Handouts are a teacher’s best friend, but they can be a student’s worst nightmare. It’s difficult to keep track of all the papers that students throughout the school year. Folders hold up for a few weeks, […]
Category: College
Setting SMART Goals In Your 2018 Classroom
Dreaming big dreams and desiring to achieve something worthwhile is natural to people. Setting the concrete goals to achieve these dreams is a skill that everybody of all ages needs to learn. It’s not natural for […]
SMART Goals Template
The below ‘S.M.A.R.T.’ template is published under Creative Commons. Feel free to share on your own blog, school site or social network. Over a 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln said “a goal set properly is halfway […]
Archived Confederate Postal History Reflects an Ideology of Nationalism
My passion of philately for over fifty years has led to me to this engaging endeavor. An inheritance of a splendid collection of pre-WWII Japanese postage bequeathed to me during childhood initialized my curiosity and spirit […]
Why Teach Digital Citizenship in 2018
Bryan likes to tell his children – unlike a diamond, what you do on the internet remains intact forever. The web is a tool – one that leaves a lasting impression with your actions, both good […]
Adding EdTech to Your Classroom? 3 Non-Negotiable “Old School” Components to Include in Every Lesson
Educational technology: it’s the hottest movement out there in education, and has been for some time. In fact, there seems to be a rather non-discriminating admiration for anything edtech among many teachers today. You can’t open […]
Leading In And From the Classroom
The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel they’re valued. ~Sir Ken Robinson I am a middle child and […]
Ultimate Project Based Learning – How Student Teamwork Built a World Championship Car
Every year for the past twenty the Saint Thomas Academy Experimental Vehicle Team (STA EVT) has built a new vehicle from the ground up to give our students the best engineering experience a high-schooler can get. […]
EdTech Comfort Zones – From G Suite to Office 365
What is your preferred platform for regular digital work? What makes it your favorite? I learned how to use Microsoft Word and Appleworks (yes, I’m old) in high school. I continued to use those tools for […]
Utilize Your Students and Surveys to Measure Your Teaching Effectiveness
A teacher’s stakeholders’ satisfaction with their course is an important measure of instructional effectiveness that is too often overlooked or outright ignored. Of course, it’s absurd to hope to satisfy every young adult’s needs and wants […]
What Difference Does Instruction Make?
When we teach, we hope and believe our instruction is making a difference. But is that always true? This was the question I wanted my third-year pre-service teachers to think about as they participated in a […]
Striving to be a Strong Digital Leader
—Every day, I want to grow and become better. Through every task and experience, I am pushed as a leader. How will this decision affect kids? What impact will this have on our school? What is […]
Progress Tests… Are They Reliable?
I recently had a small administrative problem with an institution I sometimes teach for, that ultimately made me realize for the first time why I feel uncomfortable with the term “Progress Test”. For some time now, […]
The Carrot and The Stick: Are American Schools Actually Teaching Us?
When I was seven-years-old we moved from the United States to Switzerland because of my father’s job. I was born in Brazil, but having left it just two years old, I didn’t really know anything other […]
Discipline Outdoes Talent—Here’s How
F. One simple letter. The grade we never want to have to give. Are some students simply doomed to low marks forever? Can their brains only struggle to deliver D-level work? Why do some students sail […]
3 Superpowers of the Principal: E.V.E
As a Principal you are plopped down into a building tasked with one of two scenarios: maintain the status quo or upset that status quo. In order to accomplish your own goals within one of those […]
3 Quick Tips to Build Staff and Teacher Trust
As a new principal managing your way through your first year, you should have one main goal: Building your credibility as the school leader. The quickest way to do this is not through regaling the staff with […]
Using Swift Playgrounds to Collaboratively and Creatively Code
“Leadership is needed for problems that do not have easy answers” (Fullen, 2007, p.2). Numeracy and literacy for the priority learners is one of the main problems I have identified in our Community of Learning (CoL). […]
The Secret of Team Allocation in a Flipped Classroom Environment
In a flipped-classroom, blended learning environment with team-based learning it is important to consider the formation of students teams. For students who are first year undergraduate students, freshmen, it can be a much longer and more […]
Got Calm? 3 Tech Tools That Make it Easy for Educators to Try Mindfulness
Mindfulness, defined simply, is the act of being aware of your thoughts, feelings and sensations in the present moment. Mindfulness is a trendy topic in education because it’s been shown to have numerous social-emotional and cognitive […]