Nocking the Arrow

"Formative assessment encompasses all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged."  - Dylan William
Last week, my old pickup truck started acting funny - loping, inconsistent idle, delayed erratic transmission shifts. Through years of experience, I know how most repair shops work, and I'm not in favor of spending money diagnosing an issue I can research myself. 
It took roughly twenty minutes with Google and YouTube for me to pinpoint the problem. Luckily, I didn't need a new transmission, but I didn't have space or tools to do the repair myself. Several online forums and auto repair sites told me what I likely needed was an input speed sensor replaced on the transmission; a thirty dollar part, cool!

I called a local repair shop, booked an appointment, and limped my truck to the shop. It's incredible how patient other …

"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world."- Robert McKee

It's that wonderful time of year. It's time for us to submit our content for the handful of conference sessions we'll be facilitating during the coming year. I'm fortunate enough to have been able to attend more than one hundred conferences through the years, I present at nearly all those I visit. I used to have an aversion to public speaking, that's long gone. My preparations and presentation strategies have evolved. Unfortunately, many of the so-called innovative #edtech sessions I've attended recently are still mired in the sit-n-git style of the previous century. We can do better, and if we aspire to make our classrooms places of great learning, then we must do better.

** Caution, this post is likely to contain some snarky sarcasm, but for the most part, my purpose is to share some observations and some research-based practices to help you win your conference presenta…

What if we treated time like currency? How would this impact our decisions and behavior? These were the questions posited on a radio talk show a few days ago. The commentator got me thinking about all of the time I waste deleting spam, closing pop-up windows, and scrolling past banner ads. Digital downsizing works. As recently as five days ago, I was receiving dozens of spam email messages each day, following my newly instituted digital diet plan, I now get one or two unwanted messages per day, one from Harry's Razors and one from Facebook - go figure, right?!?


Last week, I published a post about decluttering and securing my digital spaces. I've now shifted my focus to keeping my digital areas clean and safeguarded. Nearly all of my online activities have ties to Google. As I mentioned in my previous post, the DuckDuckGo private browser extension provides tracking information. In other words, which sites are tracking and coalescing my information. Since nearly fifty percent of …