The Education Experiment

The Business Department at my university has been sponsoring 1 hour trainings for local teachers on topics related to Emergency Remote Teaching. I was thankful to have the opportunity to present this week on one of my favorite tech tools, Flipgrid, for asynchronous video presentations. We had 40 teachers in attendance K-12 from a variety of subject areas. The other presenter is one of my favorite educators, and not just because she has a great british accent. She is energetic and her topic at this week's presentation was a great example, the superhero within us. The session went well. In hindsight, it would have been useful to have some procedures in place to monitor chat questions, but we were able to mutually support each other spontaneously. I am impressed that the Business Department is able to give ACT 48 for their events. It really shows care for the local teachers who have to constantly be chasing these credits.  I submitted an application in February to be allowed to do...

I just finished reading Hope in the Time of a Health Crisis , a blog by another educator and member of ISTE (Int'l Soc. for Tech in Ed).  I love the "poster" he created that states, "Teachers: Some people just want to see the world learn". He reminds us that most people are really doing the very best that they can. I would add that it is OK when we don't have it "all together." Yesterday, I taught class number 5 on presentation tools for the classroom (Gynzy, Nearpod, Pear Deck), but what really stood out to me was the extended "Check-in" time before my 8:30AM class. One of my students told us about returning to work 2 days a week to help a restaurant with the take-out orders. I broached a subject that I hoped would be helpful to all, "Have any of you seen someone wearing a mask or worn one yourself? How did that make you feel?" "Surreal.""Like I am in a movie." My student who works in a restaurant to...

Although we are in week 2 of 6 weeks of Technology in Education, I spent the day remaking the assignment for my students' final project. Usually we work together in a project based environment to create a Teacher Tech Handbook with summaries of the latest tech tools. This handbook is then sent out to local teachers for free and under a creative commons license so that they can adapt any student made worksheets to their needs. My fall students completed a pretty robust text and this spring I thought my students would be making videos about how to integrate these technologies for various content areas and grades. In light of the current COVID-19 education experiment, I have been thinking of alternatives. "Lend a Hand" <-- This is one of the options my students can choose from. I am asking them to find someone who could benefit from their new tech knowledge. Their only parameter is to use a minimum of 2 tech tools, Screencastify mixed with Google Sites for example. I ...