Project management is a dirty word for some people. It conjures up the idea of corporate-speak, timelines, deadlines, Gantt charts, and micromanagement. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The field of project management has SO much to offer educators. A strong project management philosophy allows us to establish clear goals for our projects […]
I’m proud to announce that I have a new ebook on Amazon, Raising Readers: A Practical Guide for Parents. Reading is a passion of mine and always has been. I have three middle schoolers now who LOVE to read. Countless times friends and acquaintances have asked how I managed to raise readers. As a high […]
In a Twitter chat this week, I shared that one our best PD experiences this year was when we hosted a student panel and asked them what was working for them at our school…and what wasn’t. It was powerful to hear student voices and have them call us out on some things we need to […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about boundaries lately and the role ownership plays in teaching and learning. It came from a conversation with one of my kids that went something like this: Me: I’m worried because some of my students haven’t turned in a major project yet. Kid: Isn’t that your job? To make sure […]
As project-based learning has become more popular, I’m finding an increasing need for using project management tools in my classroom. Students are working independently or in small groups on projects, and I need a way to see and evaluate their plans, view their progress, and help to facilitate the process. It can all get very […]
I wanted to share another publication with you. I co-wrote a chapter in the Handbook of Research on Emerging Practice and Methods for K-12 Online and Blended Learning with the lovely Dr. Kerry Rice. Our chapter focuses on learner engagement–what is it and how do we develop it in a K-12 online classroom? There are […]
Recently on Jeffco’s Ed Tech blog, a post by Andrew Gitner caught my attention when he said that he’s, “learned to find what’s useful instead of what’s shiny.” That idea resonates with me. As much as I love new tech tools, the key to strong instruction lies with finding what’s useful and applying it well. […]
I have a new journal article out there that I’m thrilled to share with you. In this article, I explore the future of the Learning Management System (LMS). An LMS is basically an online organizational system for classrooms with discussion boards, content sharing, gradebooks, and dropboxes. The best known ones are Blackboard, Moodle, and Canvas. […]
One of the things that I’ve learned in my years in online course design is that a course is never really “finished.” Sure, we talk about course design projects and delivering a final product, but the truth is that a course is a living, breathing thing. Each time we teach it, we tweak the content […]
This summer in my graduate work I’ve been diving into the question of learner engagement. Teachers intuitively know that engagement is important, but it’s often a struggle to know how to build learner engagement or even how to define it. Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 definition of obscenity, we sometimes say about engagement, […]
