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Internet Access Outside of Schools Is as Important as Access Within Schools

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  I was prompted by a conversation with a colleague to write this post about rural school districts and broadband access. Because I work mainly with rural districts, I'm very aware of the issues that internet access raises. While rural schools usually provide internet access at good speeds, they are only able to do so because of government subsidies.  Once students in rural districts get home, internet access is often woefully slow or non-existent.  The internet has replaced television and print media as the primary conveyor of information for our society.  Because rural students are unable to access broadband internet at home, they are at a disadvantage educationally and socially. First, let's consider how rural populations access the internet to see how lacking the access is.  Contrary to popular belief, most rural and low socioeconomic populations do access the internet daily.  In my research, I have found that ~95-97% of people in rural districts use th...
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Alternatives to PowerPoint

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NOTE: I mention PowerPoint throughout this article not to attack Microsoft or PowerPoint itself.  Rather, it is used as a generic term for most presentation software that presents ideas in a linear fashion (e.g. Prezi, Keynote, etc.) In the midst of searching for an alternative presentation tool for a conference a few weeks ago, a thought suddenly occurred to me: "Maybe we don't need PowerPoint alternatives but alternatives to PowerPoints."  The more I pondered this thought, the more it troubled me.  I remember when studying English in college that a professor was discussing tropes that occur in film which would be totally foreign to any viewer not familiarized with them through her culture.  As an example, he discussed binoculars used on screen.  For instance, when you see an image such as this: You understand that the character is viewing through binoculars.  But, does this really replicate the experience of binoculars?  No!  When you look t...
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Catch Me at GaETC 2015!

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  I'm excited to announce that I will be presenting at GaETC 2015 on 11/04/2015 at 1:30 PM - 2:25 PM.  I will be delivering a session titled: One Person PD: How I Offered 5 PLUs to 13 Schools in One Year. I will be documenting how to develop a district-wide professional development plan with a very limited number of resources.  Included will be advice on choosing delivery methods and how to monitor learning.  If you are a Georgia educator, I hope to see you there!
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Please Stop Printing!

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This post was generated from a recent device launch with which I have been working.  I have been involved with the deployment of ~900 Chromebooks intended for student use.  If you are familiar with Chromebooks, you know that they employ cloud printing.  As part of this deployment, cloud printing has been disabled due to the age of the printers in the schools as well as the desire to avoid having to revise the existing print server. After the deployment, one of the most frequent complaints is that students cannot print from the Chromebooks.  The complaint leaves me entirely baffled.  The district is a Google Apps for Education system and all staff have Google accounts.  Google recently provided unlimited storage for all Drive accounts for education.  Students can save anything on the Chromebook to their Drives and share it with the teacher.  Why would they need to print? I've Got the Need; The Need to Print Which brings up the question: Why is ther...
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Plickers: One Device Formative Assessment

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I am a fan of formative assessment, but it is usually difficult to grade the assessment quickly enough to give the student timely feedback.  With Plickers, grading simple formative questions is as easy as grabbing your smartphone and launching an app. What Is It? Plickers is an app for Android and iOS that lets a user activate the camera on her device and gather results from a question.  Students in the class hold up a card with a visual code (similar to a QR) in one of 4 orientations.  Then, the teacher scans the room using the Plickers app, and it gathers the answers and grades them. Plickers "Card" How To Use It 1.  Go to  www.plickers.com  and sign up for a teacher account 2.  Go to the "Cards" tab and choose the size card that you would like and print them.  I suggest printing and laminating the cards. 3.  From the "Classes" tab, add a class.  You may have up to 65 students in one class 4.  Enter student names and Plickers wil...
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The Two Educational Technologies: Technology for Consumption vs Technology for Creation

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Introduction Technology in education can be easily classified by purpose.  A technology is either intended for consumption or creation.  While technologies do not neatly fit these categories and can easily overlap, the distinction between consumption and creation is very important for choosing a school-based technology.  We need to choose technologies that allow our students to create.  The process of creation is a learning activity that reaches beyond memorization and into application. Unfortunately, in education, we have focused on knowledge acquisition too heavily for too long.  Only recently has education began to focus on skill acquisition and knowledge application.  As a result of this, the technology in education is still evaluated and used primarily for knowledge acquisition. Consumption Technology As the name implies, consumption technology encompasses devices and technologies that present information for consumption by the user.  The informat...
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Why Chromebooks Are Replacing iPads; or When Apple Left Education

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Late last year or early this year, you probably read an article like this one:  Google’s Chromebook wins over classrooms; ousts Apple’s iPad  from PBS.  In terms of sheer volume, Google shipped 715,000 Chromebooks to Apple's 702,000 iPads in the education market according to IDC . While that is impressive data, an analysis of why this shift is occurring from the school district level perspective is useful.  Most articles focus on items like cost, but there are a multitude of reasons that Chromebooks are displacing iPads in school, and there are many considerations to take when deciding what to purchase for a school district. Why the Shift? I will discuss several reasons that Chromebooks are replacing iPads as the device of choice for the education market, but I'll tackle the most obvious first: 1.  Cost Chromebooks' initial cost is cheaper than iPads.  Even with management licenses and peripherals needed for deployment, Chromebooks hover around $300.  ...
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