Back in May, I had the honor of writing a guest post on Larry Ferlazzo’s excellent Education Week blog. My post centered on the current dialogue around phones and young people and Jonathan Haidt’s “Anxious Generation” book. Since that dialogue is still going strong, I wanted to share it here.
What Educators Need to Know About How Companies Track Their Students This post contains excerpts from my newly released book, Digital and Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet: Practical Classroom Applications, which is now available on Amazon. In the classroom, there is not much that individual educators can do about how companies and ISPs track their students…
Just this past week, a video of Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg emerged on Instagram that featured a real video address with lip synced audio that refers to the power that Facebook has built using its users’ data. The dubbed voice, unlike the deepfake released of President Obama by researchers at the University of Washington in…
To start off the year, I decided to make sure that all of my 9th graders understand what the Internet really is and how it works before they get their Internet-ready laptops in a few weeks. When they came in, they had the first five minutes of class to “draw the Internet.” I got a…
I have been blessed to have spent the last 3-4 months working with eleven 7th and 8th graders as they create projects for the annual PA Middle School Computer Fair. We are now only a couple of weeks away from the Fair and I can’t help but reflect on the way my role working with…
First of all, I have to thank my friend, Kim Sivick for sharing this awesome gadget with me. ————————————————————————————————————————————– Today I received my Makey Makey kit in the mail and I haven’t stopped playing with it. First, I opened the box. Once I had it all plugged in, I immediately got some bananas and got…
This past summer, with the help of my brilliant friend, Kristen Swanson, I took my Technology Curriculum to a place I had never imagined it could go. As a computer lab teacher, there has never been an easy to follow, mapped out path for instruction. As such, over the last 5 years I created a…
One of the struggles of teaching a “special” is meeting the needs of over 250 students a week, sometimes for one measly 45 minute period. Differentiation in this setting is hard. Today I won a simple but hugely important battle in this arena. One of my 7th graders struggles to do anything independently. She is…
One of the struggles of teaching a “special” is meeting the needs of over 250 students a week, sometimes for one measly 45 minute period. Differentiation in this setting is hard. Today I won a simple but hugely important battle in this arena. One of my 7th graders struggles to do anything independently. She is…