I was on Google Chat last night with Alec. One of the topics of our conversation was edupunk. We’re both attracted to some of the ideas that have coalesced around edupunk since its naming by Jim Groom and summation and further articulation by Leslie Madsen Brooks. Alec mentioned the ideals of being anti-authority [...]

Within the little educational technology corner of the interweb where I hang out, this has to be the fastest spreading meme/idea I have yet seen. I think that, like the mycelium of a fungus, edupunk has been growing below the surface of the conversation for a while. The conditions have recently become right for it [...]

Jennifer Jones wrote yesterday regarding her daughter’s use of books as a source of information. It reminded me of a story about my daughter at the Calgary Zoo. Stick with me – it is relevant.


(photo by D’Arcy Norman – http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/7823971/

The Calgary Zoo is an amazing place. All [...]

I’ve been playing with Google Sites for a couple of days, and I noticed that one of the items that can be inserted into a page is a spreadsheet form. After a little playing around, I was successful. Here’s a screencast to explain how to embed a spreadsheet form into a Google Site [...]

Jotspot was a hosted wiki service, similar to wikispaces or pbwiki or wetpaint, that was purchased by Google in October of 2006. There was some anticipation of a Google wiki service which finally appeared rebranded as Google Sites a few months ago as part of the Google Apps suite. Google just announced that they [...]

I’m very lucky to work in a high school in which the principal has seen a need to have an educational technologist in the building. I’ve had the position for a couple of years and I’ve worked very closely with a couple of teachers, but I’d had problems trying to extend beyond them. I tried [...]

I mentioned Dean Shareski’s presentation on sharing in the last post as one of my presentation highlights at the TLt 2008 conference. Not only has he put the presentation slides online, he also recorded the narration (he didn’t have a recorder at the conference) to accompany the slides. Thanks, Dean, for sharing this great presentation: [...]

I’ve been reading some of the great reflections on TLt from others (Rick, D’Arcy, Jen, Alec, Dean and Dean again – gosh he’s prolific). After a couple of days for my brain to gear down from the conference buzz, a few presentations and themes stand out:

The power [...]

Every once in a while, someone asks me why I blog. My answer is that if I don’t, my head will explode. TLt summit 2008 just ended this afternoon and I am in need of some decompression after all that mental stimulation.

TLt feels like it has been the best conference I have ever [...]

It started with a small amount of mold on a window sill in The Boy’s room.

The Boy has mild asthma so even a small amount of mold on his window sill is a bad thing. There was to be no discussion on the matter – the window, sill and all, needed to go.

Looking [...]