Potato Chips, a Lawn Chair, and the Nudging Neighbor On a beautiful spring day, my husband and I were sitting outside, watching the neighbors walk their dogs, ride their bikes, and generally enjoying the springtime air while getting in a little exercise.  As I sat...

Over the past couple weeks, students in Ms. Angela Altomonte’s U. S. History class at Fordson have been working hard at preparing lessons to deliver to their peers on various topics. They learned valuable lessons about what it takes to be a teacher–and taught us a lesson about what students are really capable of when it comes to technology.

“Every day is filled with uncertainty. Learning prepares you to deal with uncertainty. ‘Education’ prepares you to deal with certainty. …There is no certainty.” -Dr. Sugata Mitra

The problem isn’t with videos. Sometimes the best way to learn about something is to watch a video about it. Sometimes a video is necessary to support other materials in learning about a particular topic. I tell people that half of what I’ve ever learned has been from YouTube. I’m kidding, of course, but it may not be that much of an overstatement. The problem, as always, is what students are doing with the video.

Just this morning, I received an email from Kahoot reminding its users that they can administer “homework that corrects itself”. As a teacher, this is intriguing to me for many reasons. Giving self-corrected homework helps me avoid a little of the mundane practice of...

For some students, publishing work online raises the stakes a little bit. Because it will be viewable by more people than just their teacher, many students put forth the extra effort to make things look good, care a little more about their grammar, and spend a little more time on the presentation.

No tool or strategy, regardless of whether it is high tech or an engaging activity, is ever the right place to start planning a lesson.

Simply putting technology in the hands of our students is not magically going to increase achievement. Neither is having them go through the motions of all the other strategies we try to employ. Just being “engaged” doesn’t mean a student is being enriched.

Here's another one of my analogies for you:   Being "good with technology" : integrating technology :: being good at cursive : writing ability The fact of the matter is that most people in the professional world are "good with technology". It's pretty much a given...

I used to tell people that 80% of my job was finding creative ways to prevent kids from cheating. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but that’s how it feels sometimes, doesn’t it? We want kids to internalize their learning. We want them to be good, conscientious pupils, just like we were. We want them to forgo all of the modern conveniences–cell phones, the internet, Google–and just learn it for themselves like we did.