I’ve been following Jim Groom’s “Name that 80s movie” 4 icon challenge series, and while he promised that they would become more difficult, I think the many summers I spent glued to the TV watching HBO for hours on end gives me an unfair advantage (I totally nailed the Flash Gordon one). I thought I’d try to up the “name that obscure movie” difficulty level, and while it was entertaining for myself...

I recently had the opportunity to spend a day in my old teaching position; an elementary technology class. I was always big on working with media when I taught the class for the 4 years I was in the position, so I took the opportunity to give the students a challenge taken from the pages of ds106, the wonderfully playful and media-rich digital storytelling community. The particular challenge that I gave them comes from the 4 Icon Challenge...

Who watches the watchmen? If teachers are to be held accountable now for every single result that their students achieve on any and all testing, who makes sure that every single teacher in a school building is bringing their “A” game every single day? If it falls upon the administrators, then who is it that makes sure those principals and evaluators are able to observe every single teacher, each and every week, in order to...

I have a pathological need like to argue. It’s something that I was apparently born with, as my mother insists at a very young age I was quite obviously cut out to be a lawyer. Despite my best efforts at self-monitoring and awareness of this trait, I often relapse into base level arguments when unprepared for a conversation that may challenge my viewpoints. Perhaps that’s why I was drawn to create the image above for the ds106...

What is digital storytelling? Rather than bore you with a rather lengthy history of the term, and how it has been applied in the past to both the realms of education and entertainment, allow me to illustrate how I see it with a highlight from Wikipedia: You can continue to read on, and ponder why someone would arbitrarily decide that 8 minutes is the acceptable limit for digital stories, but what’s most important about the term is...

It’s a Monday, it was a relatively uneventful weekend for me, but I did manage to create a little bit of ds106 art. The current incarnation of ds106 recently received a large influx of students from Japan last week, and they’ve been blogging, creating art, and accomplishing new assignments at an amazing rate, so I decided to take Michael Branson Smith’s advice to complete one last Visual/Design assignment for this portion...