Soft Technology

The Techs4Tex team spent a fast-paced and exciting day today in Brenham, TX preparing for the upcoming Texas Google Summit coming up May 17, 2104. We began by laying out the schedule (about 20 concurrent sessions). Below is Brenham ISD Tech Director Kim Strauss breaking rules by drawing on the table with a dry erase marker, which amazed us all . . . Also pictured Shepherd ISD's Tech Diva Pam Cadwalder, Brenham ISD Instructional Technology Specialist Troy Kuhn,  Coldspring-Oakhurst Consolidated ISD's awesome ELA specialist Laura Kile. There were also a bunch of other awesome people present, just so you know. We emailed with our keynote speaker Kyle Pace (so excited to have him visit us in TX), and more of our big stars including Shelly Terrell and Tim Chase . We also added a few of these guys who are kind of a big deal to our Lead Learners page, but there are so many amazing presenters sharing their knowledge it was hard to know where to stop. One of the sessions I'm mo...

Someone asked me recently if [insert organization name here] owned Project Based Learning. Well, I'd like us to think about that together because I understand the root of the question. There are some organizations, sales people, companies, etc. who seem to own the idea of Project Based Learning. Do they? In fact, the tenets of Project Based Learning are ideas good teachers have been using for many years, even if they didn't call it that. One teacher in her 60s recently told me, "Oh Amy, I know all about this! This is how we used to teach before all the testing. It was fun!" Yes, it WAS fun! My friend and mentor Jan Robin was one person who taught me about it. She used it in her elementary school classroom back in the 80s and 90s. She told me that at one time, there was even a state standardized test that attempted to have students create a floating vessel out of some popsicle sticks and foil. My knowledge about PBL has come from many different places, but it began in ...

I heard a significant amount of talk this week at TCEA14 (Texas Computer Education Association 2014 conference) about what I would describe as poor etiquette (self-promotion, self-aggrandizing) among EdTech gurus. I've got to admit. It really made me reflect. Luckily, I have a great, humble, wonderful friend who is herself honest and aware, and by her example, I strive to also be kind and humble. Yet many times, I fall woefully short of her excellent example. When I was a girl growing up in East Texas in a rural town, people said that rude people were either "Yankees" or "acted like Yankees". I now understand that "acting like a Yankee" is actually quite different from hubris, self-promotion, self-aggrandizing, or other unconscious behavior. After getting to know some wonderful, refined "Yankees" like Sean Beavers , Lisa Parisi , and Sandra Wozniak , to name a few, I now understand that while they may at times be more outspoken than would be ...

I'm just going to go ahead and admit that I'm kind of in love with Autocrat. I've set up two form/spreadsheet combos this week to send the results of forms to Google groups, and I felt satisfied like I had just finished cleaning the whole house, which completely offset the fact that I actually have not cleaned the whole house. You just gotta try it out to see how good it feels. Thanks YouPD for creating such an amazing script that anyone can use!