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 […]
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. […]
Worksheets & Dinner: An Analogy
I have been having several discussions with my colleagues about the methodologies seen in many schools. While I was busily making preparations for dinner today, a great analogy came into my head. Why do I work so hard to prepare a lovely, nutritiously balanced meal for my family? Because I care. The same can be […]
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 […]
Twitter as Professional Development
I’ve had a user account on Twitter for several years (since 2009), but it wasn’t until December of 2011 that I started actively reading and tweeting. I think what got me back onto Twitter was the DreamForce (#DF11) cloud conference I attended in August. The genius CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, discussed the importance of […]
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 […]
My First EdCamp
My very good friend Shyra and I decided we’d trek ourselves down to CSUFresno to attend our first EdCamp. EdCampCV was headed by Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) on February 25, 2012. For those of you who don’t know what EdCamp is, there’s a great video on the EdCampCV website that explains it. EdCamp is not your […]
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