Merry Christmas!

Your shift key is a super hero in disguise. During the day, it has the mundane job of making letters upper case, and allowing you to prefix your hashtags with the # sign, but it can do more… A lot more. Presenting: The hidden power of the shift key! Power 1: Adding blank lines in…
This is part 2 of a 13 part series, 13 Ways Teachers Can Hack Their Learning. Why Twitter? Twitter launched in July of 2006 as a social network for SMS (cellphone text messaging). Labeled as a “microblogging” site, Twitter was a way to post short. 140 character messages to the world. Much like blogging, Twitter is…
You’ve probably heard of the student-led “Genius Bar”, which is generally a team of student leaders that provide technical support for the technology devices and programs in their schools. What a great way to utilize and develop student knowledge and skills, right? I couldn’t agree more. Busch’s student tech teams have four sub-committees: the “Newcast…
But if students are not properly equipped to direct their own learning, then what? “We created the profession we call ‘teaching’ largely to solve for this problem,” he dryly observes: “Students need to be guided down the path of their learning. Teachers should remain central to the activity of imparting knowledge to students.” From my…
I’m the music teacher at our school. I’m also the resident Nerd Supreme, whose recent rabbit hole has been physical computing: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, sensors, boxes of electronics, and soldering. Meet Alex. He’s a second grader at my school who was born without eyes. Oh, and he’s autistic. He’s funny and smart and he loves…