So I’m somewhere in Thailand called Pattaya that I wouldn’t choose to come to except that John, my best friend from my “professional college student/Bohemian vagabond years” from age 20 to 34, is here — I wrote about him and those years of our knuckleheaded intellectual awakening in the In the Crumbling Temple of the [...]
Archives for the ‘lessons’ Category
“You Suck at Photoshop”: Paragon of Creative Project-Based Learning
Monday, 4 January 2010
I just discovered the 2008 Webby Award-winning “You Suck at Photoshop” series on YouTube. While it may not succeed at making me a Photoshop ninja, it does succeed at convincing me that this kind of project would make the classroom an awesome place. Here’s why: the series demonstrates a mastery of content knowledge — in [...]
Wikipedia: “Wikipedia is not a reliable source”
Sunday, 3 January 2010
I wrote recently about how many of my otherwise sharp students were “Google fundamentalists” who argued, to simplify a bit, that “if it’s in Google, it’s valid.” These are often the same students who insist they should be able to use Wikipedia as a source for research. I’ve been skimming Wikipedia’s own policies for writing [...]
New Tech Teaching Habits
Thursday, 31 December 2009
I think this question would make either a good meme or a good open thread: What new routines have worked their way into your teaching-and-learning life as a result of the digital revolution? I’ll share a couple of mine. I think history teachers will find the first one valuable, but teachers of any discipline can [...]
On the Art of Being Boring
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
I’ll have more to say soon about how I’ve been trying to teach the wisdom in this “napkin philosopher” piece in my classroom all year. It’s going to get center stage on my classroom door window first day back to school. Maybe even tattooed on students’ hands. But right now, it’s off to the airport [...]
Videos: Mental Poverty, Collaboration, “Recession Skills 101″
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Watch the two videos below — I even took notes of highlights to prod the attention-deficient — and then show them to your students. 1. Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University, on Collaboration and what I’ve been calling Social Intelligence in the Workplace. Key concepts: Making co-workers look good, not bad; “plussing” your partners; wanting [...]
Resource: Teaching Students How NOT to Comment
Sunday, 27 December 2009
I was going to delete this spam, but upon reading it realized it could have been written by so many students new to commenting on blogs. So students, if your comments sound like this, consider them an epic fail: Easily, this article is really the most informative on this deserving topic. I agree with your [...]
(How) Would You Use This Critical Thinking Video?
Sunday, 27 December 2009
On Using Technology Without Understanding It
Friday, 25 December 2009
This editorial from our high school student newspaper is a must-read for its criticism of the school-wide technology integration initiative. It’s a must-read for other reasons too — and other readers — but read it first, and we’ll get to that very different party afterward. The first thing I did when I read this was [...]
A New Diigo Vision and Call for Advice: On Students Teaching China to the West
Wednesday, 23 December 2009






