I decided to quit Facebook… again. This will be my third attempt to get this social media monkey off my back. I knew I had a problem when I found myself checking my phone for updates, posting all the time, and just sifting through posts that I had seen more than once before. “Show me …
NETA stands for the Nebraska Educational Technology Association, and it is an organization that promotes the use of technology in teaching. I have been attending the conference off and on since 1998. I remember the first year it was at some high school in Lincoln. I attended as an AmeriCorps representative. I had no idea …
NETA 2015 I (and 2000 of my closest friends) attended the annual Nebraska Education Technology Association conference which moved to the Century Link Arena in downtown Omaha this year. This year was special for me personally because it was the first year that the Nebraska Writing Project partnered with NETA. This meant that we had 3 …
I faced a dilemma this week. By some act of fortune, a teacher friend of mine posted a link about opting out of standardized tests. That may or may not be it. I have a daughter who is now a junior and she has already taken a battery of Nebraska State Assessments including Writing, Math …
Today I had another obvious breakthrough as a teacher. I just finished teaching The Great Gatsby again, and I love it each and every time I do. However, the assessments that we have come up with are usually duds and make me dread the grading part of the whole equation. One thing that I struggle …
I think it has been a long time since I made a blog post, so allow this to be my reflection on the year 2014 as a teacher. Forgive me as this turns into a treatise on education and technology. The biggest change I have made this year is that I am no longer an …
I just want to share some materials that we use for Reading Circles in our Humanities class. We have been tweaking this for awhile. Not perfect, but kind of neat. Let me know what you do! This is the calendar I use with roles on the 2nd page. Here is a guide for what they …
Day 30 What would you do (as a teacher) if you weren’t afraid? I am having a tough time answering this question because it makes the assumption that all teachers are afraid. I had a wonderful discourse with my American Literature students a few years ago. I proposed the theory that everything we do as …
Day 29 How have you changed as an educator since you first started? This one could take a month to really respond to, but who has that kind of time. Now and then, I like to read from my original philosophy of education to see what I was thinking as I graduated from college with …
Day 28 Respond: Should technology drive curriculum, or vice versa? I think that we are in a tender trap of educational technology right now. Too many administrators are piling on and thinking, “What can we do to be on the cutting edge?” Without stopping to think, “Why do we want to be on the cutting …