My office space is shared with our Media Specialist, so that places me in the school library. During the lunch recesses, students have the option to come into the library to do work. On one particular day, I noticed two…
I’ve written two posts in the past on this topic (3/18/15 The Animation Chefs… & 1/28/16 A Proposed Challenge…) this past February my district had a PD Day where I was able to submit a session proposal on Green Screening…
I read a post from Alice Keeler, Google Drive Level Up Challenge, where she created an individualized, badge-awarding professional development tool using Google Sheets. I thought this was fantastic, though, I had one hesitation; I thought the concept of typing…
If you are on Facebook, maybe you have seen this… It’s slowly making the rounds trying to get responses. Well, there are multiple ways of answering this problem and it could be interesting to see which method people employ. This…
Susan Oxnevad, ThingLink’s Education Community Manager and a great colleague, shared with me some exciting news coming soon to ThingLink. Below is the beginnings of a post she released on ThingLink’s Education Blog. Let me say, I’m really excited about…
During a Twitter chat, Jonathon Davis asked: @JDavis680 I might be interested — Dan Gallagher (@Gallagher_Tech) January 12, 2016 The blog (‘Teachers Use This‘) is based on another blog (‘The Set Up‘) where educators describe the equipment they use in…
Pley is a company I heard about through Twitter, last year. They were new and were generating attention by giving educators a free year’s membership. According to their site & blog… “Pley is the leading toy rental company, helping smart…
The teacher resource specialists for technology (which I’m a part of) were asked if we would like to participate in 2nd year teachers’ Book Clubs. We all selected to be a part of Who Owns the Learning by Alan November. I’m…
I recently read a post by Richard Wells (@EduWells) titled “14 Star Wars Posters for Educators” which combined two loves: Star Wars & LEGOs. He created scenes with minifigure (LEGO) Star Wars characters. The difference in mine, I had those LEGOs (I know, my…
The last time I went on a small rant was back in April of 2015, at this time I need to vent again. 21st-century skills (in my district they’re called competencies) are those abilities which students should be learning to…
My team and I just finished reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Dan & Chip Heath. Awesome book and whoever suggested it for our book club should get a bonus (wink, wink). If you haven’t read the…
UPDATE: I recently listened to a podcast, by Chuck Poole, titled ‘3 Lessons We Can Learn From Yoda’ I felt his message fit with the topic of this post so after reaching out to him, @Gallagher_Tech hey Dan sure go…
I was going through my ‘Saved for Later’ on Feedly when I came across Rae Fearing‘s recent blog post about Creating Science Memes… I would recommend checking it out, then do like I did and accept the challenge. I thought for…
***I posted about this topic on my district’s blog: WW-P 1to1 Learning*** I had the pleasure of getting a Post-it Note from Dr. Rebecca McLelland-Crawley, one Friday morning. “11am, STEAM room, Take Apart Day, be there!” Now that sounds enticing!…
In time for award season (AMA’s were this past weekend), the Edublog Awards will be starting up. “The Edublog Awards started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog…
Professional development is a hard task to fulfill. Teachers have varying skills and needs. Sometimes topics can be too large to cover in a short period of time or they can be too specific and not really apply to the…
I’ve had my mind on Forms a lot lately. Assisted a teacher with setting up Parent/Teacher conferences using Forms, Choice Eliminator add-on, and confirmation emails using formMule add-on. Then I joined an 8th Grade Team meeting. Prior to the agenda…
Here’s the setting. The teacher resource specialists for technology are gathered together for a team meeting. On the agenda, our, what has now become annual, Tweet 10 Challenge. One of our team members read a blog post by Alice Keeler.…
Going Google brings a whole set of new terminology to try and explain. So here is my attempt at making sense of this from what I heard in a session by Mike Marotta. Apps – quickly launch to a web…
There are events you attend which are filled with excitement; overwhelming with new ideas; and leave you with your head spinning. That’s how the International Society of Technology Educators’s conference was for me this past summer. Now I had the…
“Two heads are better than one” -John Heywood, 1546 Well I want to take that to the next level! Two resources which I like, have built in features allowing for multiple people to work together in creating collections, projects, examples,…
A few years ago, as a classroom teacher, I started a blog called TODAY IN SCHOOL… with the intention of using the site to chronicle daily adventures with my students, ultimately painting a picture with each entry of what it…
One of my new favorite tools for Chrome is Google Tone! My district invested in Hapara which allowed our teachers in our 1:1 Chromebook program the ability to manage the devices while in the classroom. One of the features I…
That’s right folks, with summer comes the opportunity for hands-on learning that is fun and self-paced. The 2015 ThingLink Summer Teacher Challenge starts shortly (week of June 28th). This 5-week challenge introduces you to a must use resource through weekly…