Here are my top 10 2008 K12 Online Conference podcasts for busy principals and superintendents (in no particular order). These are the K12 Online presentations that I think are most likely to interest, educate, and entertain administrators as well as make them think!

hree years, 20+ million online views, and many, many face-to-face showings later, the Did You Know? (Shift Happens) video still is going strong. Just this week it was mentioned in TIME magazine. Karl Fisch and I continue to get a bazillion e-mail messages about it…

Here are my top 20 TED Talks podcasts for busy principals and superintendents (in no particular order). These are the TED presentations that I think are most likely to interest, educate, and entertain administrators as well as make them think!

Read excerpts from this innovative guide, in which teachers share their stories, successful practices, and vivid examples of their students' creative and expository writing from online and multimedia projects such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, electronic poetry, and more.

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A companion site to the book The Digital Writing Workshop, this network empowers teachers as they learn how to teach digital writing.

I was fortunate enough to engage with a Michigan colleague who, as a part of her master’s program, is doing an inquiry project on establishing her own digital writing workshop. She had picked up my book (thanks!) and then had some questions for me, specifically related to her teaching context. With her permission, I share excerpts of our email conversation here in hopes that it may be useful for some of you attempting to establish digital writing workshops in your own classrooms and schools.

There are some educational "truths" that we can't change, even if we wanted to. These educational technology resources, annoyances, and condiions are here to stay despite some educators denial, resistance and fast grip on the status quo. The sooner educators, especially tech directors and administrators, accept that these things are a permanent part of the educational landscape, the sooner attention will be paid to using them positively and productively.

This is just more evidence on how what our children watch can influence them. There is so much violence and profanity on television now that I think our children are desensitized to it. They think it is so cool to do these kinds of things. Even worse, many of these shows are showing that the “bad guy” gets away with it.

I thought about these tips and how I could apply this in the classroom. Simple steps like this can help the student and the teacher from being stressed out. Let’s face it, sometimes chaos happens but the little routines we have bring some sanity to our lives. The tips suggested are in bold italics and my comments follow the tip. I hope these tips help the class be more successful on a daily basis.

Digging Back in Time

From homestead structures of the early 1900s to stone tools from the Paleoindian Period (thousands of years ago), Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve has a rich and deep history of human presence.

How much can you spoon feed other teachers? Do you write their lesson plans for them? Do you keep nagging and begging for participation? How do you find collaboration partners who are equally invested in a project? How do you motivate your teachers at your school to be those invested collaboration partners for others?