Photo of blue cornflowers and a magenta cosmo flower.

Life Lessons from the Garden

This summer I have spent countless hours outside planting, weeding, trimming, mowing, replanting, clearing, building and rebuilding areas of my yard. As I work the soil, tend to plants, harvest vegetables and care for the living things around my house, I am often struck by how many lessons we can learn from the soil and…

Why Teachers Should Think Twice Before Selling Their Content Online

Over the last few weeks there have been a number of conversations centered around who owns the content that teachers create for their classrooms. Anyone in the teaching profession knows that part of being a teacher is actually not that different from being an artist. Teachers have to think outside of the box about how…

Why We Need to Teach Kids to be Skeptical of Everything

Just last week, a relative of mine posted an image on Facebook that grabbed my attention. I teach juniors and seniors in a Media and Design class, and our first project was based around image editing. At first glance, the photo just didn’t look right. The next day, I showed the image to my students,…

Teach Kids How the Internet Works

Welcome to the first installment of my blog series focused on my upcoming book, Digital and Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet: Practical Classroom Applications. I always start the year with my freshmen making sure that they have a basic, underlying understanding of how the Internet works. I ask them to explain how…

Some Thoughts on AI in the Classroom

As I look at the conference offerings for this year’s ISTE conference, I am concerned to see Alexa-focused sessions about how to incorporate the device into your classroom. I have an Amazon Dot in my kitchen, which I purchased on a whim a few years ago and use for listening to podcasts, checking the weather,…

A Conversation About Teacher Retention With Acting Secretary of Education, John King

I was honored today to take part in the first “Tea with Teachers” round table discussion of 2016 focused around teacher retention. While Acting Secretary John King was the host, he mostly listened and asked questions. With only an hour to discuss such an important issue in education, it felt as though a lot was left…