This post is bringing our attention to the exciting changes that are happening. We all have a number of individual changes happening in our lives. For example, I just moved (hence my mini hiatus for our posts), and started teaching at a new school. No matter what our individual changes are, the better weather is... Continue Reading →

Teaching How to Learn. This anecdotal story is taken from Patrice Bain, a veteran K-12 teacher, author, speaker and consultant. She recently completed 25 years teaching middle school in Columbia, Ill., where she was a finalist for Illinois Teacher of the Year. She is co-author of the forthcoming “Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning,” available... Continue Reading →

When it comes to exercise, we think about how to “get” fit. But often, starting out is not the problem. I'm most interested in how this affects our students. Of course, these tips and tricks work for all of us. “The big problem is maintaining it,” says Falko Sniehotta, a professor of behavioural medicine and... Continue Reading →

As Google aptly puts it this AM:  To all the teachers whose job is never finished, Happy World Teachers’ Day We all have great experiences and some not-so-positive experiences with the teachers of our past. One thing is for sure, teachers spend a great deal of time with our children, help them learn and grow, and... Continue Reading →

LeBron and Education - 2 words we wouldn't usually put in the same category. However, he's been contributing to the education narrative as of late and, most notably, announced he's opening a school. Ohio has been trying to stomach the four-time NBA MVP’s decision to leave his home state to join the Los Angeles Lakers.... Continue Reading →

Getting our students to read - an uphill battle for sure! Some of us have used audiobooks as a means to help engage our students into the wonderful world of reading. But how do they compare to traditional paper reading? The following article is useful for us as educators, but also just for us as... Continue Reading →

Hello all! Summer's done and a new school year has arrived. These times often provoke fear, anticipation, foresight, and anxiety. For me - I'm excited. Here's to a new school year!!!   Stay tuned for upcoming posts. There are a few in the works that are pretty interesting. Good luck Edureachers!    

Hi All! Sorry for the little hiatus. I've received a number of requests to "up my posting game", ha! My message to those people: I can't say I disagree. Today's topic is the next step in Edtech Evolution. Stay tuned! Social-Emotional-:Learning, or SEL, is the ability to manage emotions, to empathize, and to collaborate with others.... Continue Reading →

Here’s a slightly Orwellian way to check whether your students may have plagiarized part of their essays: the Chrome extension Draftback, which plays back the revision history of any Google doc you can edit—down to the keystroke. That was just one of the many extensions, add-ons and hacks for the Google ecosystem shared at a pair... Continue Reading →

It’s terribly confusing, but perhaps no coincidence, that three of the world’s most prominent consumer technology companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft—each boast a “Classroom” tool aimed at K-12 educators and students. After all, what better way to secure a foothold in the market than impressing one’s brand to future consumers at a young age? Even more confounding... Continue Reading →

I’ve always been a fan of a good startup. About a year ago, I supported the Spinn Coffee startup, investing in their product and getting priority shipment (although I'm still waiting for it, ha!). While I'm not necessarily anti big corporations, I feel that a lot of individual thought and progressive attitudes can be easily... Continue Reading →

Who in the last twenty years in the world of successful business leaders has truly embodied the idea of leadership better than Steve Jobs? In Walter Isaacson’s article, The Real Lessons of Steve Jobs published in the Harvard Business Review, April 2012, Jobs relates the ten principles of leadership: Simplify Control the Experience Innovate Ignore Reality Have... Continue Reading →

What do you do when standing in front of a room full of students who have suddenly surpassed your knowledge level as a teacher with 45 minutes of class time left? As teachers, we are not just disseminators of knowledge. We are leaders and facilitators of strategy. This is a normal situation many teachers face.... Continue Reading →

Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for instructors to include notes regarding laptop and internet use in their course syllabi. Many instructors ban the use of electronics, including laptops, due to the assumption that these machines may be more distracting than helpful during class time. However, students often argue that they can take better notes on their... Continue Reading →

Recent technological advances have affected many areas of our lives: the way we communicate, collaborate, learn, and, of course, teach. Along with that, those advances necessitated an expansion of our vocabulary, producing definitions such as digital natives, digital immigrants, and, the topic of this post -- "21st Century Teacher." One of the things I have... Continue Reading →

"Built and designed by teachers, for teachers." Stan Litow, President Emeritus of the IBM Foundation IBM's Watson, everyone’s favourite supercomputer, is taking on a new challenge - education! Over 1000 educators  contributed to the project, 1000s of hand-selected lesson plans and activities were categorized and rendered, and the use of the artificial intelligence interpretation. All... Continue Reading →

Our cell phones have evolved from the indestructible Nokia phones that were primarily used for speaking (sometimes I forget that I can do that on my iPhone!). Add social media to the list of many activities that are commonplace for the screen of our mobile devices, and it is easy to question the necessity of... Continue Reading →

Most of us remember the traditional teacher-centered classrooms. The students were situated in nice, neat rows, not allowed to talk to each other. The teacher, the source of authority, downloads information to the students and is the sole disseminator of their knowledge. The information is then regurgitated back on an evaluative test designed to measure... Continue Reading →