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I was lucky enough to be part of an Ignite breakout session at ASCD's Empower 2018 conference in Boston, Massachusetts this weekend. My co-presenters were impressive educators from throughout Massachusetts. My Ignite was focused on the changing research and education around screen time. Please watch, think, and comment.

In every school community there are a handful of great teachers – the teachers who are passionate about their students, experts in their content, and beloved by the families they have served – who are also kind of scared of technology. Either they have little experience using tech in their personal lives and therefore do not see how it applies to the classroom, or they have been burned by bad technology rollouts and learned to rely on their tried-and-true non-tech strategies. No matter the reason, they are great teachers and there is a way to change their experience with technology to benefit both them and their students. Often it is up to the instructional technology coaching staff to help facilitate the transition. Here are a few tools and strategies that I've seen work, and that might work for you. Traditional Teaching Strategy: Slide Decks Gateway Technology Tool: Pear Deck Especially at the secondary level, teachers have relied on slide decks to structure lesson instructio...

The advice for the past few years from parents and educators everywhere has been clear: Don't do it.  That advice has been less than effective. So, here we are. Sexting is still going on and may even be " the new first base " for teens. In fact,  80% of adults admit to sexting within the last year . The reasons that adults and teens engage in sexting behavior is often different, and schools and parents are usually rocked by scandal when teen sexting comes to light in their community. In the mean time, many adults are afraid to talk about it because it seems so taboo and uncomfortable. This post is meant to provide enough information to empower educators and parents to start talking to their adolescents and teens about sexting proactively. The discussions need to happen before the scandal breaks and in an effort to prevent it, not in reaction to the scandal. This information should make adults feel empowered, not frightened. Also, as a disclaimer, this ...

I was honored to be invited to write a guest post for the DigCitSummit group and to work closely with David Ryan Polgar to develop a topic and pull it all together. After working hard to develop a digital citizenship curriculum at my new job, I had some reflections on the (very much ongoing) process and best practices. The result is an article that seeks to emphasize that digital citizenship is a new part of citizenship, and should not been seen as -- or taught as -- a separate category. Although the realist in me knows that our society at large is not quite ready for this shift, I eagerly await the day when “digital citizenship” is not a special term. Instead, we will talk about citizenship in general. There will be a common understanding that our communications and contributions online should be measured and judged the same way our communications and contributions are in person.   Similarly, just as educators talk about how teaching the whole child is more important th...