Beginning another year in game-based learning: from making to morality
This year I am teaching civics and economics as a middle school social studies teacher. While the content classroom brings new challenges and opportunities to student-directed learning, I'm working to...
View ArticleTime to let the dragons rest
Lately, my students and I have been talking a lot about a new game. Here's what I've learned from the kids:Failure is a hilarious.Trying to break, exploit, and/or glitch a game is part of playing...
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On "digiship"
This year we begin our spring testing with civics and economics - the course I teach. Since we test first, we have several weeks of classes left after testing. In hope of sparking each student's drive,...
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5 Ways to Flip Composition
Originally published on August 21, 2012 at Democratizing Composition.To really flip a classroom, we have to go past the idea that letting kids shuffle the cards we give them somehow disadvantages the...
View Article"It's only a prototype."
"Relax, Chad. It's only a prototype." - an 8th graderThat was, perhaps, the best thing I heard all week*. Using recycled cardboard, my kids are building their own workspaces off the surfaces in our...
View Article#mozfest: Open schools for open societies
2012's #MozFest began a conversation about schooling that I hope continues over the course of the next year. I hope that in our care and commitment to raising a generation of webmakers who write the...
View Article#ncte12: when they came for us, they came with standards
There’s really no better way to silence us teachers (apart from the crippling, self-imposed professional norm of not admitting to our students and parents that have an opinion on anything) than to give...
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Learning to be weird: an #educon reflection
Right before EduCon 2.5, Laura Hilliger facilitated a hack jam hosted in Drexel University's ExCITe Center (where - you should know - they are making future clothes, among other things). I very much...
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#openschools, open source, open world: 3 keys to an open classroom
This #dlday, the author of one of my favorite projects is absent. I'm going to attempt to describe her work and then offer my own commentary on it. Once she returns, I'll ask her to add anything she'd...
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#nerdcamp and the new educational transcendentalism
In the spirit of melding DIY with do-what-you-can-where-you-are (DWYCWYA?), I ran an mostly impromptu nerd camp for any and all local educators. Call it #popupPD. I scheduled the camp for Wednesday of...
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