Like Krazy

A couple of days before the last day of class one of my colleagues, Paul Clark, mentioned an end of the year idea that he was doing with his English classes. He gave his students ballots to vote on different categories for the readings they had done in class: Best Novel, Best Character, Biggest Jerk, etc. He gave them the ballots the day before classes ended, tallied the votes, and created cards and envelopes for students to read as part of an awards ceremony in class. He said students had a good time doing it each year and it was a good way to reflect on and appreciate all they had done over the course of the year. Of course, I stole it. I did add a few technological twists and it was one of these that created a surprising ripple effect. My students voted using a Google form that I set up for them and therefore, all the results were placed in a spreadsheet. The next day Paul was using tally marks to compute scores before classes began. I sat next to him, showed him the...

Apparently, I can't even lead a horse to water, much less make it drink. I held a tech session recently at school to introduce interested colleagues to free and ongoing professional development opportunities. The plan: show them several ways to learn online (Future of Education interview series (www.futureofeducation.com) and Learn Central webinars) and then show and have them sign up for Twitter and have it culminate in participation in a Tuesday edchat session. It was going to be great to show them immediately how to learn from others all over the world. One person showed. The week before I held a session on organization and document sharing. Two showed for that. I should have quit while I was ahead. Of course, it was in the middle of summer and I only gave them a few days notice so that could have been a big factor. Maybe the topics were not that exciting, interesting or maybe I used terms that had no appeal on their own. But I had a theory that I thought would make this...

As part of ISTE11, on June 27 some #EngChat participants met upstairs at a pub and participated in the weekly discussion together. Awkward. I am not gonna lie. It felt awkward sitting upstairs in a pub with about 15 others, laptops out and open, participating almost silently in a virtual chat. The quiet was purposeful. We were reflecting on reflecting and writing about it. But we weren't just online with each other (which would have added strange and unusual to the awkwardness). We were chatting and writing and sharing with others from all over the world. We would have been quiet at home doing the same thing but we were in a social gathering place meant to foster face to face discussion. Did this make a difference? As a matter of fact, all of us had done the same type of chatting weekly on #engchat and various other Twitter chats throughout the week. But this time some of us were physically together for the process and it just felt strange.  Temporarily. The...

A few months ago I found out about Twitter and created an account. My wife did the same thing at that time and after about 15 minutes of exploration neither of us was convinced that there was anything worthwhile in it. She said "Let me know when you find something useful to do with it" and was done. It has taken a while and although I still haven't found a reason for her to use it, it has become a valuable tool in my learning as an educator. The list of those I follow has taken time to build. It began with people I knew (not many Twitters!) and through online real-time discussion forums such as educhat and Classroom 2.0 has grown to include teachers throughout the world. The people I follow generally have suggestions and ideas of web tools to use in the classroom (and beyond) with my students. I recently received a tweet about a kindergarden teacher sending tweets during the school day keeping the parents in the loop and encouraging them to ask their children about the sp...