I don’t discuss my years as an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL, a.k.a. ESL) specialist much on these pages, mainly because there are no ESOL students at my high school. But the experience of being a second teacher in the content-area classroom when I wore this hat? That’s some good fodder for thinking [...]

In a post last month I mentioned seeing the need for short video presentations about web 2.0 in education, and posted a snippet from a parent presentation I gave at our 1:1 Apple Laptop School launch. That snippet focused only on the motivational power of a simple ClustrMap on a blog. Here’s another one: Less [...]

Eight minutes on how to 1) find content on Creative Commons, 2) use Zamzar to download YouTube and other videos for mashups. (It’s also posted on my “Teaching Gallery” static page.) [Update: Photos credited in final titles, plus CC licensing added.] Coming in Episode 2: Still Photo Skills: Advanced use of the Ken Burns Effect.

Long presentations are great and all, but maybe quickies have their place as well. I can see the need. Here’s a 2-minute snippet from a presentation I gave to parents to launch our 1:1 Apple Laptop initiative back in August. I simply explain Clustrmaps by showing it on a blog with world-wide readers….written by a [...]

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 [...]

This TED Talk [update: about "Redefining the Dictionary"] is a must-watch for 20th Century Students (there are more of them than we realize) who are as reactionary as their parents about Why 2.0: And Graham Wegner‘s presentation about Personal Learning Environments makes great use of metaphors to sketch out the bewildering shape of our attempts [...]

Back in August, I posted a screencast called “What is Blogging?” for audiences, educational and otherwise, needing a basic introduction to the read/write aspects of this new world. Since I’m sponsoring a Web 2.0 club at school this year, and also setting my AP Literature students up with their own WordPress MU blogs on our [...]

I stumbled upon this. I’ve seen text versions in chain emails, which always struck me as slightly sappy. Not so with the performance version. Love the buildup and conclusion.

Just sharing this tutorial I made for my staff (95% of whom will not watch it, and therefore spend the rest of their lives making and grading quizzes and tests the hard way). It shows one way to use class Scribe Blogs to create test and quiz items on Moodle. Moodle then auto-grades, reports correct [...]

I don’t know Nick Senger, but just discovered his blog, Teen Literacy Tips: Working to Improve the Teaching of Literature, because he linked to my Screencast-o-matic for AP Lit post. (I just love how that works.) Nick’s blog is a keeper for Language Arts teachers. Here’s a very simple, elegant poetry movie assignment he posted [...]