Guest Thinkers

It’s spring training for Major League Baseball and that means it’s time for another season of edublogger fantasy baseball!n

The Ames (IA) Community School District – my kids’ district – is hiring both a new superintendent and a new high school principal for next year. Below is the letter […]

I just returned from ASB Unplugged, a 1:1 school laptop conference hosted by the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India. If you can imagine nearly 300 educators from international […]

I got an e-mail from the folks at 60second Recap about their service. They use video trailers to summarize – and/or interest students in – great works of literature. Check out the […]

Rethink Learning Now asks: Why don’t schools with the biggest challenges have access to the biggest talent? Answer My answer: Because as educational systems we allow individual teacher preferences and/or union seniority […]

Continuing the conversation from yesterday when I asked “What’s WRONG with the edublogosphere?“, today I invite you to share what you think is RIGHT in our not-so-little edublogger world.    […]

[This is the text of an e-mail I just sent the 7 board members for the Orange County (FL) Public Schools.] Dear OCPS School Board members, Greetings from the freezing state […]

Just a quick post to note that registration for our Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) on April 7 is now closed. We hit our mark of 500 attendees last week despite […]

Iowa State University held its second annual ComETS symposium a couple of weeks ago. Faculty, professional staff, and a few outside folks gathered together to talk about technology integration and implementation […]

Ordinarily we bloggers don’t repost someone else’s entire blog post. But I just had to for this recent post by Seth Godin, It’s easier to teach compliance than initiative. Read […]

In October 2007 I wrote: n n [M]any administrators dispense with students’ 4th Amendment rights in the name of ‘safety.’ They know what the law says, but community pressures or […]

Sports Illlustrated offered its thoughts on what an electronic version of the magazine might look like. Now Wired has done the same. As the iPad and other similar devices permeate […]

Darren Rowse had a brilliant idea to ask, “What’s wrong with blogging?” I think we should ask this about the edublogosphere as well. So…    What’s wrong with edublogging?   (or, if […]

I am extremely pleased that Iowa State University approved my request to take my first-ever sabbatical this fall semester. I will be spending the bulk of my time away working […]

Just a few weeks after publicizing our first-ever Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I), we already have over 300 people who have registered to attend on April 7. Our registration is capped at 500, so […]

The ISTE SIGAdmin just asked its membership two questions. Here are my answers… 1. How has the Internet changed thinking? The Internet has allowed distributed thinking (and thus learning) to […]

As part of our never-ending quest to tap into the potential of social media to enhance the practice of school administrators (and the university programs that prepare them), I am pleased […]

Any thoughts on this?

Here’s the latest educational technology video that’s making the rounds. I know a few professors like this! “If you are here, why are we Skyping?”

Here’s a 10-minute video I helped make that advocates for P-12 online learning. Created by Intermediate District 287 in Minnesota, which heads up the Northern Star Online collaborative, the video […]

In case you missed the news, Google’s latest service, Buzz, is now available to most users of Gmail. Here are three Google Buzz conversations from which I’m learning a lot: […]

Many of you may have seen this commercial for Kaplan University. It made the rounds in the edublogosphere because of its message about change, talent, and learner-centered instruction. I’ve used it […]

Like most states, Iowa is concerned with the retention rate of its new teachers. Over the past decade Iowa has instituted a number of different efforts to combat new teacher […]

I’m reading a fantastic book right now: Futurecast, by Robert Shapiro. In the section on globalization, Shapiro notes that the first waves of globalization primarily affected manufacturing. Millions of American […]

I am a big fan of student choice. When students work on projects, I think that they should have as much choice as possible regarding both the topic and the […]

A baker’s dozen of great Scott blogs… Dilbert Blog, Scott Adams Scott Berkun, Scott Berkun (wrote a fantastic book, BTW!) Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider, Scott Kelby HELLO, my name is […]

Seth Godin wrote today that: People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: […]

On January 28, several students in the Van Meter Community School District demonstrated to Iowa legislators the work that they are now able to do as a result of the […]

Iowa’s first-ever conference dedicated solely to P-12 laptop programs, the Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I), will be on April 7, 2010 at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines. Administrators, […]

This is the message that I just sent my Education Law and Ethics students (the two cohorts are in Des Moines and Mason City, Iowa). Thought I’d share here too… […]