Teaching
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Appearances
Below is a list of locations and recordings where you can hear me talking more about education, technology, and professional development. And usually some ridiculousness or another. Teach Better Talk Podcast – You’re Doing Enough In 2020, the Teach Better Talk Podcast invited me on to talk about failure, finding the good in emergency remote…
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Podcast Archive
All episodes of The Planning Period Podcast are still available to listen to. Listen to me interview some of the biggest and most interesting people in education and ask them my three questions.
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My Mental Health Journey
To hear a recording of me reading this post, checkout the podcast episode. Today, I want to tell you a story. Spoiler Alert: I have anxiety and depression. I haven’t said that in public before. In fact, I’ve only said that to about five people in my life at all. I didn’t know I had…
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Master’s Program Paper – My Leadership Philosophy
Application Assignment To try to articulate exactly what makes a great leader is a complicated, if not an impossible task. From my experience, the job of a leader, and especially of a principal, consists of countless priorities, fires to put out, and an endless juggling act of various stakeholders. Even with that in mind, thinking…
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Master’s Program Paper – Professional Biography
As I announced on Episode 75 of the Planning Period Podcast, I have started a Master’s Program in Educational Leadership. As part of this process, I will be posting to the blog many of my completed assignments, research papers, and thoughts about class. This, is the first of those posts, my Professional Biography (school names…
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Students Will Never Understand Their Place
If you listen to my podcast, you’ve probably heard that I am going to a new school this year, and in my area, students are back on campus today. I have been lucky enough in my 10 or so years teaching to have some wonderful students. My last group of students at the high school…
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My Time on A Word In Progress
After I asked him to be on my show (Episode 19), Derek Rhodenizer asked me to be on his show, A Word In Progress. This show is all about talking in absurd detail about specific words that educators throw around, but often we don’t have a solid definition of what those words really mean. Ultimately,…
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Pursuing Survival… Guest Post by Kristen Iannuzzi
“For decades, terrorists and mass shooters trod their separate paths. Then Columbine. Eric and Dylan fused them. School murders had been done; Eric envisioned a school catastrophe. A new template was born. The spectacle murder. Performance without a cause. Just demonstration of personal power.” -David Cullen, Columbine I was a freshman in high school when…
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Google Add-On: Class Folder Creator
As a teacher at a one-to-one school who uses G Suite and Canvas as an Learning Management System (LMS), few things are more annoying than the “You must request permission” screen. This happens a lot for my teachers and I. You give an assignment description on Canvas, the student creates their work in a Google…
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On a Field Trip with My Son
My son’s kindergarten class went on a field trip to a farm recently, and I had the chance to chaperone the trip. First of all, it was really interesting being a chaperone for another school, another group of kids. With kindergarten field trips, the ratios are something around 5 kids to each chaperone. With that…
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I’m Done Holding My Tongue In Class
It only seems fair to start this post with an admission. I am a gun owner. In the past, I was even a member of the NRA. I was born in Georgia, have family that still lives on hunt-able land there, have gone hunting myself. I’ve made the arguments myself that people having guns makes us…
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I Am A Valuable Brand
Ok, so admittedly, that title makes me a little uncomfortable. It’s a strange statement, and gives me the impression of someone with an inflated ego and unhealthy dose of arrogance. But, how am I wrong? Dr. Will’s words on Episode 30 of my show about teachers needing to make their money have been bouncing around…
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Why The Teacher Moral Standard May Be Necessary
A few weeks ago, I learned that a teacher my little brother Travis had as a kid was arrested and charged with stalking his ex-girlfriend. It was a pretty intense case, as the news reported it, including thousands of calls and even putting a GPS tracker on her new boyfriend’s car. The news piece was…
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Story Speaker – Part 1
On Google Teacher Tribe Podcast last week, I heard about a Google Docs Add-On called Story Speaker. In the description on the show and on the Add-On page, it was said to be for making choose-your-own-adventure style stories that connect with Google Assistant to be read aloud and choices made through voice. I remember the…
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Admin Balance Panel
Tomorrow on VoicEd Radio, I will be hosting a panel discussion on administrator balance with special guests Derek Rhodenizer, Brent Coley, and Mary Vetter. This came about because a couple months ago, Mary came to me and asked “How do I make sure I’m not hurting or upsetting teachers, but also give them the necessary…
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My Time on APlusEdTech Podcast
A couple months ago (yes, I’m behind big time), I was interviewed for the APlusEdTech Podcast. This podcast is hosted by Ashley McBride, who I was lucky enough to just sit down at a table with during ISTE. Ashley asked to talk with me because she wanted to learn more, and share with her audience,…
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My “One Thing”
