From the desk of Mr. Walters

Okay peeps and tweeps, it's time for this year's round-up of inspiration and wholesome challenging goodness for the start of the school year. This is when I share who / what is challenging me right now with you... kind of an annotated bibli blog raphy of awesome. Are your students totally Psyched? Okay, maybe they're not, but they should be. If you're a teacher, and you're not a Vlog Brothers fan (or a Nerdfighter like me), you may have missed this. I'm posting it here for you to share with your friends, colleagues, administrators, and, most importantly, your students. DFTBA An Open Letter to Students Returning to School John Green Room Readiness Ahhh... Room readiness. No matter what your district calls it, you probably have to go set up your junk this week or next week. What are you going to do differently? What will you keep the same? What is your core message? ...WHAT? I thought we were talking about room setup, not an essay or lecture. This yea...

Disclaimer: This is for the purposes of generating discussion within a community of teachers. It does not reflect the views of any school districts implied within. One of the primary complaints I hear from teachers about integrating new technologies and 21 st century skills into their classroom is that while administrator say they want to see these things, District or Network policies often prevent their use. When teachers try to make changes to these limitations, they meet little real support. Frustrated, they return to their classroom bubble and break out the composition books, colored pencils, or overhead projectors. Blogging is a perfect example of this frustration voiced by many teachers. Originally, we in the education community were given Edublogs.org as the official answer to our desire to have students blog.  Signing up students with no email account was difficult, but after discovering a somewhat shady work around using gmail, teachers were able to sign up classes. Ed...

Okay so I'm facilitating a workshop on blogging today at my school, and I'm struggling to recommend any one Blog site.  They all have good features and bad, depending on what you want to do. Edublogs I used to simply recommend Edublogs.org , but due to it's new advertising practices, it's difficult to endorse. Okay, I understand.  Edublogs needs to make money to keep their servers running, but there are various degrees along the spectrum of supporting oneself and selling out.  Edublogs has sold out.  An appropriate banner ad or two is expected on most free web services, but embedded advertising links??? Will Richardson , whom I respect greatly, defines real blogging as, Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience response in mind. If this is the case, and links are an integral aspect of the connective writing process known as blogging, then what is one supposed...