Last week I flew to Madison, Wisconsin from South Bend, Indiana. There was a short layover in Chicago, and the entire trip was supposed to take a little more than 3 hours. It turns out, a small fire on a plane is good enough cause to ground it (thankfully) and thoroughly checked over by the mechanical crew. It also turns a 45 minute layover into a 5 hour layover. I know it’s not the worst layover an air traveler could have, nor was...

In my position I get to try out a lot of new gadgets for use in the classroom. Sometimes our school pays for these “trial gadgets” and sometimes vendors are willing to give us a device gratis for testing. I’m not sure if it’s my blogging that helps, the large purchases we make at least once or twice a year, or the fact that I get to put the devices into real world scenarios with teachers and students, but it’s...

I haven’t blogged about anything music-related since November of 2012. That’s criminal. Especially considering the last one was a lazy post with several different examples of teachers parodying Rebecca Black’s “Friday”. No I will not link to it, you can go search for it if you like. I’m going to pretend as though I never hit the “publish” button on that post. I feel as though I may have made...

If you haven’t heard already, The cicadas of Brood II in the Eastern United States will be emerging in the billions this summer. Yes, billions. Science and Biology educators along the East Coast are likely in a state of teacher-nerd joy for the anticipated event. Once the soil temperature reaches a comfortably steady 64 degrees Fahrenheit, the nymphs that have been living underground for 17 years, surviving on the juice of tree...

This week in DS106 we’re supposed to be creating audio and design assignment based around three particular episodes from the famous series. I choose to create an assignment around none of them, because I like to rock the boat in seemingly harmless and inconsequential ways like that. We all have learners like this in our classrooms, right? Besides, if I had created the 4 Icon Challenge assignment around one of the three episodes...

DS106 is a magical and serendipitous course. There’s really nothing else like it. The recent Education Technology MOOC that Alec Couros and Alan Levine, among others, helped facilitate this Winter came close to matching DS106. It had awesomely silly collaborative experiences, and fantastic conversations based around the educational use of technology that helped introduce a host of educators to blogging, but it just wasn’t...