Category: 1:1

  • Daily Dedication, Check-In Question, and Selfie-Bingo

    One of the things I love about teaching at an independent school is the opportunity to have “advisory time.” At my North Carolina school, I’m a seventh grade advisor again this year, and we have an hour after lunch for advisory every third school day. Today was our third advisory meeting of the year, and…

  • 15 Things I Love About My Classroom (and teaching situation!)

    I’ve been teaching and working in education since 1995. The past 3 years, as I’ve served as a media literacy teacher, instructional coach for our teachers, and (last year) an introductory Spanish teacher have been some of my best ever. Yesterday afternoon and evening, I recorded and edited a 17 minute video I titled, “15…

  • Podcast475: Lessons Learned Teaching During the Pandemic

    Welcome to the first episode of Moving at the Speed of Creativity for 2021, now starting its 16th year as an educational podcast! This podcast episode features a conversation with Shelly and Wesley Fryer on January 3, 2021, reflecting on some of their lessons learned teaching elementary and middle school students during 2020, the first…

  • Recording and Sharing Your iPad with In-Person and Remote Learning Students

    Update 8/24/2020: I’ve created a step-by-step tutorial for these steps, using either Google Meet or Zoom. This is linked from our “Lesson Cast” support page on our school instructional support website. Today is our 3rd day back with students for the 2020-21 academic year, and it’s both good and challenging. Most of our students have…

  • Recent Virtual Workshops by Wes (March – April 2020)

    The move to “remote learning” at our school in late-March 2020 has corresponded with an uptick in the number of online workshops and webinars I’ve offered for teachers, mainly for faculty at our school as part of my “day job,” but also a few evening and weekend virtual presentations. All of the workshops I’ve led…

  • OLTI – The Oklahoma Learning Technology Initiative

    Today’s decision by the Oklahoma State School Board to keep public K-12 schools closed for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year will have both short term and long term repercussions for students and families in our state. Virtually overnight (pun intended) all 500+ public school districts in our state are now required to move…

  • Tips and Strategies for Remote Learning (March 2020)

    For the past four weeks, starting two weeks before our Spring Break last week, teachers, administrators and staff at our school have been preparing for “remote school” for students as a result of the coronavirus / COVID-19 crisis. On March 19, 2020, our Head of School sent out a letter to our parents including information…

  • Modern Learning in School: The 14 Legs of the Table

    Modern Learning in school today is a complex undertaking which requires a robust strategy of support to be successful.* Today I’m in the Dallas, Texas, area, and had the chance to visit with both Good Shepherd Episcopal School (@gsesdallas) and Prestonwood Christian Academy (@PrestonwoodPCA) teachers, students and staff with a team from our school in…

  • Thoughts on Content Filtering, Parent Education, and School Laptop Initiatives

    The Oklahoman, our largest Oklahoma City based newspaper by circulation, published a scathing article today about Norman Public Schools’ new MacBook Air and iPad “1 to 1 Learning” initiative. The article is titled, “‘They want them gone’: Norman parents complain of school devices.” In case The Oklahoman puts this article behind their paywall as they…

  • What Paperless Debate Can Teach Us About the Classroom of the Future

    This weekend I had the privilege and opportunity to fully experience “paperless debate” at the UT Austin Longhorn Classic Debate Tournament, as an adult chaperone for our high school debate team at Casady School. In this post, I’d like to reflect on what these experiences suggest, reveal and invite when it comes to student learning,…