Recently, I had the chance to be on an episode of OnEdMentors on VoicEd Radio. I was joined this particular night by Sarah Anne Lalonde (who you might remember from Episode 17 of Planning Period Podcast) and Stephen Hurley (who will one day not be so busy that he can’t be on my show…). In…
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It’s About Time We Upset Some People
The admin team at my school (principal, assistant principal, and coaches/instructional support) are doing a book study of Rick Wormelli’s Fair Isn’t Always Equal. We’re going through two chapters a month, and each month have a meeting facilitated by a different pair of participants to review the chapters in some way. In our most recent…
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Flipped PD Update – Not All Good News
When I started out on this endeavor, I had the best of intentions. I was full of energy and excitement. Even when the first online session wasn’t as attended as I would have liked, I figured, “Hey, it happens. They’ll get it next time.” And they did, as I explained in this blog post. After the…
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Why Teachers Should NaNoWriMo
There is only a week or so left in October, and that means National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner. NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge for people to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (November 1st through 30th). It comes out to 1,667 words per day of pace. The general idea…
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Being a Parent at Open House
Last week, I attended my son’s Kindergarten Open House. For the first time in my career, I sat in the room while a teacher talked about her class. It was a surreal experience for me. For one thing, there wasn’t a lot I didn’t know. Systems that teachers use to monitor grades, test the students,…
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Sprint #1MillionProject
The digital divide is a real thing. Many students do not have internet access at home, and many do. It is easy, especially for anyone reading this blog, listening to my podcast, or working walking down the street in most areas, to forget that there are still families out there that don’t have internet access.…
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The Connected Educator Back-to-School Blues
Most teachers lament returning to work. While parents are ready for their little darlings to stop harassing them every hour of every day about going to the pool or theme parks or bowling or anything but sitting on the couch so we can work, teachers have the opposite. Our summer break is over, we have…
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What We Can Learn as Teachers from Challenging Administrators
We all have said the words that relationships with students, especially relationships based on mutual respect, are critical to getting the best performance out of our students. Still, a great student will excel no matter what, right? Let me tell you a story of two school years, and the parts of the Venn Diagram of…
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Future of EdTech Coaches
Last night I participated in the #EdTechChat on Twitter, in which the topic was Ed Tech Coaches. As a full-time Digital Instructional Coach, the topic obviously intrigued me. Given the content of the chats, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about it a little on here. Huge thanks to Susan Bearden…
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Creating an Open Source Curriculum Instead of Textbooks #EdChat
A few weeks ago, I participated in #EdChat to discuss Open Source Curriculum (more specifically, the question posed was “Is it possible to create a modern, relevant curriculum using open sources from the Internet instead of textbooks?” I enjoyed the discussion, as I regularly encourage my teachers and students to look for outside sources to supplement…
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ISTE2016 Summary – Closing Keynote with Michelle Cordy
Michelle opened with the title slide: “Show Up and Refuse to Leave.” She explained the story of how she started a 1:1 pilot program, and being that she was the only teacher at her school doing so, she reached to books for support and ideas. She wrote a blog post about one of the books…
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ISTE2016 Summary – Genius Bar: Promoting Student Leadership
As a teacher of what is loosely based off the Genius Bar model (more tech assistants truthfully) I am excited to get to see how to potentially take that class a little further. So I sit, early and waiting eagerly, to see this session, presented by Alicia Johal and Mari Venturino. They run their Genius…
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ISTE2016 Summary – Ruha Benjamin Keynote
I wasn’t sure I was going to make the Tuesday keynote, mainly because I went to Denver Biscuit Company and ate myself into an unbelievably delicious and completely worth it food coma. However, as I arrived at ISTE this morning, I saw screens showing none other than THE LaVar Burton in the keynote hall. So,…
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IST2016 Summary – EdTekTalks
This is another multi-presenter session. In an hour and 45 minutes, you see 5 mini keynotes from distinguished EdTech leaders. First presenter is Amelia Rose Earhart. As you might guess, she’s an aviator. In 2014 she did a solo, single-engine, flight around the world. Amelia told us the story of her life, and how she…
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ISTE2016 Summary – Ed Tech Start Up Pitch Fest
My second session of the day is the Ed Tech Start-Up Pitch Fest. In this session, 6 startup companies will present on their new education technology products. There is a panel of judges, and at the end, the audience votes on their favorites. It is a structured pitch setting, with 5 minute presentation and 2…
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ISTE2016 Summary – Problem-Based Learning Extravaganza!
ISTE2016 is finally here, and I couldn’t be more excited! In the beautiful city of Denver, some of the worlds greatest teachers have come together to talk pedagogy and technology. It doesn’t get any more mind blowing than this. Ok, geek out session over (for now). The following are my impressions and some paraphrased quotes…
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Teachers – How You Turned Out is Irrelevant!
