Category: assessment
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Wisdom from Heather Smith
Heather Smith is the 2024 North Carolina Teacher of the Year! She teaches 8th grade math teacher at Waynesville Middle School in Haywood County Schools. These are my notes from her presentation, “Teachers: The Ultimate Influencers“ at the March 24, 2025 NCMLE ‘Middle School Matters’ Conference MY THOUGHT AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. In this…
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Road to Awesome
These are my notes from Darrin Peppard’s keynote at the March 24, 2025 NCMLE ‘Middle School Matters’ Conference. MY THOUGHT AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Darrin’s books include: “The Road to Awesome: The Journey of a Leader”: roadtoawesome.net and roadtoawesome.net/books Darrin’s most recent book with Katie Kinder is “Culture First Classrooms: Leadership, Relationships, and…
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AI and Cheating
One of the most common concerns many teachers and parents have today regarding generative AI / artificial intelligence tools is that students are using and will use them “to cheat.” While students have used and will continue to use a variety of tools and strategies to cheat during exams, quizzes, and other forms of formal…
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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…
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Takeaways and Learning from the MSON Summer 2020 Annual Conference
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the second edition of the MSON Summer 2020 Annual Conference, held virtually via Zoom. MSON is the “Malone Schools Online Network” (@MaloneSchools), and for the first time this year (I’m guessing because of COVID-19) their annual conference was open to educators everywhere. Our school (where my wife…
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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…
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Seesaw Skills, Assessment and Parent Feedback
Last week I had an opportunity to attend the LLI Southwest Conference at The Oakridge School in Arlington, Texas, and present with two of our second grade teachers about our “Seesaw Skills iPad Pilot Project,” which I’m leading this year with teachers in our Lower Division at Casady School in Oklahoma City. In this post,…
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Design Thinking Takeaways from Our #k12onlineconf Panel
Last Friday after school I had an opportunity to facilitate a 60 minute panel discussion about “design thinking” with Brad Ovenell-Carter (@Braddo) in Vancouver, BC, Canada and Brian Lockwood (@BrianLockwood) in Copenhagen, Denmark for the K12 Online Conference (@k12online). In this post, I’ll share some of my learning points and takeaways from the panel discussion.
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Students Need Teacher Relationships Not Just Adaptive Software & Videos
Thanks to the web of connections facilitated by Twitter, this morning I watched the popular (> 1 million views) YouTube video, “Digital Aristotle: Thoughts on the Future of Education” by YouTuber CGP Grey (@cgpgrey). Like many snappy and impressive videos about “transforming our education system” created by professional YouTubers, however, this one makes some flawed…
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Interview with Chris Davis on “Journeys in Podcasting” Project
This afternoon during the “Hack Education” event at the 2015 ISTE Conference in Philadelphia, I was interviewed by Chris Davis (@chrisdaviscng) about using media to document classroom learning. Chris is conducting a series of audio interviews at ISTE this year for the “Journeys in Podcasting” project he’s continuing with Natalia Leon (third grade teacher) and Diego Lopez…