This week presents a culmination of many realities for me this school year:

I’m taking lead on my school district’s improvement plan for the first time. I’m busy coordinating funding and professional development for our district-wdie STEM programs for next year. I’ve finally admitted that without actually writing anything, it’s…

This coming Tuesday, May 31st, I’ll be working with some English 11 students about turning written memoirs into digital stories. The teacher has given me carte blanche to introduce students to a wide range of media and forms for turning a written work into a 3-5 minute digital narrative. Needless …

I’m supposed to be an educational technology cheerleader for my school district. I’m supposed to champion the unrestrained exploration and adaptation of technology in all areas of K-12 learning. I’m supposed to network with individuals that have an insatiable curiosity and enthusiasm for educational technology in all of its many …

 

Providing hands-on challenges and tasks in History classes can be difficult; sure, economic simulations, debates,  and reenactments of significant events can all “juice” up a lesson or unit, but as a Social Studies minor, I encountered a lot more discussion and lecture-based History courses that I’d like to admit. …

For many years I protested that I had no clear need to attend the annual International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference. From the social media streams and vendor receptions, it has the appearance of an ostentatious event focused on selling the latest and greatest gadgets, apps, and …

I have no problem putting myself in front of a camera and acting, performing, “hamming it up”, or delivering other recorded performance. It seems many Millennials are comfortable being YouTubers as well, putting themselves in front of the camera for school work, personal projects, or just sharing thoughts.

However, I’ve …

My “Monday on a Wednesday” mood captured and immortalized as a GIF.

This animated GIF brought to you courtesy of phhhoto. It’s been an interesting new social space/app for creating and sharing animated GIFs. There’s a lot of really creative art there, and I hope the community that continues …

How do you take the time to slow down, and catch your breath in the middle of a busy school year? Do you carve out your own “creative time?” Do you blog? Do you relax by the fire with a mug of something warm and a good book? Do you …

I’ve been known to GIF my day on special occasions. Alan Levine even created an honorary #ds106 assignment in my name for the practice. And in honor of the the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, I thought I’d take a day to share what I’m grateful …

I’ve been blogging every weekday in November in an homage to the now defunct NaBloPoMo. Started in 2006, the “National Blog Post Month” movement was a response to the “National Novel Writing Month” event, in which writers across the web dedicate themselves to writing for sustained periods …

As if my summer weren’t already busy enough with conferences, curriculum planning, implementation of new software systems, prepping new iPads for classrooms, pulling off a minor ed tech conference, teaching CEP 810 for MSU, and squeezing in some family time; I went ahead and threw myself head first …

I’m not one to usually struggle with tech tools; new updates to iMovie set me back a day or two, animated GIFs were quite easy with the proper apps, but Vine is something I struggled with for quite some time. I would create a 6 second clip, realize I …

I’ve written about speeding up my work day in the past. I even took the time to turn it into a rather simplistic ds106 video assignment. For me, altering the speed of a video clip feels like a cheap emotional trick (not that I’m not above easy emotional manipulation).…

It’s no secret that I’m openly in love with the anti-MOOC that is #ds106. It’s also no secret that my wife makes amazing digital art…when she actually has time to create. Last summer she created a 60-second narrative of her day, capturing small moments with her phone’s video …

Last week I flew to Madison, Wisconsin from South Bend, Indiana. There was a short layover in Chicago, and the entire trip was supposed to take a little more than 3 hours. It turns out, a small fire on a plane is good enough cause to ground it (thankfully) and …

I haven’t blogged about anything music-related since November of 2012. That’s criminal. Especially considering the last one was a lazy post with several different examples of teachers parodying Rebecca Black’s “Friday”. No I will not link to it, you can go search for it if you like. I’m going to …

This week in DS106 we’re supposed to be creating audio and design assignment based around three particular episodes from the famous series. I choose to create an assignment around none of them, because I like to rock the boat in seemingly harmless and inconsequential ways like that. We all …

It’s the end of the school year, end of term work is piling up on your desk and inbox,  it makes more sense to count the remainder of the instructional time you have with students in hours rather than days, and you feel like if a panic button magically appeared …

Let’s keep this relatively short and simple shall we? I’ve spent just a month shy of 10 years in education, and I feel as though some days I know just about as much as I did on day one in the teaching field. I’m not going to call it an …

For regular readers of my blog, you may have already guessed that the dancing mushrooms above can only mean one thing….I’m about to succumb to another intensive 5 weeks of DS106, the best digital storytelling course in this universe, although I’m told it will soon be available in many of …

It’s April 12th! It’s my Birthday! What better way to celebrate than a special edition of “My Animated GIF Day“! Come back throughout the day for updates with new GIFs…if you’re into that sort of thing

 

5:56 am
I’ve been up for about 30 minutes or so. …

My three year old son stole my wife’s iPad yesterday and took more than four dozen photos before we knew what was happening. I’m not sure what he was taking pictures of, but I created an animated gif from the images that showed up in my Photostream this morning. It’s …

I have just under 70 blog posts on my site dedicated to my work for DS106, the original anti-MOOC course that encourages all participants to “Make art!” Since this week in #etmooc we’ve been challenged to attempt some digital storytelling through various means (and I fully intend to create …

I’ve had 3 snow days so far this week. That means I’ve had plenty of time to answer lots of emails, work on non mission-critical projects that have been piling up, have a bunch of fun with some media and digital storytelling, and catch up on some good old fashioned …

Last week I introduced myself to the #ETMOOC course with a rather whimsical poster of me enjoying a snack and a few tid bits of information. This week? I thought I’d tackle a few of the thoughts and ideas that came out of the Elluminate Live session last night. …

I let myself get caught up with several of the new Google+ Communities over Christmas break. While I’ve mostly been seeing a lot of cross-posting by some of the bigger “ed tech” heavy-weights spamming opportunities and interesting articles across several communities (mostly good mind you), there have been a few …

This post is long overdue, as I finished What Video Games have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy by James Paul Gee more than a month ago, along with the other members of Book Club 106. It was a monumental achievement for me personally as I hadn’t ever …