Last month, I travelled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to attend the 2015 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention with two fellow teachers to participate in poster sessions under the topic Digital Pedagogies and Approaches to Media. One of the poster session was titled “Every Picture Tells a Story” and offered by Catherine Flynn, the Literacy Specialist […]
Technology
E-Sub Plans for Educators
Writing sub plans is the task I dread most as a teacher. It is time-consuming and often the best-laid plans go awry. Substitutes misinterpret directions or students use that excuse to claim that they were led astray from a meaningful task. I have found a few digital applications that have changed the nature of the […]
Adventures in Going Paperless: Step Two, Navigating Digital Feedback
After realizing my endless stacks of grading were threatening to swallow my sanity, I took the leap into embracing technology. However, what I found initially was that while stacks were fewer and my desk cleaner, my anxiety levels were not lower. In my quest for a new organizational system, I moved to using Turnitin.com for […]
BrainPOP: A Te(a)cher's Best Friend
Think you’ll have 5 or 10 minutes left in class? Need an engaging way to start a lesson while you take attendance, grade a few papers, or call a parent? Looking for something simple to drive home the core idea of a lesson? Want to find a place to have formal assessment with students at […]
Adventures in Going Paperless: Step One, Taking the Leap
urnA few years ago, my best teacher friend and I decided the entire population of the world could be dived into two kinds of people: spreadsheet people and stack people. Spreadsheet people sort and file. They label and color-code. Their organizational world is akin to the beloved spreadsheet after which they are named and on […]
The Classroom as a Transformative Space
Every educator I know spends time setting up their classroom designing the use of space to be aesthetically inviting, with little to no assistance, little to no training. That first connection with students is so important, the room they walk into tells them if they are safe, if they can be inquisitive or if they must […]
Blending Digital Time: Mobile Learning and Self Reliance
The shift in education towards mobile learning and self reliance has educators and parents grappling over the social dynamic shift in relationships between student and adult. Access to technology has transformed traditional responsibilities, and redefined cultural values which is alarming for some and liberating for others. The media tends towards a worrisome focus on the health of those with access […]
Clear Out Your App Collection And Build Student Mastery
The education technology industry is one of the most quickly growing industries in the United States. Billions of dollars are spent annually by tech juggernauts such as Pearson, Kaplan, and Apollo Group as they develop Learning Management Systems (LMSs), mobile apps, tutoring services, online course offerings, and digital textbooks. In terms of sheer dollar amounts […]