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If you have ever been the lead teacher, technologist, or administrator tasked with finding the right tech tool for your school or district, here are a few scenarios that might seem familiar: You walk through the flashy fun exhibit hall at an edtech conference. The vendors are friendly, helpful, and give you plenty of hands-on opportunities with their product. You leave with handouts, email addresses, and lots of hope. But when you get back to school, you feel overwhelmed as you flip through all of the information. What’s next? As you look for a solution to your school/district’s particular situation, it is easy to go with one of the big companies with a big reputation. They might be exactly what you need. But they might also have a big price tag, inattentive product support, and updates or interface design changes that come without warning. Well, it is what everyone else is doing, right? Vocal teachers have always been the beneficiaries of both budgetary and time considerat...

Image Source: Pixabay This is what it feels like. The idea is there. It might develop because of a conversation. That conversation reminds you of a lesson you taught, a workshop you participated in, or an article you read. The idea is the fibrous web that connects all of those things together. At this point, though, the web is only in your head. You're not sure where each of the strands will be, but you know they will be there. At this stage you have a constant nagging need to nurture it until it is fully formed. So, as the day goes on you take quick notes. Maybe they're on a notepad or on your phone. Each note is a strand of the idea web. You methodically record each note, starting to design the structure of the web. Once you have a basic outline that connects all of the pieces, you start to write. Those notes are now subheadings, and the details on each of those big ideas become paragraphs under the subheadings. Once it is done, you sit back and look at the web. You...

I just believe that this is what play should look like when done through technology. -Rachel Fondell Rachel Fondell , a 6 th grade humanities teacher, has something in common with Zach Lankow, a 9 th and 10 th grade religious studies teacher. While they both have a passion for reading, for working with their students, and for teaching their content, the commonality that is most striking is their willingness to give their students the freedom to play. They both use iPad games, which are traditionally seen as distractions by many educators, as a tool for learning and creating in their classrooms with their students. Click here to listen to the podcast. Recently, Zach told his story to the editors at EdSurge. His students use Minecraft to build safe havens during the unit when they are studying the story of Noah’s Ark. They have to think about the details of the story, the message it is meant to convey, and which elements of survival need to be considered. His proje...

Thanks to the power of EdSurge, these 4 powerful teaching strategies -- made possible by some smart edtech tools -- are no longer a best-kept secret. I've seen some incredible change in student interest, engagement, and student-teacher relationships thanks to these ideas. Click the graphic below to read more! Ready for the New School Year? Get on Top of These Four Edtech Teaching Trends

EdSurge has done it again! Are you ready for ISTE ? I am! What will you bring back to your students? Will it really make a difference?   Here's my take . Click here to see the full article The article was also featured in this week's Instruct Newsletter . If you have an interest in the amazing ways to leverage student data for personalized and meaningful instruction, we would love to see you at the Why Student Data? panel in the midst of all the ISTE excitement.  Join us Tuesday, June 30 at 12:30 in PCC 114.

The opinion piece originally published by The Hill was reposted today by EdSurge .  My hope is that this small article will continue to circulate so that lawmakers, policy advisors, parents, and students can consider the educator voice in the student data privacy conversation. Given other recent articles, such as this one in the Washington Post  and this one in EdWeek  the discussion is heating up.  It is essential that we protect our children's privacy while still making it possible for educators to access formative data that informs instruction and allows for personalized learning. This important conversation must continue in a meaningful way that will lead to best practices everyone can agree on. June 2015 Update The op-ed from The Hill was cited in a whitepaper from The Center for Democracy and Technology .  You can download and read it at Privacy and the Digital Student .

I'm passionate about giving my students learning experiences rather than merely conducting a class.  I like to call it 'Collaborative Learning' and I've been building my model for the past 3 years.  Lucky for me, EdSurge picked up my recent post  on how I do it.  It is up on their site today.  It is also in this week's Instruct Newsletter .  Click on the screenshot below to read. Thanks!

