GTAMTV14
I applied to Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View, California. My interim principal, Sr. Margaret, convinced me to do it at about 4pm on May 14th, about eight hours before the deadline. I created my video first, and I basically used Camtasia with Google Presentation and a ton of photos from the past year. You […]
MERIT is…
life-changing, inspiring, amazing, awesome… I could go on forever. Making Education Relevant and Interactive through Technology (MERIT) is an educator professional development program at Foothill College’s Krause Center for Innovation. It is a year-long program in creating fun, engaging, learning-filled, student-centered environments in classrooms around the world. While most of the teachers accepted into MERIT […]
Revolutionary War (EXPLORE)
Today, I told fifth graders in my tech class that their homeroom teacher (Ms. Flynn) decided she wanted to be greedy. Normally very kind and happy, Ms. Flynn had changed overnight into a mean, grumpy tyrant. She was going to start taking Flynn Bucks (her positive reward system) away from the students. She was going […]
50 Things I’ve Learned about Teaching
I have been working in education for the past eight years, and I look back and see how I’ve developed my own (very strong) beliefs about teaching and learning. Many of these have been inspired by things I’ve learned through ed-tech conferences, teaching my own classes, reading, and being surrounded by great teachers on Twitter. […]
A Good Day
Today was a good day. I started teaching at 8:00am, and I saw half of the 5th grade class for 50 minutes. Today, we created Glogster posters. The students had to become residents of the original thirteen colonies and convince others not to follow or participate in the Stamp Act of 1765. My requirements were […]
2nd Graders & Friendly Letters
I have to admit that our current second graders are wonderful. They follow directions, they are eager to learn, and they are simply a bunch of sweet kids. I was a little leery about introducing email to these young scholars, but after I finished the lesson, I realized I had nothing to worry about. We […]
The Poverty Project
For the past few years, I have been doing a very special project with the eighth graders at our school. It covers curriculum in religion, social studies, language arts, science, and math – and it even uses technology throughout the lesson. For those in non-parochial schools, the religious aspect can be left out of it […]
Email Etiquette for Students
I teach my students e-mail etiquette as part of their first lesson in accessing their Google Apps for Education accounts. My rules are not complicated, and they work really well for our particular students. Always include your name in the subject. I don’t know who pinkfluffyunicorns1357 is. Plus, it’s a good habit to get into […]
What They Said: