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School Shopping
When I first moved to Sacramento in 2008 like many teachers I was happy just to land a job. The recession had not started, but it was easy to predict that we were all in ...
School Shopping
When I first moved to Sacramento in 2008 like many teachers I was happy just to land a job. The recession had not started, but it was easy to predict that we were all in for a bumpy economic ride. I was fortunate that having both multiple subject (elementary) and single subject (secondary) science credentials, […]
Filtering for Learning
When I first started working at Natomas Charter School our filtering situation was, well awful. As I have shared in other posts, we were so locked down you couldn’t even to get to Amazon to order a book. YouTube? Forget about it! Every teacher had their own crazy, convoluted plan for downloading YouTube videos at […]
Crafting Together – Minecraft EDU
Creeper, zombie, crafting table, spawning, smelting, command block – these were all words I learned this afternoon from a 6th grader while playing Minecraft. It was amazing! Today was our first of three student-facilitated MinecraftEDU workshops for teachers. At our school March is Minecraft month and the teachers are learning from individual Minecraft Mentors how […]
A Transition to EdTech – CTO Weekend #2
Friday and Saturday were the second meeting of the CETPA CTO Mentor Program. This time all 19 of us met at the ACSA Headquarters in downtown Sacramento to focus on Professional Development and Education Technology. Our facilitators were two educators from Southern California, Kris Linville and Jeremy Davis, and a Sacramento local, Sarah McFarland. As […]
Elementary Google Apps EDU
Back in December I wrote about our Google Apps EDU rollout with elementary students. As I mentioned in that post Iwas initially bit unsure as to how much these kids really needed Google Accounts and wondered if they could even remember their passwords. However, as I wrote the kids really surprised me and I found […]
ETC! 2014 Sessions
One of my favorite annual technology conferences, today is ETC! 2014. If you attended one of my sessions or are attending virtually from home you will find all of my resources below. Session 2: Creating Digital Writers with iOS – Joe Wood & Burt Lo Session 3 &4: Digital Storytelling with Google Apps – Joe Wood […]
Scoring Zero
Earlier this month on Digital Learning Day, our Speak Up Survey data was released and I finally had time last week to sit down and analyze the results. At Natomas Charter we look closely at this data because it is a powerful tool for listening to our students, staff, and families. As I sat down […]
Gettin’ Ready for Digital Learning Day
Digital Learning Day is right around the corner – a week from Wednesday (February 5, 2014) to be exact! This third annual event is sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education with many partners including the National Writing Project, Library of Congress, and Edutopia. The day itself is simply a national day to celebrate innovative teachers […]
Living #TeamKid
Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit John Swett Elementary School in Martinez with my friend and colleague Jennifer Kloczcko (check out her post on the visit). John Swett Elementary is the home of Adam Welcome (@awelcome) and a team of innovative teachers who live the hashtag #teamkid. The original plans for our visit stemmed […]
Taking Control of Your Professional Learning
My first year in the classroom education was at the height of the No Child Left Behind revolution. All of the teachers at my school site, including me, had been deemed “highly qualified” so my school district decided that they could cut all professional development funds and did so for quite a few years. Sheer […]