Research into how children, and really all humans, learn should inform our instructional design.  Educators should also take care when building assessments to ensure that they measure the learning that was intended from the beginning.  Personalized learning means that educators tailor the experience of the student to fit her needs instead of pushing her to fit into the traditional structures and sequences of industrial institutions.  Ideally, every student would have access to a program of learning that allows her to experience what she needs in order to hit learning goals. Alan Blankstein Many organizations are helping to offer this experience.  Last week I was invited by one of them, Redbird Advanced Learning , to a symposium at Stanford University for a discussion on how to make learning more personal for every child.  Redbird believes the best solution is a combination of digital curriculum, blended learning, and professional development to train e...

Julia Donohue & Megan Catalano, founding members of Rockets Help Desk and co-authors of the EdSurge article. In perhaps the article I'm most proud to be a part of to date, my Rockets Help Desk founding students and I co-write about our journey from idea to pilot to school-committee-approved course.   Read, share , and let us know if we can help you start your own movement. We were even the top story in the EdSurge Instruct Newsletter this week and were mentioned during the live streamed panel at the Redbird Learning Personalized Learning Symposium at Stanford University today. Click here to read the article.

This morning Alfie Kohn  posted this Tweet: Courses should be created WITH students, not just for them. If a course doesn't vary considerably from yr to yr, something's wrong — Alfie Kohn (@alfiekohn) March 24, 2015 It made me think about how some teachers put real effort into revising their lessons year to year, while others might pull out the same readings and questions no matter whether they really helped students learn or not.  Do I revise and improve my class activities enough each year?  My 10th grade Civil War infographics lesson is one example.  Last year I wrote a how-to guide for helping students create infographics as proof if their learning.  I was lucky enough that it was noticed and picked up by EdSurge as part of their Fifty States Project .  Now that I've gone through the process again this year with my students and I've improved the experience a bit, there are some important lessons learned. 1. Clarify the Goal Last year my stu...

I'm so proud of the hard work of my 9th grade 18th century history class on this most recent project.   EdSurge thought it was great too! Read about it and see some examples of student work by clicking the cover shot below.

Snowed in? Looking for some inspiration of the edtech variety? Click this book cover to buy this awesome book! EdSurge Associate Editor Mary Jo Madda has been leading an incredible project over the past year.  Her goal was to get educator contributors from all 50 states to write about their inspirational examples of tech integration in schools.  The result is this impressive guide on the EdSurge site.  The list of writers is impressive and includes people I admire quite a bit like Tom Murray and Pam Moran . The many faces of the 'Fifty States Project' I'm honored to be one of the faces in the flag and that my article about my students' infographic project last spring is a part of the guide. If you sometimes like to read real tangible books, EdSurge has brought you one!  Get your copy of From School to Shining School: 52 Stories from Educators Across the U.S.  in a full color paperback book.  I ordered mine today.

Four of my current and former students helped me write an article about the importance of student voice at EdTech conferences.  In their portions they went even further and called for student input into lesson plans, app designs, and professional decision-making. Click the image below to read their words.  Thanks for sharing! Click this images to read the article.

Check out my latest article in EdSurge for these tested and proven strategies.  I've used them myself! Thanks so much for reading.

My students, who live in a quiet suburb north of Boston, are suddenly starting to feel like their work is making a difference. In December some of them shared their ideas for the innovative classroom remotely to a conference in Disney World . Two weeks ago a few more presented to a room full of teachers and administrators on the benefits of a paperless model.  And now a few of them have a national audience thanks to a  published article with EdSurge . Click the image to read the article. The Fifty States Project ( #edsurge50 ) is the brainchild of Associate Editor Mary Jo Madda . Her mission is explained in this great video. EdSurge and Mary Jo are providing an opportunity for teacher voices to he heard by business and political leaders who develop education products and policy. Not only that, even my students feel like their work is connected with the real world because their work was linked to the article . One of them even tweeted about it this m...