Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Category: edtech

  • Reflections on PD Hackathon 2023

    Today I’ve had an opportunity to participate, facilitate, and volunteer as a judge in our fall 2023 Hackathon at our school, Providence Day School of Charlotte, North Carolina. This is the second time I’ve been able to be part of the Hackathon, and in this post I’d like to reflect a little about some of…

  • 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…

  • Stephen Wolfram on Computational Thinking

    These are my reflections and takeaways from a captivating 40-minute fireside chat with Stephen Wolfram, shared on August 4, 2023 during the AI x Education Conference streamed via Zoom. Stephen is the “CEO of the software company Wolfram Research where he works as chief designer of Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine,” which are two web-based computational platforms I want…

  • Import Blackbaud Class Calendar to Google Calendar

    Today I created a revised version of a video tutorial I created in August 2021 and shared in the post, “Import Class Schedule Into Google Calendar.” Our school uses “Blackbaud” as our student information system (SIS), but our teaching schedules are not automatically synced with Google Calendar. As I mentioned at the end of this…

  • Starting an Audio Podcast (June 2023)

    I love listening to podcasts and creating podcasts! I’ve been a podcast geek since 2005, which is getting close to 20 years, and the good news is there are more outstanding podcasts to enjoy than ever before, and the steps for CREATING and SHARING your own podcast have never been easier to use. In this…

  • Disruptive Decentralization in Social Media and AI

    Centralization and decentralization both have their pros and cons. In this post, I want to explore the opportunities and challenges posed by these two paradigms in two contemporary technological contexts: Social media and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the realm of social media, Twitter has become a hotbed of controversy for numerous reasons, primarily due to…

  • Storychasing Graduation

    This weekend, we traveled to Oklahoma City to celebrate our middle daughter Sarah’s college graduation. In this post, I’d like to share a little bit about my current workflow for using my iPhone to document and share important family events like this. “Storychasing” is a term I’ve been using for years, which refers to using…

  • Storychasing Live Events: A Guide

    In 2023, the digital software, tools, and connective infrastructure at our disposal have opened exciting avenues for documenting and sharing live events. This process, which I’ve called “Storychasing,” is the focus of today’s post. Prompted by a Facebook “friend of a friend” planning a school trip to Europe this summer, I intend to share some…

  • Harry Potter Style Live Photo Albums

    Shelly and I love watching our photo memories with our kids and family, as well as now just with our dogs (as “empty nesters”) on our living room television as well as our kitchen Google Nest Hub. I wrote about this a couple weeks ago in the post, “Digital Picture Frames.” This weekend we’ve had…

  • Media Literacy Lessons (April 2023)

    This evening I participated in a wonderful (monthly) webinar hosted by “Teachers for an Informed Public” (@TIPteachers) over Zoom. As participants we shared some experiences we’ve had with ChatGPT as teachers, and it got me thinking about the value of just sharing “here are some of the lessons I’m teaching and facilitating now in my…