The Minimalistic Gmail Cheat Sheet

If you're a Gmail user (and why wouldn't you be now that they give you 15 GB of free storage across their services), this cheat sheet will make you a power user.

The allure of ̶r̶o̶l̶e̶-̶p̶l̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ education

I recently came across this image, created by Jason "Danger" Block, and it got me thinking about the classroom.

How do we get our kids to feel this way about their accomplishments in real life, in our classrooms, not just in their fantasy lives, their role-playing lives? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

2 Minute EdTech Tip - Episode 1 - Scratch 2.0

In this video series, I will briefly explore web tools, apps, websites and other valuable classroom tools. Episode Number 1 is about the new version of Scratch, Scratch 2.0. The biggest change from the previous version is that the program is now entirely web-based. No more struggling to install software on computers in our classrooms. Check it out:


Scratch 2.0 is flash-based, so it will work on nearly any browser.

Find it at http://scratch.mit.edu

There is also a great community of educators using Scratch with their students at http://scratch.mit.edu/educators/.

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley

TED has just released the individual segments from each of the speakers at this week's PBS special "TED Talks Education."

I'm a huge fan of Sir Ken Robinson and the message he shares. In his segment, Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish - and how current education culture works against them.

Want to hear about the current state of education? Ask the students.

There are some issues in education. We all know this. The problem is that the only people that have any say in what we do to fix these problems are those that have never spent any time in the classroom. For some reason, the powers that be do not feel that they need the opinions of classroom teachers. Nor do they feel that they need to hear from the most important piece of this puzzle, the students.

This morning on Twitter, Tom Whitby tweeted out a link to the following video. It's a video of a high school student named Jeff Bliss, expressing his concerns with education as he sees it, from student's point of view. Although the venue may not be the best one for this type of reaction, his message is spot on. 

TED Talks Education - full video

The show aired last night on PBS. They are now making it available for free. Hear inspiring and forward-looking leaders and thinkers on the topic of learning, including Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth, Bill Gates, Rita F. Pierson, Sir Ken Robinson and Geoffrey Canada, among others. Hosted by John Legend, this special focused solely on education marks the first TED project produced specifically for television.

Watch TED Talks Education on PBS. See more from TED Talks Education.

Bringing the world to our students

I live in a pretty small county in Florida. Our three high schools have a total of 5,000 students, many of whom have never left this county and have little idea of what lies out there. With the increasing popularity of free video conferencing tools like Skype and now Google+ Hangouts we can bring more of that world to these kids. I love finding experts in the "outside" world willing to chat with our students about a range of topics. Last year, I helped a first grade teacher take her kids on a "field trip" around the world via Skype and helped another first grade class see snow for the first time when we Skyped with a classroom in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I've helped teachers connect with authors of books their students have read and also even assisted one of our chorus teachers make a connection with a Broadway singer/actress. I was also lucky enough to connect one of our high school biology classes with geneticist Dr. Kelsey Metzger from the University of Minnesota at Rochester. A couple of years ago, she taught a one hour lesson to our AP Biology class via Skype. How cool is that? I absolutely LOVE this stuff.

A week ago, a journalism teacher at one of our high schools as me if it might be possible to find a working journalist willing to chat with her journalism students. After thinking about how I would approach this, I remembered following someone on Twitter a few years back named Craig Kanalley. At the time, I followed Craig because he was is a Buffalo Sabres fan and was originally from Buffalo, NY, just like me. Craig was living in Chicago but a short while back, Craig was hired on at The Huffington Post as senior editor of Big News & Live Events and moved to New York City. I sent Craig a tweet:

Craig said he'd love to. We connected today via Google+ Hangout. It was fantastic. The students took a lot of time to do their research and come up with high quality, inquisitive questions. Craig spent about an hour with us answering every question the kids threw at him.

We appreciate the time he spent and it was an amazing opportunity for our kids in little ole' Citrus County, FL. The Huffington Post is the 89th most visited website in the world and for our kids to have the chance to speak to someone in the field, in the trenches writing everyday and managing a staff was invaluable to them. You can watch the recording of the chat below.

We need to keep doing whatever we can to bring the world to our students.