This weekend I attended ntcamp, an unconference for both veteran and new teachers aimed at providing conversation for new teachers to learn from veteran teachers. I sat in on a session facilitated by Jason Bedell about grades that proved to be a thought provoking one. He created a collaborative document that holds a lot of…
Maybe it’s because it’s summertime or maybe it’s the general atmosphere of education these days, but the online education community has been a flutter with talk of what needs to change in education. What I’m wondering is how much of this is new or different than years past. I am fairly young, so my memory…
Tonight’s #edchat conversation both invigorated me and irritated me at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, it had nothing to do with #edchat itself, but rather the topic. We have talked ad nauseam about reforming education. We have hashed out what needs to be done, what education should look like and why it’s important…
If you are a teacher, parent or anyone invested in education in the Philadelphia area, I want to introduce to THE source of information for what’s going on in public schools in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Public School Notebook is “a nonprofit news service serving thousands of supporters of the Philadelphia public schools. The Notebook serves…
Yesterday I attended EdubloggerCon, an unconference organized by Steve Hargadon. In the sessions on Best Practices in 1:1 Laptops and Bringing the Family along for Learning, the conversation centered at times around the Digital Divide. One of the things I love about the ISTE conference is hearing all of the innovative and exciting projects and…
photo courtesy of fmgbain on Flickr During this week’s edchat I saw a name scroll by that made me look twice. Mixed among the many tweets was a tweet from Diane Ravitch. I had just recently read an adaptation from her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and…
As many readers may know, myself and a team of dedicated, innovative, collaborative and fun-loving educators put on the very first edcamp unconference here in Philadelphia. We have been working tirelessly since November when we attended our first ever Barcamp to put together an education-focused professional development experience unlike any other. In my humble opinion,…
In lieu of all of the wonderful comments on my recent #edchat post, I felt the need to vent some frustrations about the initiative I started with some colleagues a few months back that I blogged about here. Long story short, I started a Google Group around a school-wide initiative aimed at improving the climate…
I have been participating in the weekly Twitter discussion, #edchat, since August 2009. It has been amazing watching the conversation grow and expand, pulling more and more people into the conversation. The topics range from educational technology to best practices in education and schools. Many times the conversation is heated, often it is inspiring and…
Just last week my friend Chad Sansing challenged me to respond to his blog post, #EduThingsILike. In his post he listed things that he would like to see in schools, districts and education as a whole. His post was in response to Tom Vander Ark‘s post Things I Like. Here are the things I like…