If you told me in January that my district was going 1:1 (we aren’t) next school year I would be jumping up and down with pure joy and excitement. If you told me today that my district was going 1:1 (we aren’t) next school year I would be jumping up and down with pure joy [...]

I am not usually one for passing on memes but I happen to like this one. Thank you Carl Anderson for passing this recognition on to Synthesizing Education. For those I am awarding below, here are a few  suggested guidelines if you would also like to pass this meme on: 1. Copy and Display the [...]

Blogs I Have Written For: The Importance of Generalizations in Social Studies- Bridging The Gap Be Wagner Dodge & Then Replace The Windows?- Cooperative Catalyst Blogs I Have Commented On: Why Change?- My Island View Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Class size discussions fascinate me especially when we start talking about making students “independent learners” and when we want to expand learning “beyond the walls of the classroom” by introducing technology and, especially, social media tools. It even fascinates me so much that I wrote a post in early January talking about “How Class Sizes [...]

It drives me crazy when people say things to kids like “you know, in the real world…” as though it is some far-off place that requires the indoctrination of 13 years of boring, irrelevant schooling to enter. How about this? WE SHOULDN’T WANT THE CLASSROOM TO BE “THE REAL WORLD”! Why? Because: The “Real World” [...]

At some point, society needs to realize that getting an education is not the prerequisite for being successful. Education should be viewed and utilized as a facilitator to achieving success. In other words, students should be working on “academic” knowledge in school while paving their career path simultaneously such to provide relevance to what they [...]

Every school should have a museum (storage room in the basement) where educators can go to reminisce about the practices of old that are no longer deemed effective or of high quality. I bet there is plenty of “stuff” that people can donate and get out of their classroom and teaching repertoire that are hindering [...]

The video below is of a commercial for a Becel, which is some type of heartcare company. Either way, I find it rather amusing, and the amount of discussion that it can create with kids is amazing. I showed it to one of my classes, and we talked about how that applies to a lot [...]

It seems as though politicians are rallying around the notion of national standards and there are few individuals voicing an opinion and raising questions about the effectiveness of such measures. I, on the other hand, am beginning to wonder if the entire country realizes that standards as they are currently envisioned limit the amount of [...]

"Kids don't know anything about the world around them." I hate this statement though I hear it in one form or another from a variety of sources from the virtual and physical world (and certainly not from just teachers). I prefer questions rather than bold generalizations. Are kids really not informed or has the adult [...]