Making Meaningful Connections

Over the past two and a half years I’ve been focusing on helping teachers make connections with other classes around the world. For the most part, our collaborations have been about general topics – book reports, water, persuasive writing, enhancing oral language, things that almost any classroom teacher would be able to connect with, and…

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Going Full Circle

Eureka! I think I’ve got it! Thanks to all of your fantastic feedback on my previous posts, I realized that the Collaboration Continuum I started this weekend isn’t really a continuum at all – it’s a cycle: To me, the cycle idea makes much more sense than a continuum. For starters, I really didn’t like…

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Making the Shift Happen

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that this is the third international school I’ve worked in – and the third school that I’ve helped shift from the “computer class” mindset to an “integrated” technology program. In all honesty, it’s quite amazing to me that every school I’ve worked in has very similar problems, very similar history…

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Social Networking and Responsibility

After an excellent session with parents about cyberbullying and an equally excellent session with our staff discussing the Frontline documentary Growing Up Online, I’ve been thinking a lot about responsibility. As in: Whose responsibility is it to teach students about the dangers of social networking (not only physical danger from online predators, but the danger…

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Work With the Willing: Moving Teachers into the 21st Century

Given some time to reflect over the holiday break, I’ve been thinking about the essential structures that must be put into place for a successful technology integration program (or, as I would prefer to call it, a 21st century school). I started really thinking about this last year, when my then-tech director, David Sinclair (now…

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