Scot Aldred asks how I assessed projects like the Broken World Wiki textbook, and I tell him I haven’t the foggiest idea. It was too long ago. More to the point, he notes that since I said in my Australia keynote that whatever I did at that time led to burnout, the better question is, [...]

Fellow Army vet and English teacher Jan Seiter and I had a dialogue on a comment thread that I want to share on this post. It will mostly be of interest to English and history teachers, I think. I hope some of you weigh in. In the meantime, it gave me an opportunity to list [...]

Last week, Wikispaces invited me to give a Wikispaces in Education Webinar about four wiki projects I’ve done in high school English and history classes: The Broken World Wiki Textbook, a student-made textbook of modern world history from WW1 to WW2, featuring text, images, and embedded videos and student video lectures (and linked to a [...]

Update 1: Wikispaces recorded the webinar as a movie, and will send me the link when it’s up. I’ll post it here. I took the last half-hour of the 1-hour show to discuss 2 history wiki projects, and 2 language arts projects. Highly caffeinated and well-run good time (for me, anyway ). ~ As the [...]

One for the MiniLegends [Update: I was out of the loop preparing for my wedding when Australian Al Upton's MiniLegends and Qatar's Jabiz Raisdana got hit by two shockingly reactionary hammers. Since this podcast features Noel Thomas, an Australian high school principal representing all that is most forward-thinking and impressive about Australia's educational system, I'd [...]

[Note: "Talking Story" is an expression we use in Hawaii to set the tone for a conversation. Instead of focusing on solving a problem, coming to a conclusion, or debating an issue, talking story means to share experiences and anecdotes that relate to the issue at hand. I think it's an appropriate expression for web [...]

Tis the season to be jolly. We only live once, so let’s end this most amazing year with some well-crafted, twitterary prose. Don’t know what a Twittory is? Yet another amazing OZucator, Mike Seyfang, turned me on to this with his most excellent post today (from his most explosively creative edublog), in which he writes: [...]

Here’s an 8-minute promo movie I made for my school over the last few hours. I share it in case anyone wants a resource that talks through a couple of class projects we did last year in my grade 9 history and English classes – and shamelessly boasts about how special my school is for [...]

Twitter has definitely shifted my networking and online writing habits. A case in point: Since I’m 14 hours ahead of the American east coast, I mentioned how lonely it was to be awake on Twitter when most of my compatriots are asleep. Graham Wegner in Australia, whom I’m recently enjoyed getting to know, answered my [...]

Last week, I mentioned reading Jeff Wasserman’s post about how schools teach bad writing (the 5-Paragraph Essay and other abominations). I mentioned how it made me “want to make my AP Lit class Ning public. We’re having forum discussions about Organic Form v. Mechanical.” The more I thought about atomizing those Ning walls and welcoming [...]