The Moss-Free Stone

I was reading an article about yet another school district banning yet another social technology this morning, as Hattiesburg has protected its citizens by banning student-teacher communication via text messaging or social networks. No need to bother wasting precious testing-time crafting creative applications of such tools in order to take advantage of their popularity in [...]

At the Decatur Jump! event last week and, for that matter, anytime I share with any group a sampling of Web 2.0 technologies, I reminded participants not to be overwhelmed, but to consider their own curriculum and their own students and to try to identify 2 or 3 tools which would be most beneficial to [...]

I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to and training teachers in Decatur ISD for the second consecutive year. I spoke with them on Tuesday about 21st century skills, characteristics of effective classrooms, and Web 2.0 tools. I encouraged them to respond with comments and questions, and they did not disappoint, leading to some great [...]

I finally was successful at uploading a video of some interviews I conducted this spring with students who published their writing to a class blog this year. In just six months, the students’ blog had over 1,000 visitors from six continents! What an effective way to motivate our students to write! The blog also includes [...]

I have had to do several projects involving putting together examples of Web 2.0 use in our district in the past couple of weeks. I thought I would share a small sampling of them here. They might inspire others to give some of the tools a try.
Blogs
Talented Texans–elementary students sharing writing. Student interaction is constructive [...]

Thanks to John Pederson for pointing me to this video. It paints a powerful picture of just what forms cyberbullying can take and the importance of addressing it in our families and our schools.

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I recently reviewed Google Sites, the company’s wiki tool. The site previously was an enterprise-only tool, meaning you had to be a member of a domain, such as a school district or company, to join. As of last Wednesday, the tool is open to anyone, meaning students can now create their own wikis. If you [...]

Ewan McIntosh posted a link to a great list of The Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating to his Del.icio.us account today. A few particularly relevant ones to those of us in education (some with commentary):

I don’t have the time.
I’ll be punished if I fail. (Education translation: If my kids fail I’ll be punished.)
My [...]

The school year will be drawing to a close on Thursday. As we meet as an Instructional Technology team tomorrow, I feel it is important to evaluate where we have been, where we are now, and where we hope to go in the future. The year began with high expectations for teacher learning, student learning, [...]

The K12 Online Conference 2008 has released its call for participation. This is a great event, particularly in that it opens the door to learning about Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom to a global audience, and it allows access to some incredible educators from the comfort of a participant’s office chair. Details are below.
We [...]