Recent articles

Customize learning with Google Forms
08/31/2018
Topics: Advocacy, Assessment, Corporate innovation, Education leadership, Personalized Learning, professional learning, Standards
We know that students do not all learn the same way. Some need a great deal of repetition to learn new material while others can see it once and have it down. Some need absolute quiet to learn while others feel uncomfortable with too much stillness. One might prefer reading while another…

3 myths about OER
08/22/2018
Topics: Education leadership, OERs
When Ben Churchill rejected his district’s textbook adoption process in favor of using open licensed resources, he got a little excited. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on published instructional materials, he watched his teachers come alive as they created — and shared —…

ISTE's Leader Standards can guide whole-district transformation
06/24/2018
Topics: Education leadership, ISTE Standards for Education Leaders, Student empowerment
Working in the nation’s second largest school district requires the collaboration and calibration of thousands of students, teachers and administrators. With the adoption of the refreshed ISTE Standards for Students,…

Edtech Playground: Helping Teachers Choose Better Tools
09/28/2021
Topics: Education leadership
A virtual reality headset can take students on an immersive journey to another world. History students can tour ancient Rome, science students can travel to another biome, and biology students can explore the inside of the human body.
But no matter how cool it is, if that $3,000 piece of…

Amy Tran Is Creating the School of Tomorrow
02/23/2021
Topics: Education leadership
(This post originally published on March 18, 2018, and was updated on Feb. 23, 2021.)
In a corner of their high school fabrication lab, Amy Tran’s students are building a model of London. But this isn’t just any London.
…

Building parent capacity to support student success
02/07/2018
Topics: Education leadership, Parent engagement
When parents fill out registration forms for Sigler Elementary, they sometimes write in “Sigler Nation” instead. Students print it across the tops of their papers. Teachers hashtag it on Twitter.
In just a year,…

How To Become a Connected Educator
01/07/2023
Topics: Education leadership, professional learning
Within the silo of a school or classroom, it’s difficult to find time for meaningful conversations about what works and why.
But by reaching beyond school walls and connecting with colleagues from around the globe, many educators have discovered vibrant learning communities in which…

Weigh in on the ISTE Standards for Administrators
12/18/2017
Topics: Assistive and adaptive technologies, Augmented reality, Coding & robotics, Computational Thinking, Digital Citizenship, Digital storytelling, Education leadership, Gamification, Gaming, Literacies, Makerspaces, Personalized Learning, professional learning, Project-based learning, Robotics, STEM & STEAM
“Leaders get people moving. They energize and mobilize. They take people and organizations to places they have never…

WHAT WORKS: Teaching digital citizenship without devices
12/15/2017
Topics: Advocacy, Digital Citizenship, Education leadership
Over the summer, a group of preteens attended a camp to learn how to communicate online. They explored computational thinking concepts, practiced using social media and developed their media literacy skills.
And they did it all without a lick of technology.
Instead, they put on…

STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT: Tools to support the ISTE Standards for Educators
12/15/2017
Topics: Education leadership
The ISTE Standards for Educators challenge teachers to become leaders, creators and facilitators of dynamic or transformative student learning. What I love most about the new standards is that they view educators as…