One of the best reasons to adopt technology is because it can provide students a much more active, meaningful, and self-directed educational experience in your classroom. As a bonus, it can make your job much, much easier. In my workshops with educators, I often call
The concept of “wait time” isn’t anything new to educators. Every year, new teachers have to get used to suppressing that urge they feel to fill silence in their classrooms so that their students have quiet processing time. We know students need wait time to
John Hattie’s research over the past few decades has provided educators with some tremendous insight on what truly impacts students’ learning. Basically, anything that is at or above an effect size of .40 has been found to greatly enhance the learning environment for students. Going
When should kids get their first cell phones? How can I keep kids safe as they use the internet? How much screen time is too much? These are just some of many common questions parents and caregivers have about technology in their kids' lives. Parents
It’s hard to keep up with all of the latest and greatest technologies—and plan how you’ll integrate them throughout the school year. These books are easy reads packed full of fresh ideas to get you started. Take them along on your summer vacation! If you’re looking
Outside of school, most people apply learning across disciplines, scenarios, and experiences. For a majority of our lives as students, we are taught in a system that creates blocks of time for learning specific content, much like the factory model of production. However, learning should
Have you ever used Google Hangouts? If not, you are missing out on free and powerful collaboration tool. Get started with the basics at this helpful link. In a nutshell, Hangouts is a free way to engage in a video conference with up to ten people.
"It’s up in the Cloud" is a common refrain we hear in our lives today. From our emails, to our photos, and don’t forget our documents - much of our teaching world now lives online. Let’s take a quick look at three ways you can get most
When Tom Whitby and I set out to write The Relevant Educator: How Connectedness Empowers Learning, we wanted to provide a manual for any educator who had a desire to improve their practice, as many have already done, by utilizing social media and other tools.
In this video, Zachary Walker explains how he began teaching with technology and the difference it made for one student, leading to the writing of his new book, Teaching the Last Backpack Generation. You can download some of the lesson plans from Teaching the Last Backpack Generation here.