Adventures in Administration

This is part of the #EdublogsClub year-long challenge to blog every week.  This week's focus is on Digital Citizenship. Digital Citizenship is a favorite topic of mine. As a high school administrator, this is a topic that comes up in multiple ways every single year.  As this year gets ready to launch, I see this as a wonderful opportunity to take stock of what we currently do and set a few goals for the coming year. Opportunities to Teach Digital Citizenship Image Source At our school, our process for instilling good citizenship, digital or otherwise, is part of our DNA.  Several years ago when digital citizenship became a hot topic, we immediately turned to Common Sense Media's education page to augment a program we already had in place for instructing our students on plagiarism.  Over the last few years, we have worked to be sure all faculty know about Common Sense Media so that they can utilize the rich resources there as they build their own less...

I am responding to prompts a little out of order. This post is actually in response to the #EduBlogsClub prompt #15:  Write a post that discusses “assessments." Image Source If you are a connected educator, you will recognize assessment as a common topic; you can easily find one or two Twitter chats a month focusing on the topic of assessment in addition to numerous hashtags. I suppose it makes sense since as educators we are asked to assess our students regularly in order to ensure they are meeting the benchmarks agreed-upon for that grade level. I honestly have no issue with us determining how well students have mastered specific tasks.  After all, as adults, our employers expect a certain amount of productivity AND a certain level of accuracy in order to ensure our continued employment. Most of us are given annual reviews at the very least to identify strengths, accomplishments, and areas of growth.  But here is where I begin to jump onto my soap box. Apo...

"This post is part of the # EdublogsClub – a group of educators and edtech enthusiasts that blog around a common theme each week.  Oral histories are how society passes on cultural beliefs and experiences. In the modern day, blogging has become a surrogate for those histories. Stories interpret our experiences and help others learn about the worlds around them. They help us connect on an emotional level and create empathy."   This week's task is to write a post that tells a story so here goes... This week has been the much longed-for Spring Break at my school. That has given me time Image Credit to catch up on emails and think about not only how the year is going but to reflect on it in comparison to years past. With just over a month left of school when we return next week, it's a good time to reflect. And what I have found myself thinking about is how many students I have had the privilege of working with over my years in education. After 25+ years, ...

Image Credit This week's prompt for #EduBlogsClub  is about pendulum shifts in education. I have been ruminating on this topic all week. And clearly many of my fellow bloggers are in the same boat as the posts have been coming in much slower in comparison to previous weeks. This week, I am sharing a few of my thoughts on the idea of 1:1 implementation in schools. I know that it has only been a nanosecond in time since 1:1 programs were implemented in schools, and that not every school is even there yet. However, the number of shifts that have already happened around this topic in education is fascinating to me and probably what drew me to it as a topic for reflection in the first place.  The iPad was first released in 2010.  Schools began jumping on the iPad bandwagon within months. How wonderful to have all of the student work and text books contained on one light-weight device. No more heavy backpacks to lug around and students could learn anywhere--provided they ...

For week 12 of the EduBlogs Challenge , we were asked to embed something into our post. I love the idea of embedding and it just seems to get easier and easier. (Follow the link to this week’s challenge to find tutorials on embedding if you have never done it before). We try to make sure that our teachers know how to embed material into the lesson pages housed on our LMS because when you embed, you make sure that the students stay right where you want them to--engaged with the lesson.  The alternative--hyperlinking--is great in some scenarios (I like to use this method when preparing agendas and meeting notes), but if you want to be sure your students don’t wander down the rabbit hole, aka, get lost on the web, embedding is much more effective.  For blogging and for websites embedding is also really useful because again, you keep the reader where you want them: looking at your material.  So for this week’s challenge, I am embedding a project that my son and I com...

Image Credit:  https://pixabay.com/p-1232558/?no_redirect This week's prompt from #EduBlogs Club is related to Student Privacy. This has been an interesting topic to reflect on as both an educator and a parent. I work in a high school so I think we have approached the student privacy issue in a slightly more relaxed way than my son's school (he's in elementary school). And that feels appropriate to me. Why we need to teach about digital safety We live in a digital age so what we are now teaching has had to expand to cover online safety simply because if we are really doing our job then we are preparing our students for their futures. And let's face it, our students live as much on line as they do off line. So my approach, and what I coach our teachers in, is to help students learn how to interact safely and positively online. If we shelter our students from all that is available digitally then we are doing them a disservice.  Not only are we not allowing them t...