I love the idea of Makerspaces. But I am still struggling a bit with the ‘what’, the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. To figure things out I am listening to this excellent Cult of Pedagogy podcast: What is the Point of a Makerspace? In it I think John Spencer gives the best description I have heard … [Read more…]
My school is moving to BYOD next year and we are suggesting parents get their child a Chromebook. One of the questions I am being asked by parents is what are their options are for parental controls on a Chromebook. Our school owned Chromebooks are all on our management console, so we can push out … [Read more…]
This is the second part of a series I am writing about using Badges and Hyperdocs in my ICT class. Part 1 can be found here. Initially, I was convinced that Google Slides was the best platform for a BadgeDoc. I liked that multiple kinds of media could go on a slide and that I … [Read more…]
For the past few months, I have been trying to figure out how to use Badging effectively in my classroom to empower my ICT students and differentiate learning. This is part of a larger attempt to understand Open Badging, and the work being done to date on using Badges with adults to facilitate meaningful professional learning. … [Read more…]
In August I had the privilege of attending the Google Certified Innovator Academy in Sydney. It was a crazy trip: two red eye flights, an ‘amazing race’ in downtown Sydney, lots of design and moonshot thinking, encouragement to think big but start small, and an expectation that I would spend the year working on an … [Read more…]
I recently came across this post: 4 Fake Sites to Teach Students Website Evaluation, which includes some of my favourite fake websites, and wanted to share some of my experiences using them, and an idea for extending how we teach website evaluation. DHMO is a classic. I have to always bite my tongue as I just … [Read more…]
A lot of my current thinking is around how to help teachers know HOW to use the collaborative tools in GSuite, not just know ABOUT them. One area that I find doesn’t get a lot of attention is how to share a link. I personally like to do it while I am also setting the … [Read more…]
I started participating in #sketch50 a few weeks ago on a whim. I now find myself a bit addicted to the challenge of drawing a new sketch every day based on the word or theme presented. It has certainly been a challenge. After participating for a few days I realised that a credentialing system for … [Read more…]
I love this image. Thank you to @robreetz for sharing it. It has helped me to connect the dots between The End of Average, which I have been reading on and off, and the excellent #IMMOOC Twitter and You Tube Live conversations about the Innovator’s Mindset that George Couros has been leading over the past … [Read more…]
As a Design Technology teacher my students are constantly creating Computer Aided Design (CAD) files. These might be from 2D Design (.dtd), Photoshop (.psd), Sketchup (.skp), and (hopefully soon) 3D printer files (.stl). In the past, getting the files from their computer to the appropriate machine involved lots of passing USB drives around in a … [Read more…]
