The combination of three different pandemics – the coronavirus, racial injustice & economic uncertainty – has opened a gaping anxious hole in my inner being ripe for the filling. Like many people I know, I began to fill that hole with “doomscrolling” and mindless swiping through social media. Over the last few weeks, as the…
As I was scrolling LinkedIn today (this is something I just started doing recently), I felt the need to dust off this blog and slowly emerge from what feels like eons of silence here. I came across a post by Mingda T, a UX Designer intern, that immediately grabbed my attention. It started with “I’m…
Reflecting on a busy weekend of conversation and learning at this year’s annual ASCD conference in Los Angeles, a few bright spots stand out for me. I attended ASCD two years ago in Philadelphia and I couldn’t help but notice that while conversations haven’t necessarily shifted too much (school leadership, school transformations, teaching strategies, assessment,…
Next week, myself and hundreds of other educators from around the country will be congregating at the 92nd St Y in New York City to share stories of how they have used social media to grow personally and professionally and how they have used it to empower young people both in and out of the…
image from Melody on Flickr Amazingly, I did not write a single ISTE reflection piece this year. It’s always a little overwhelming trying to digest everything, but there are a few things that have stuck with me even into the beginning of August. Now that I’m on a bus headed to the #140edu conference ,…
Tonight I heard a great story on Marketplace about using Peer Pressure to affect social change. The interviewee, Tina Rosenberg, explained how some groups, rather than focusing only on education used, essentially, Personal Learning Networks to promote social change. She sums it up below: “…by connecting them to other people, by having them be a…
When the story of Natalie Monroe, the “Teacher Blogger” broke earlier this year, it rustled a lot of feathers. There were those that stood in firm support of her 1st Amendment rights, there were those that called for her to be fired immediately, and there were those that denounced the idea that teachers should be…
My last post, Research: One of the Hardest Things You’ll Ever Do, was a reflection on a lesson with my 6th graders about evaluating sites. I shared it with my network on Twitter and was met with some dialogue about my choice of “Is it a blog?” as an evaluation question. Here is some of…
I have been participating in the weekly Twitter discussion, #edchat, since August 2009. It has been amazing watching the conversation grow and expand, pulling more and more people into the conversation. The topics range from educational technology to best practices in education and schools. Many times the conversation is heated, often it is inspiring and…
On April 20th, a group of fellow EduTweeters and I will be presenting at the #140 Character Conference in NYC, organized by Jeff Pulver. A very interesting and informative Posterious blog post came through my Google Alerts for my name earlier this week describing the conference. The blogger, Alan Weinkrantz, had this to say: Jeff…