Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Category: assessment

  • Show What You Know with Media

    I’m sharing a presentation on Thursday at the Miami Device” conference titled, “Help Students Show What They Know with Media.” My “Mapping Media to the Curriculum” website and eBook series are the primary referenced resource. Here are my slides: The official description of the session is: Tablets, smartphones and computers should not be used by students just…

  • Inspired by Ben Wilkoff’s 6 Second Stories for Learning

    This post is the first of a series of reflections on presentations I’ve watched that are part of the 2014 K-12 Online Conference. @k12online is a free, annual, pre-recorded video-based conference by educators, for educators. This year the conference strands were STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math),  Stories for Learning, Passion Driven Learning, and Gamification. I’ve…

  • Mastery Grid with Openly Licensed Icons

    I created the following “Mastery Grid” to use with my students in our STEM classroom today, using openly licensed icons I found with iconfinder.com (here and here). This is also available as a downloadable PDF. As our district continues to implement the “Marzano Teacher Leader Evaluation” (TLE) framework for Oklahoma, based on “The Art and…

  • Act Today to Encourage Teachers at Crutcho Public School

    I feel a lot like a member of the stringed quartet on the Titanic, playing away to soothe remaining passengers as the great ship sank. As I write posts (after school, of course) about my end-of-year student lessons launching water bottle rockets and completing a coordinate grid “orientation challenge” in MinecraftEDU, I’m confronted with multiple…

  • Why is Oklahoma Education Policy So Screwed Up?

    Oklahoma science teacher Lisa Seay, who I met at EdCampTulsa several weeks ago, asked a great question in a poignant post today titled, “Tattered, Torn and Tired.” She wrote: I have only been teaching 11 years. Maybe some of you can answer this: How did we get to this point? At what point in history…

  • Unwrapping Common Core State Standards and Unit Planning (Deer Creek Public Schools)

    These are my notes from today’s professional development day with Deer Creek Public Schools (in Oklahoma) focused on understanding the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), learning to ‘unwrap’ the CCSS, creating a CCSS unit based on an existing ELA or math unit, and learning about resources for teachers/students to share for teaching/learning. This day was…

  • What’s So Common About Common Core?

    These are my notes from Dr. Sharon Wilbur, Tiffany Neill, Levi Patrick and Pat Turner’s presentation, “What’s So Common About Common Core?” at the Oklahoma Association of Elementary School Principals (OAESP) mid-winter conference on January 19, 2012, in Oklahoma City. The conference is sponsored and organized by the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration (CCOSA).…

  • Voices of #iste11 – Dr. Leigh Zeitz (Dr Z) on Digital Portfolios

    Equipped as a storychaser with my iPad2, a $60 iRig mic, and the help of friends (as well as some bystanders) willing to be short-term videographers, I’ve recorded a series of interviews this week here in Philadelphia for the 2011 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. This sixth episode is an interview with…

  • Digitizing an Elementary Writing Portfolio

    Today my fifth grade daughter, Sarah, brought home her elementary writing folder. This folder includes samples of her writing dating all the way back to first grade, and she’s never been able to bring it home previously. She was excited to read me several of her essays, so I suggested we record them on the…

  • Video reflection from North Texas

    Today I had an opportunity to spend the morning with Dr. Gerald Knezek visiting with educators in Irving ISD. There are lots of things to share which I’m thinking about now as a result of our conversations, but since I don’t have time to write them in a post at present I recorded a twelve…