• Evaluating the Nutritional Content of Technology

    If we want to make lunchtime fun, why not allow students to choose anything they want to eat? Of course we recognize the absurdity in this statement; we have actually taken great strides to ensure that students eat a nutritious lunch. So shouldn’t that same logic also apply to learning? Too often, I hear teachers…

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  • Technology Futures: Parenting and Teaching

    So far this summer the best book that I have read is a short and insightful book by Illah Reza Nourbakhsh: Parenting for Technology Futures, Part I.  Every parent, teacher, administrator and school board member should read this book.  It is a short and fulfilling read, and is only $2.99 to download the Kindle book.…

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  • EdTech Smog

    We recently had the opportunity to talk with Illah Reza Nourbakhsh (author ofRobot Futures) about robots now and in the future.  As robots are getting easier and cheaper to make, Illah describes the growing problem of robot smog: We talk a lot about smog in general as kind of a pollution, this haze that is…

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  • Using Vernier’s LabQuest2 to Enhance a Demo

    Last spring, Vernier Software and Technology released the LabQuest2 – a device that collects data from a variety of sensors and has the ability to share this data wirelessly with any device that has a browser. To me, this is a game-changer in science education. I decided to test it out this year while teaching phase…

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  • Go Ahead and Play With It

    While in school one day, I caught my son playing with a document camera.  I was amazed by his adventurous curiosity; he had no fear playing with the ELMO – trying to figure out what it can do and how it works. To me, there is no better professional development in learning new technology than…

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  • Who Needs a Scoreboard?

    As meet manager for many swim meets, I know the importance of having instant results displayed on the scoreboard. But a new iPhone app is starting to make me think differently.  At the 2012 FVA Boys Swimming and Diving Meet, we turned on Meet Mobile – a fantastic new feature in Meet Manager 4.0. Let…

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  • iPad2 as Wireless Document Camera

    After using the iPad2 and the Apple TV to mirror iPad content through my LCD projector, I realized that this setup can be used as a wireless document camera by using the built-in camera app on the iPad2. The Setup: First of all, I setup a ‘stand’ for the iPad, so that it could project…

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  • Chemistree

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  • Teaching with Television

    A recent Phi Delta Kappan article caught my eye about using TV in the classroom: Teaching with television: New evidence supports an old medium, by Deborah L. Linebarger. In the article, Linebarger cites research affirming that TV can be used effectively in the classroom – especially where it supplements, rather than supplants, good instruction. There are some…

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