Category: edtech

  • Packet Defender 1.0

    Packet Defender 1.0

    Today was the first day of our spring semester, and I’m teaching middle school web design again. As part of our introductory class, we watched the video, “The Internet: IP Addresses & DNS” from Code.org and then played a Kahoot I made with AI about it, using the video transcript. As we learn to create…

  • Multi-dimensional Digital Identity

    Multi-dimensional Digital Identity

    This is a comment and reflection I shared on this blog post by Allysia Doratti, one of Dean Shareski‘s EC&I 832 graduate students in fall 2024: Mirror, Mirror, On My Feed: Exploring Identity in a Digital World. Hi Allysia- Thanks so much for this thoughtful post and especially for the reflections on digital identity and…

  • AI Created Video Clips

    AI Created Video Clips

    One of the powerful ways artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can be used by media creators is to identify short clips in longer videos which are potentially engaging for audience members, and then facilitating the process of making those clips into shorter videos that can be shared on social media. In this post I’ll highlight how…

  • Facebook Friend Safety Tips

    Facebook Friend Safety Tips

    I’m on Facebook frequently, and I’ve noticed it’s become a REAL MESS because of poor account security and rampant cybercrime. I have multiple relatives and friends now who have lost control over their Facebook accounts. Sometimes these individuals have created another Facebook account, creating confusion about “what is the real account?” Some of these people…

  • NotebookLM on Project 2025

    NotebookLM on Project 2025

    At the risk of ruining your Thanksgiving holiday and throwing us further into a “psychological funk” as we approach the political uncertainties of 2025, I’d like to share a brief (and successful) experiment I conducted yesterday using the full PDF of Project 2025 and the artificial intelligence (AI) model NotebookLM. As you may be aware,…

  • ALT Text for Web Accessibility

    ALT Text for Web Accessibility

    In the semester web design course I teach for middle school students, I share a series of videos and activities in a lesson series on web accessibility. I first became aware of the importance of web accessibility when I served as the first “Director of Distance Learning” for the College of Education at Texas Tech…

  • Scratch Coding Resources

    Scratch Coding Resources

    I received an email earlier this year from a teacher in South Africa who is interested in starting a school and including coding in the curriculum. I finally responded to that message (yikes!) asking for links to CODING RESOURCES I use and have shared, including resources for using Scratch coding from MIT. These are the…

  • Beware of Hurricane Helene Fundraising Scams

    Beware of Hurricane Helene Fundraising Scams

    Today in my middle school web design class, we took some time at the start to “think / pair / share” about the past weekend’s dramatic and even traumatic events caused by Hurricane Helene. Several teachers in our department did not have electricity at their houses for three days, and some students reported electricity outages…

  • Priceless Media Hostages

    Priceless Media Hostages

    This evening I looked through an old box of media tapes and CDs which managed to survive our 1000+ mile move from Oklahoma to North Carolina two years ago. There are some priceless artifacts here. Basically all the Digital 8 and MiniDV video tapes which I recorded of our kids and family growing up are…

  • Favorite Digital Utilities

    Favorite Digital Utilities

    What are the websites, web services, and software applications you use regularly and can’t imagine doing without? I call these my “favorite digital utilities,” and today I created a specific webpage for them on my curriculum / lesson sharing website which is built with Google Sites. As an example, I used the website Flickr to…