Soft Technology

Huntsville High School students elected a special homecoming queen this past year, and the film students had the foresight to make a film about it. I think you'll agree that "A Queen to Be" is worth watching. Lucky for me, I get to see this lovely lady frequently in the hallways. Her classroom is right around the corner for my office. Enjoy the film, and be sure to leave comments for our student film-makers on YouTube!

I hope you'll sign up to watch this upcoming Tech & Learning webinar with Cassi Caputo from Google's Education team and yours truly. Get registered here . Topic: Huntsville Independent School District helps close the digital divide with Google Chromebooks and Apps Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:00 pm Central Daylight Time (Chicago, GMT-05:00) Pictured Above: Jessica Moore with some of her students

Since my first year as a teacher in 1997 I've been deeply interested in how to get students interested in learning what I wanted and needed them to learn. Lately I learned what I was striving for had a name that has become quite the buzz word in education; I wanted students to become ENGAGED. Eventually I developed a knack for understanding what choices left to my students would most likely lead to this state. Each educational book I read, and really each terrible staff development session I attended, helped me refine my understanding of exactly how to design engaging lessons and staff development events.  I want to help you learn to do the same, and to that end, I'm developing a new 3 1/2 day academy to help teachers learn how to get human nature working with them instead of against them. If you want to know more or sign up to get information, please visit http://www.EngageMeAcademy.org   Feel free to download this image, print it out, and use it however you want. There will b

I've always wanted to know more about the Data Validation setting in Google Forms, and yesterday, thanks to a participant question and a Google search, I learned how to make sure phone numbers in forms are entered in a consistent format, in this case, ###-###-####.  Here's how . . . Set up your "Phone Number" question in a form, then choose the Data Validation setting and Regular Expression. Insert the pattern below into the box and type your directions to the right. Data Validation String for American Phone Numbers: ^[2-9]\d{2}-\d{3}-\d{4}$ If not being able to make sure your data is consistent in a Google Form has always bugged you too, well, now you know how to fix it! Wrong . . . Wrong . . . Right!