Guest Thinkers

A buddy of mine called me the other day with awe in his voice and asked me if I knew that Hosni Mubarak was worth as much as Bill Gates. […]

Sanaa University president,Khalid Tamim, has been removed from his post, according to reports in Yemen.  News Yemen claims it has been trying to get a hold of him this morning […]

1.  According to our really cool BIG THINK physicist, Michio Kaku, evolution has stopped for our species. 2. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change ourselves. 3. So, in the […]

Yesterday, Google announced their 2011 class of Science Communication Fellows.  This year’s program focuses on climate change and I am excited to say that I was one of the selected […]

We’ve talked a lot about volcanoes in other parts of the world, but now we have two US volcanoes making some news (although neither because they’re having a large eruption): […]

After Mubarak who is the next Middle Eastern leader to go? Some people have been pointing to President Salih and Yemen, but experts on the country have been pouring cold […]

Do you want to have an affair? Noel Biderman is the chief executive officer of Avid Life Media, based in Toronto. “Monogamy, in my opinion, is a failed experiment,” he declares.

There has been much talk about facebook and twitter revolutions in the Middle East, but given the internet’s rather low infiltration rate in Yemen – I think roughly 200,000 lines* […]

Mark your calendars! The second annual Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) will be at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines on April 20, 2011, from 9am to 5pm. In our first […]

‘We may need to seriously rethink the university and its future.’ [feel free to substitute ‘school’ for ‘university’] Another thought-provoking video by Dr. Michael Wesch. Happy viewing!

Florida Virtual School’s second online course / video game, Conspiracy Code Intensive Reading, appears to be ready. I blogged about Conspiracy Code American History a year and a half ago. […]

I can’t attend Educon this year. Snow in Philadelphia has canceled school today so they’re moving to Plan B. I thought I’d share some questions for attendees to ponder as […]

I’m in Amsterdam with my colleague, John Nash, for the European League of Middle Level Education (ELMLE) conference. Yesterday I facilitated an all-day preconference with a small group of teachers and […]

Last September I blogged the trailer for the movie, Race to Nowhere, which focuses on the achievement pressures faced by many of our schoolchildren. Today I had an opportunity to attend […]

Goodbye, Mark. I don’t say this lightly. I am an extremely strong advocate for free speech and for open discussion. In 4+ years – and despite numerous wide-ranging and contentious dialogues here […]

A video for those of you who get frustrated with others who are less technology proficient. I confess that people who still type URLs into search boxes drive me nuts […]

Vicki Davis just blogged that an innovative teacher friend of hers has been shut down by her school district’s leadership because: No one else is doing this in our state, […]

Below is a nifty video, Mobile Year in Review 2010, that highlights some of the changes we saw last year related to mobile phones and computing. My favorite statistic is this […]

I’ve been using a nifty little add-in for Gmail that I thought was worth sharing. Boomerang for Gmail gives you greater control of your e-mails by allowing you to hide […]

For a student who was in a school district’s middle-school-only 1:1 laptop program, it’s tough to go back to ring-binder-and-notebook-paper classrooms when she transitions to the high school. n For a child […]

Drug pushers: n n Pssst. Hey, man. Want some bennies? Wanna get amped? Got some chrome, got a little croak too. How much you got? I got something for ya. […]

In a critique of the latest PISA results, Walt Gardner said: Shanghai is hardly representative of China because it is an industrialized center with scores of modern universities. In contrast, […]

Chris Lehmann and I submitted our book to the publisher yesterday: McLeod, S., & Lehmann, C. (Eds.). (in press). What school administrators need to know about digital technologies and social […]

Here are some things that you may remember from the science fiction movie classic, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial: At the beginning, E.T. is a little bit mysterious and spooky Most of […]

Two more videos about The School of One in New York City. If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to also watch the program overview video. Happy viewing!

Well, 2010 is over; hope it was a good one for you. For those who may be interested, here are a few statistics about this blog from the past year… Overview […]

Larry Cuban says: Teaching, then, whether in graduate schools or kindergartens – in elite universities or slum schools – binds all of us together. In teaching we display our views […]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of graduating two Ph.D. students here at Iowa State University. Commencement is always one of my favorite times as a faculty member. Dr. Kim Buryanek […]

Here is Youngme Moon’s awesome anti-creativity checklist. How many boxes can you check for your school leaders? Moon is the author of Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd, which is nearing […]

I thought maybe this was the year I didn’t blog about Christmas messages from public schools. But, of course, the topic has come up again. ‘Tis the season… n Start […]