My district started to move over the Canvas LMS last year and we are really embracing it this year. I really like the LMS overall, it has power, customization, and flexibility on how to do almost anything that you could want. As part of that flexibility and customization, you can set your course’s homepage to…
With the school year over, I now have a lot of additional time to work on some projects that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. Over the past few months, I’ve felt a little out of control when it comes to getting things done. The end of the school year is particularly…
I am in my 9th year of teaching and I’ve had two very different teaching experiences that greatly influence the ways that I do things in my current classroom. My first teaching job was at an online charter school. I taught my students 100% through video, text, images, and live webcasts. From a creative point…
I recently got around to updating my computer to the newest version of MacOS, Mojave. The feature that I was most looking forward to was dark mode and other than that, I didn’t really take note of anything important. That is until I miss clicked a keyboard shortcut and found a new way to record…
I mentioned in my last post that I really wanted to start to create things this year. As part of that I thought that I would share some of the tools that I use to create things for myself and my classroom. While I really like free tools, sometimes paid options are just better. I…
I’m an avid listener of podcasts (and I even make one with my wife) and one of my favorite shows, Cortex, had its annual Yearly Themes episode. I’ve always enjoyed these episodes in particular because I like hearing about how different people work and what drives their focus. Both of the hosts are self-employed and…
I’ve been a big fan of Camtasia for several years now. I even teach three online courses on it. They recently released a new version that has a few bells and whistles beyond the previous versions. You can see all of the updates here, but I’m going to focus on some of the ones that…
A while ago I did a 2017 reflection to see how I stacked up to the goals I set for myself. I’m not big on New Years Resolutions because they often fail and the New Year is an arbitrary date. I haven’t been happy with my progress (or lack thereof) for my goals this year…
I’m attending the annual PETE&C conference right now, as I have for the past seven years. Professionally, I love getting to gather with like-minded teachers and admin and exchanging ideas and learning new things, but I also hate leaving my kids. I also hate to think what my 5 classes of 6-8th graders are up…
I’ve been using Google in the classroom for about four years now and I constantly find myself helping other teachers in my building with all of the different pieces of Google in education. One of the things that comes up the most often is organization. By default, I don’t think Google does a great job…
