I don’t typically go on rants here on the blog. I’ve occasionally voiced frustration about political developments, subpar video sharing sites dedicated to education, or questioned the heralding of large Bill Gates-backed video learning projects, but when it comes to calling out other education blogs, I’m typically quiet. Why? Well, for starters, it usually invites a host of negative or critical comments on my own work,...

Public educators in Michigan have been under an extreme amount of pressure and stress lately. Our state legislature is getting ready to completely overhaul the funding model of public education, create a state-wide school district that is untethered from meeting assessment standards should the Governor choose, and then this happened earlier today. I’m not going to go into more detail (for now) and debate where I stand on any of these...

Regular perusal of my blog feeds has long since gone by the wayside as I juggle the responsibilities of the quasi teacher/coordinator possession I hold at work, the demands of  fatherhood, and still trying to hold onto a few tattered shreds of what used to be my social life both with friends and my wife. Not all is lost though! I did manage to read a book for professional benefit thanks to a great group of educators, and just today I...

As seen on TV, Peter Coyote has one of those unmistakable voices, most recently heard narrating the excellent Dustbowl documentary on PBS. Where I didn’t expect to hear his voice, but am glad that I did, was narrating one of several of Edutopia’s videos about Assessment. I was actually assigned to watch the video as a part of a course I’m taking about blended learning environments, and besides making the totally...

For a while now I’ve downplayed the current trendiness of Gamification in learning. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why, but there are a few ideas buzzing around my head. At times I’m put off by the heavy reliance on replacing one form of extrinsic motivation (gold stars, points, etc.) with another (achievements, points, etc.). Quite often it’s the oversimplification of game design and instructional design...

I’m at the ISTE Leadership Forum today and tomorrow, getting schooled by some serious hard-core academic types that take learning extremely seriously. These amazing educators have devoted a large amount of their life’s work to helping establish lots of frameworks, graphic organizers, and other tools to help us visualize how various components work together. For example, here’s the Framework for Systemic Improvement we were...