note bene: while this post is directly applicable to educational organizations, the strategies may be effectively applied to any organization As schools start back up again, teachers seek ways to “get to know” their students and cultivate a healthy classroom community. Many schools engage in pre-term professional development and other meetings in order to prepare for the new year. Confession: I have never been a fan of meetings, in particular. In fact, in some of my workshops

I love my #visualversevolley project with Erin Olson (@eolsonteacher)…love her creativity and how it makes me think. My goal with this project is to challenge myself to manifest what first comes to mind – to pay heed to the gut reaction I get when I first read her verse, sent to me every Sunday. Sometimes I do a quick sketch, other times something more elaborate, like an animation.  This week I suddenly envisioned something that had to move – a sea! I used Paper 53 to draw on

Starting a new project…something for Sundays! I love having something consistent to do…some creative challenge that has a designated time slot but is not too overwhelming (in other words, has a low barrier of entry). My most recent has been my “Friday Five” reflections, but I was craving something collaborative. My gal pal Erin Olson (@eolsonteacher ) and I don’t meet face to face often (only twice actually at Alan November’s BLC Conference in Boston), but she and I are “symp

A while back the lovely Wes Fryer (we’ve never met, except on Twitter, but I’m the type that definitely counts that as “real life”) asked me to share my thoughts about maintaining the spark for innovation. He’s crowdsourcing a keynote, which is something I’ve done in the past and loved it (so much so that I plan to do it again) I like to organize any “tips” I give into short collections of alliterated words – that, and rhyming or assonance, just seems to work for me both as a

In early September, I was thrilled to get an email request from Mozilla to be a part of their first ever “Webmaker Fellows” program. Apparently, they were pleased with my Introduction video for the #teachtheweb MOOC using the Popcornmaker tool. I had previously used (and loved!) Popcornmaker for my final project for the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC with Coursera in this cheesy ’80’s music video parody/commentary on our present relationship with digital devices: “Digit

image: my student, Sam St. John I’ve been really enjoying participating in #etmooc, and the last Blackboard session with Alec got me thinking of connectivism again. Each year I have my IB Theory of Knowledge students read “Knowing Knowledge” by George Siemens (2006) KnowingKnowledge_LowRes (1) Last year we had a lively socratic circle activity with a Twitter backchannel, but this year I decided to include the reading and obligatory reflection in their semester exam. They resp