My ISTE Goal – Learning New Ways

Douglas Merrill in his new book, Getting Organized in the Google Era, states in the preface that In my research, I found that most of the ways we teach math (and other subjects) are poorly designed for how are brains actually work. Dyslexic or not, most of us have trouble learning math (or other subjects) not because we’re stupid or lazy but because we’re simply being taught in the wrong ways. As a a parent, I can attest to this statement. My daughter does not learn algebra the way I process it. I want to see the problem, sketch, and […]

Webcasting

Over the past two years, Alex Ragone and arvind grover asked me to become a part of their webcasting team, 21st Century Learning, where we have explored the intersection of learning and technology. As busy and as crazy as life has gotten, I have always cherished the opportunity to connect with these two good friends and a collection of great guests, to discuss a number of interesting topics. Although I am not always as prepared as I could be, I always try to bring a non-New York flavor to the show. The show has allowed me to connect with a […]

New Young Hires May Be Connect, But Can They Use It for Instruction?

Last week, Lucas Ames wrote a wonderful blog post entitled, “A Class Full of Digital Natives Doesn’t Know They Know Everything..” I agree with Lucas’ assessment that just because high school students have grown up connected doesn’t mean that they can transfer that ability to  use the same tools that they connect socially in ways which will facilitate their learning. I have found the had the same experiences as Lucas, that there are “a significant number of students who had real antipathy toward using technology as a vehicle of assessment. ” This upcoming year, a large number of the teachers that […]

The Network Effect -Free Book Download

One of my linchpins or mentors – Jeff Utecht,  launched a new book, Reach: Building Communities and Networks for Professional Development. While the book will be available for purchase in a bound version, Jeff has made the PDF version available to anyone in his network for FREE until Friday, June 19th. As of last evening, there were over 1200 downloads of this book. I know that these numbers do not represent the number of readers of this volume, since Jeff has made this volume available to distribution via a Creative Commons licensing. I have sent this to five of our […]

It’s Never Too Late

Last Friday, my eldest daughter graduated from high school. Despite a significant number of obstacles over the past three years, we are ecstatic that she was able to graduate “on time”. A year ago, even six months ago we were anticipating a January 2011 graduation. She was all smiles as they announced her name and reflections about her during the very personalized  ceremony. While not to diminish my daughter’s accomplishments, I was equally touched by the story of one of her classmates, Sonia LaForest. Sonia is a 52 year old immigrant from Haiti. One of a large number of siblings, left her […]