Africa’s plastic bag ban seems to be working, and a STEM challenge idea

My wife and I were fortunate to travel to Africa this past summer. Our itinerary included Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. We were notified by most of the listed countries when we applied for tourist visas that we were not to bring plastic bags into the...

What Happened to the Potential of Social Media in Education?

Dean Shareski posted this to Twitter (SM = Social Media): Read the thread of comments (it’s worth a minute or 2) by following the link. I’ve written a bit about this before, and ironically that post from 8 years ago also involved Dean (Who’da...

Class dynamics and culture are really time consuming AND really worth every minute!

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about assuming students have collaboration skills and building class culture. These vital learning pieces were greatly deemphasized and cut (even ridiculed as a waste of time) during the last 15 years or so of school “reform.” I...

Why should education leaders embrace digital technologies in their schools?

Why should education leaders embrace digital technologies in their schools?  1) If you are in a state that adopted the “Common Core State Standards” (CCSS) you really don’t have a choice. There are many (yes many) English Language Arts standards...