Student guest bloggers is a brilliant idea on a professional blog: I am very intrigued as to how the ways in which you “live history” in these games end up showing you the ways in which historical events have played out in real life. I wonder if your empathy for …
When does gamifying your classroom lead to unintended outcomes: I can get behind a lot of the different types of items you have outlined here, and I am absolutely amazed at the level to which you have gone to explore the practice and share that exploration. The one that I …
I truly believe that podcasts can transform your practice. Weird, but true. I think you have hit upon something fundamental for the ways in which we both consume and create within the stream of information that is seemingly all around us. Authenticity isn’t found within the conveyance of information, but rather …
Inquiring minds… They want to know… always: I don’t know that it can be said better than this: ” The only constant we have in our profession is a captive, open, interested audience. It is up to you to decide what you do with that audience. Create goals for your …
Decisions that are made as close to the classroom as possible are ones that are most aligned with creating great leadership within schools: Although I am struggling a bit with all of the war/bomb-related metaphors here, I think your point is sound. We can empower teachers and create a chain …
I love a good critique now and then, but I want to build something too. How can we make our schools what we want them to be? This is one of the more coherent pieces I have read about the CCSS. It lays out a specific issue that you have …
We cannot simply expect finished products. We must honor and value the process of creating them too. Modeling within professional development what we want to see in classrooms should be standard practice, and yet it is often not. Specifically, we tend to put teachers directly into fixed mindsets by denying …
Tolerance is not enough: When I was in high school, we had a “diversity day” every year. During this day, we had many different speakers come and talk about their different viewpoints. The effort was to ensure that we did not get stuck in our little bubble (which was formidable …
Debugging is about more than just programming and algorithms: I really love your approach to teaching kids algorithms and getting them to stick with their plans long enough to see their first implementations before changing them. I think the skill of understanding WHY something didn’t work is the most important …
When is Substitution the right choice for teachers (in the SAMR model): I struggle with this idea and I go back and forth on the merits of substitution. You have made the case for it, and I think it holds. And yet, the point of looking beyond substitution is so …