Does It Matter How Information is Accessed?

Each year, I oftentimes struggle to get my daughter to “get excited” and complete her summer reading assignments from school in a timely manner. Both to alleviate the stress around the completion of these assignments, which can potentially ruin a wonderful Labor Day weekend, but also to enable her to read deeply, not just skimming the book in order to complete the assignment. This year, I am trying something new. I bought her the physical book in June, just like I have done every summer in the past. And true to form, whenever I ask her about her progress, I […]

Drinking From the Fire Hose – Rethinking Search

One of the presentations that I shared at the Laptop Institute was entitled Drinking from the Fire Hose:Rethinking Search and Research in a Digital Age. This was a two-year old presentation that I dusted off and updated significantly. I was concerned that this topic was going to be too simple, too elementary since it was about a topic that all of us and our students do on a daily basis. However, I do know that the scales have been tipped. No longer are we living in an age where we go to information oases (the library) . Instead, we are […]

Goodbye Laptop Institute

Yesterday, I returned home from my favorite conferences of the year, the Laptop Institute held at the Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis, TN. I had the pleasure of being able to lead two pre-conference workshops, both Geeking Out With Google Apps for Ed, and five different conference sessions. My hat goes off to Stewart Crais, Paige Holmes, and the rest of the teachers and staff at Lausanne for allowing us to come into their rooms for sharing. Why is this my favorite conference of the year? Great question. One reason that it ranks as one of my highlights of the […]

Learn to Become a Power Searcher

Earlier this month, Google announced that they were going to open up a free, online course, taught by Dan Russell, Google’s Technology Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness, entitled “Power Searching with Google” over the next two weeks, from July 10th – July 19th. This six lesson, self-paced course will help you learn how to better harness a Google search to find the results you are really looking for.  I can honestly claim that I thought I was fairly good at constructing Google searches and have learned many good tips and tricks to make my searches more efficient and targeted. To […]

21st Century Moving – Don’t Forget the Digital Artifacts

In the “old days” during the last century, it was easy to pick up and move jobs. You simply found a small box or two and packed up your physical belongings, then headed out the door. In the 1990’s, when I was first starting to use computers and laptops, it was packing a second and maybe a third box, this time containing 5.25″ and 3.5″ floppy disks and maybe a few boxes which contained application software and manuals, like ClarisWorks, Microsoft Word, Aldus PageMaker, and a few others for good measure. Now that I am moving to a new position, […]