Summer Reflections and Conclusions

You know the saying from Of Mice & Men, “The best laid plans…”, well that’s sort of what my summer was like. I originally thought it would be my typical: lay by the pool, read a ton of books on my Kindle, watch the 200 TED’s that are sitting in my iTunes, and generally relax. Unfortunately not one of those things occurred, but what did occur was an amazing amount of learning. So when I received the principal’s welcome back letter today I realized it’s time for some reflection and… Continue reading

OneNote Files

As my mind now turns toward the upcoming school year I am diligently working on transferring all my files into OneNote folders. (If you missed my post about OneNote, it's worth a look.) So this is just a quick post to let you know the folders are being updated and you can access them here. BTW, if you don't have OneNote in your MS Office suite. You can download a trial copy. It's good for 60 days, and if you find that you don't want to purchase it, just transfer… Continue reading

Truly Using Technology In The Classroom

Yes, this does seem like an ad for Apple products, but get past that and think about what is really happening here. The ultimate engagement experience for students. My mind swims with the thought of having students who are excited about being in class. Instead of us just talking at them, they are partners in their own learning. This is how technology benefits us! This is truly my ideal, what I hope to experience as an educator before I retire. Hey, I have 20+ years to go, so maybe there's hope! What do… Continue reading

Smart Decision, or Smart Disaster?

I have been teaching for 11 years, and while I wasn’t a super fantastic teacher out the gate, I can now say I’m a good teacher. I don’t think that is an arrogant statement, it is simply a fact. How do I know I’m good? Sure my students always improve on the state tests, but I know I’m doing something right because my students improve period. They always get better. From September to June I watch as my students become better readers, better writers, better thinkers and yes, better test takers (not… Continue reading

A.W.O.L.

You may have noticed that I have been “dark” this past week. I have been working hard, revamping a couple of important pages on this site: Blogs I Follow and Ed-Tech Links. Now, instead of feeding them in via Google Reader and Diigo, I am inputting everything myself. I realize this isn’t the ideal solution due to all the labor involved, but the feed situation wasn’t working for me. I didn’t like that all the links were not available here, and more importantly there was no… Continue reading