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Rachel Salinger is a high school English teacher at my school, St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is passionate about literature and about giving her students learning experiences that arm them with the skills they need to be thoughtful and good stewards of our future. I asked her to share her recent project on my blog because I think it is a stellar example of how traditional teaching and learning strategies can be effectively combined with digital tools for a deeper student learning experience. I referenced this project briefly in my recent EdSurge column and wanted to be sure to highlight it in detail on my blog. Introduction In my CP sophomore classes, we read Macbeth over the course of a few weeks. The students really enjoyed the play (surprisingly!) and I wanted to do a more creative assessment at the end instead of a typical paper or test. In the past, I’ve done an iMovie project with Macbeth but really wanted to do something different this year. I met...

By Dr. Will Deyamport, III Professional development is the means for improving one’s professional knowledge-base, skill-set, and/or practice. It is an ongoing process. That said, just like Video killed the radio star , a reference to an eighties pop song from the The Buggles, school districts have killed professional development with mandates and a one-size fits all approach to meeting the instructional needs of teachers. Identifying the Problem and the Opportunity As someone whose job it is to help teachers utilize technology and reimagine the learning experiences of their students, I have to balance the wishes of the district with the personal learning goals of teachers. Throw in the time crunch of having to deliver professional development during a 45 minute time frame (teachers’ planning periods) and sessions become driven by an agenda, not designed by the teachers. That’s where blending online modules into professional development comes into play. Before, I would emai...

By Dr. Henry Turner When Mark Zuckerberg started his book club in 2015 he kicked the year off with Moises Naim's The End of Power: from boardrooms to battlefields and churches and states, why being in charge isn't what it used to be . Naim's general argument is that traditional power systems--such as political, structural, corporate, cultural and even academic--are being challenged by the distribution of power towards smaller and more agile players. Where Clayton Christensen talks about disruption of society, Naim discusses the flattening of power. One area in Naim's argument that is relevant for us in education is the increase in human connection in our modern world. Naim argues that people are connecting more face to face than ever before and therefore more of them are empowered. An excellent example of the increase connection of teachers is through the development of teacher Professional Learning Networks (PLNs), where educators share and learn with ...

By Sarah Thomas A Big Change August 2015 marked the beginning of the most transitional year of my career. First, a position opened at the district level, coordinating technology with a team that had inspired me to become a teacher leader.   Almost simultaneously, I was offered a high school position that everything in my gut screamed “YES” about.  I accepted (after disclosing my pursuit of the other opportunity).  This was one of the scariest choices I had ever made. It was my first time in high school since 1999, when I actually was a student. It was my first time teaching Technology Education, which I soon found out was very different from Technology Integration. I had taught the latter for six of the previous seven years, and had thoroughly enjoyed gamifying a curriculum of our (the students and my) choice, which included any and everything that we could get our hands on. We coded with Sphero, learned basic photography and video editing, created podcas...

By Ross Cooper According to EdTechTeacher , “ App Smashing is the process of using multiple apps to create projects or complete tasks.” According to Wikipedia , inquiry-based learning “starts by posing questions, problems or scenarios – rather than simply presenting established facts or portraying a smooth path to knowledge.” The Problem On many occasions, I have seen/read about App Smashing being leveraged in a way that is entirely anti-inquiry. In instances such as these, an overly contrived and smooth, risk free process is followed, all for the sake of a “cool” product. Here are directions I pulled from a real project: Using iMovie , shoot a scene of two actors portraying characters from a novel. Use the speed editor in iMovie to speed the video up slightly. Save the video to your Camera Roll. Open 8mm , pull the previous video from the Camera Roll, and use the “1920s filter” on the video and resave to the Camera Roll. Open Tellagami and use a...

By Dan Ryder Empathy isn’t a just touchy-feely, get-to-know-your-neighbors, appreciate-the-rich-tapestry-of-our-community, we-are-the-better-for-truly-understanding-the-perspective-of-another exercise in character building.  When employed in classroom, empathy proves a nimble and dynamic tool for critical thinking, authentic understanding and demonstrating proficiency.   I’ve long taught the value of diversity, tolerance and understanding of others’ points of view.  For some time I served as co-advisor for our campus Civil Rights Team, developed interactive theater experiences around social justice issues, and raised consciousness in my classroom through music and film.  But it wasn’t until I adopted design thinking -- empathy-fueled, human-centered problem solving --  as my preferred pedagogical lens that I became aware of how useful intentional empathy could be in the content areas. What follows is something of a prototypical day in my English c...