This isn’t theoretical – necessarily. It could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Given a 1:1 MacBook school, a geeky teacher, no bandwidth or filtering or blocking restrictions, how would you design an elective class to showcase 21st century learning possibilities? I’ve got an elective “writing seminar” beginning next week, with about ten students [...]

Every week is interesting when you’re launching an all-Apple Laptop high school. This week was no exception. I run a 40-minute Web 2.0 activity club every Thursday. (That experience, by the way, makes me weep for teachers who teach classes of less than an hour’s duration. I have time for almost nothing in 40 minutes [...]

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 [...]

Kent: Now, banish’d Kent, If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn’d, …Thy master, whom thou lovest, Shall find thee full of labours. –King Lear I.iv.5-8 Photo Credit: “Iron Team” by 3blindmice on Flickr (via Everystockphoto.com) What. an. intense. week. or two.My last post was a rant against what I perceived to be the [...]

Awake and refreshed now. Neurons still firing from a heady mental cocktail blending the Shanghai Learning 2.0 Conference, my RSS subscription to Crooks and Liars (my favorite political blog), the creative potential of iLife for student-people and teacher-people alike and, five minutes ago, a dash of eureka inspired by reader comments to a week-old and [...]

Not to beat this GarageBand horse too hard, but Wes Fryer’s Shanghai workshop last week really did lift my creative skullcap. This GarageBand composing is fascinating to me, because it has implications for revolutionizing musical creativity in the same way that blogging has revolutionized writing for me (and so many of you). I’ve said it [...]

I’m posting these notes for the use of anybody who travels the first weeks into 1:1 laptop education in the future. I figure the bumps on that path will be pretty universal. And the solutions. Last week, I groused that “teachers don’t like to be learners,” and that “IT managers get in the way of [...]

Constantly risking absurdityand deathwhenever he performsabove the headsof his audiencethe poet like an acrobatclimbs on rimeto a high wire of his own makingand balancing on eyebeamsabove a sea of facespaces his wayto the other side of the day…. ….in his supposed advancetoward that still higher perchwhere Beauty stands and waitswith gravityto start her death-defying leapAnd [...]

We expect my presentation to start around 7.30 p.m. That would make it: Thursday 11 a.m. in London Thursday 12.30 a.m. (ouch) in Hawaii (sorry, Chris! I owe you! Or you can send me a YackPack voice message?) Thursday 4.30 a.m. (carrumba) in Denver (Karl, how about a YackPack message?) Thursday 5.30 p.m. in Bangkok [...]

Arapahoe HS (Denver – Karl Fisch’s Digs) I know this is short notice, but that’s half the fun. I’ve been quiet this week because life hasn’t been. We’re in our first week of school as a 1:1 Apple Laptop school; I’m in my first week as Tech Coordinator / AP Literature teacher; our IT Manager [...]