Twitter professionally, than those who do. The “why” of that is what perplexes me to no end.

I recently watched an interview with Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers. His book sits unread on my shelf, but, inspired by what I saw in the…

As I prepared dinner the other night, my son and I talked. Somehow, our conversation turned to my level of intelligence. In order to prove my point, I shared with him that I was enrolled in gifted programs all my life, in fact, I had even skipped a grade. 

He laughed…