I have conversations regularly with people about the state of education. Some people want to understand the problems educators face, others want to hear my opinions about what we can do to fix things, others (and these are the most interesting) just want to have enlightened discussions about pedagogy. In my experience, one idea almost…
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Censorship: The Real Problem With Education
It has been a while since I have posted to my blog, and there is a reason for that. I hope, that as I write this post, I will be able to explain why that is. My most recent post, dealing with how to use OneNote Staff Notebook at the administrative level, was originally written…
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Organizing Administration Using OneNote Staff Notebook*
At my school, we have launched into OneNote as a school platform with both feet. At this point, just 9 weeks into our one-to-one program, we have roughly 80% of our teachers using Classroom Notebooks for their day-to-day activities, and 97% of our staff using the devices every period of every day. We believe that…
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My Life as an Instructional Technology Coach – 6 Weeks In
Week 7 of the school year starts tomorrow, so I thought now would be a good time to give a quick update on my job, and what it actually means to be an Instructional Technology Coach (or, Digital Instructional Coach as we call it at my school). Student Tech Support For the first 3 or…
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Observations at a High School Football Game
As part of my job description as an Instructional Technology Coordinator, falls the ever-dreaded “Other duties as assigned.” As part of my other duties for last night, I had to help with crowd control at the football game. I don’t really mind, especially since this was a high-profile game with attendance over 5,900 fans, and…
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ISTE2015 Sessions – 1-in-3 Round 2
My last session of ISTE2015 (no! I don’t want it to be over!) is 1-in-3 Round 2. 1-in-3 is much like an Ignite talk, but only 3 minutes and not as restrictive on what can be on the slides (can have video and sound and don’t have to autoforward). I unfortunately showed up a couple…
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ISTE2015 Session – Managing a 1:1 Campus
My next (and final) session for today is Managing a 1:1 Campus for Principals and Technology Specialists. I’m not 100% sure this training is really meant for me, per se, but whatever. My focus next year will primarily be the coaching and instructional support stuff, but like anything else, I feel like the more I…
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ISTE2015 – Ignite Talks Round 3
For anyone who doesn’t know, an Ignite talk is a 5 minute, fast paced talk. Behind the presenter is a series of 20 slides with a 15 second timer. The slide auto-forwards every 15 seconds, meaning you must be on your game in terms of preparation and speed. My students did Ignite talks as the…
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ISTE2015 Session – Create a Technology Start-Up in Your School
I decided to attend this session because it just sounded really interesting. The idea of starting a company while in school is just fascinating to me. When I was in school, I made a couple bucks selling TI-86 programs (in BASIC), and I just think the idea of not only allowing, but encouraging, our students…
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ISTE2015 – Flipped PD Session
My first session at ISTE2015 is called Flipped PD: Creating Teacher Buy-In and Modeling Technology-Rich Professional Development. What a mouthful. Still, very interested in this topic, especially as I step into the Instructional Technology Coach roll. One of my primary responsibilities is Professional Development (PD), and getting that buy-in from the staff is going to be…
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Humor – A Double-Edged Sword in a Classroom
This is the first week of the summer. I’m spending it at a week-long training on Digital Curriculum and what we, as the school technology teacher leaders, are going to present to the rest of our staff one week this summer. There is a group of 7 of us from my school, many of whom…
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#TEDxWOHS Reflections
Well, the school year is over, and so is the TEDxWOHS project (or maybe it was more of an experiment?). Whatever I title it, I will call it a huge success. My students really crushed this project. Their presentations were so cool, and powerful. If you’ll remember, I started this presentation with my students when…
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5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Do the TEDx Project
Since I started the TEDx project, I have been amazed at the things my students are doing. They are learning about fascinating topics, writing truly awesome reflections, building a positive online presence, and just all around being great. I’ve posted lots on this blog and on my twitter about how much fun this project is…
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Technology is Not a Learning Outcome
Found this on twitter and felt it was worth sharing. Good for all of us to remember as we merge technology and pedagogy. Source: https://twitter.com/CushGills/status/601399974820061185
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Bragging Time – Round 3
Running a little behind posting this, but better late than never. Students submitted their second round of reflections last week, and as before, I’ve pulled out some of the best to share with everyone. Please, be so kind as to share your appreciation of their work by commenting on their blogs. Thanks! Katie B –…
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Overheard at a Continental Breakfast
It never ceases to amaze me what you can learn from listening to people. I have this thing where I listen to all the conversations going on around me, whether I’m at a restaurant, in class, or at a continental breakfast. I like to believe that it is a “teacher thing;” something that we all…
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Teacher Appreciation Week – Just Say Thanks
As most of you should be aware, this week has been Teacher Appreciation Week. While I appreciate the nice little gifts that our administration gets us (we got new laptop sleeves this year) and the determination of PTSO and administration to make us all fat (doughnuts, bagels, and Honey Buns, oh my), these are not…