I must begin by giving a huge thank you to everyone at the Extended Reality Initiative at Kent State and especially to Karl Kosko who has patiently answered my countless questions. While I had dreamed of a future with 360 degree classroom video being used in professional development, I thought it was still years away.…
I love magic tricks. They often make my brain race, straining for some explanation of how the impossible was possible. Most of the time that’s where it ends: with wonder and amazement. Sometimes I cheat though. I occasionally go to YouTube and search for a video to explain what I saw. What’s interesting is how…
I love reading (and especially listening) to books that help me learn new ideas or realize how what I thought I knew was wrong. I think this is especially important for anyone responsible for leading or inspiring others. I especially love stories and metaphors that I can think about and incorporate into my presentations and…
I recently saw that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory musical, and one song really caught my attention. It took the common saying of “you have to see it to believe it” and gave it a twist in the song It Must Be Believed to Be Seen. One of the verses is: Beyond this door’s a…
Imagine that people who wanted to become a math teacher had to take a test to determine how well they understood mathematics. Sounds reasonable. However also imagine that this test was both ludicrously hard and assessed topics that had little to do with what teachers actually teach. Not so great. Well unfortunately, this test exists…
When I look back at my first years of teaching, I’m shocked that I wasn’t fired. I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean it literally. Times were a bit different in 2003. When I was hired, I was the third teacher of the year for those students. The first teacher quit and the second was…
Have you ever realized that so much of our job as educators has nothing to do with the content we teach? Much of it is how we share what we know or about relationships between:
teachers and students
teachers and parents
teachers and other teachers
teachers and admin
teachers and other school staff