Tag: edtech

  • Tales by Light

    I started my morning this Thursday of our spring break by watching episode one of an amazing Netflix series, “Tales by Light.” In this post I’d like to reflect on how this documentary combines my loves for digital storytelling, photography, the stewardship of our planet, and powerful media narratives that can both enthrall and inspire…

  • Tags and Hashtag Literacy

    Understanding and using both “tags” (metadata) and hashtags to find, organize, and archive information for later retrieval are essential literacy skills today. These concepts may be poorly understood by many teachers and students, however, and underutilized in school-required research assignments. In this post, I’ll explore both the concepts of tags and hashtags and the skills…

  • Amazing #STEM Animated Visual Notes by Dominic Walliman

    I agree and resonate with many of the things Jaron Lanier shares in the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” but I disagree with his advice on YouTube’s “recommended videos.” Jaron advises we should never click on “recommended videos” on YouTube, since that furthers the dystopian economic model of “surveillance capitalism” upon which many of Silicon…

  • Lesson Cast: Sharing a Class Recording with Minimal Steps

    This past summer as we prepared for the challenges and uncertainies of the COVID-19 dominated 2020-21 academic school year, our head of school asked me to work on an educational technology challenge. How could our teachers best share face-to-face / in-person lesson recordings with students who either chose or were required to learn at home…

  • Thinking about Educational Technology Support for Fall 2020

    Today I attended a virtual webinar presented by Mike Gwaltney (@MikeGwaltney) for ISM (Independent School Management – @isminc) titled, “How to Create an Academic Technology Plan for the 2020–21 School Year.” Here are a few of my takeaways and reflections on the information and advice Mike shared. First of all, Mike’s recommendation that schools plan…

  • 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…

  • Podcast472: Remote Learning in Oklahoma #OklaEd

    This podcast is a recording of a webinar panel discussion by Oklahoma educators Telannia Norfar, Delilah Rodriguez, Rhonda Schroeder and Wesley Fryer on Saturday, April 25, 2020. Our topic of conversation was “Remote Learning in Oklahoma,” as we are now about a month into “learning at home” because of the neo-coronavirus / COVID-19 global pandemic.…

  • 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…

  • Deep Work and the Race to Minecraft

    Last Thursday was the last day of our second trimester at school, and therefore the end of my second opportunity in 2019-20 to teach Digital and Media Literacy to 5th and 6th Graders. As classroom teachers, one of the things we quickly learn is how different the dynamics of separate classes can be based on…

  • Facilitating Student eBook and Book Publishing with Book Creator and Lulu

    For the past three years, I’ve had the opportunity to partner with our high school English department chair, Whitney Finley, who teaches a unique and engaging creative writing class for 12th graders in which they write and publish their own children’s picture books. After creating their books, as a group students visit our Kindergarten students…