Social Security Fairness Act passed

This was a shocker to read today: “Everyone knows a teacher, firefighter, law enforcement officer, nurse or public worker who’s paid into Social Security year after year, only to have their payments curbed by the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset when they retire. Now, …

Breaking News: TxASCD Closes Its Doors #EduSky #Texas

A breaking news announcement from Texas ASCD organization: December 18, 2024 Dear Texas ASCD Community, After 77 years of dedicated support and service to educators across our great state, Texas ASCD will officially close its doors on December 31, 2024. We do so with much gratitude to all of our …

Done with Teaching

Someone on Facebook wrote: I think I am done teaching, any suggestions on a good career change for teachers? What are the teachers who left teaching doing now? That made me wonder, “Have you asked an AI for help?” So I asked on their behalf and got this: Sure, I understand how overwhelming it can …

20 #AI School Scenarios: Scary or Not?

What are some of the problems with AI in schools? How would you resolve them? The Student’s Warning: A high school student warns you, a school board member, about the potential negative impacts of AI chatbots on student writing. Will you take action to address these concerns, or will you …

3-2-1 Brain Science and Effective Teaching

Interesting article, What Brain Science Says about Teaching Teens via EdSurge, on teenage brains. More details on effective teaching appear afterwards. Here’s an AI generated 3-2-1 summary: Summary of Key Ideas from the Article 3 Facts: Adolescent Brain Development: The article highlights that the …

An AI in K12 Panel

Someone asked if I might consider serving on a panel discussing AI in K12 education. It occurred to me to ask ChatGPT 4o for a panel script. Since the result was a bit overly positive, I had to add an oppositional perspective to original output. I wanted to include topics like fears of AI in …

MyNotes: Writing by Hand

The verdict is in…again? it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type. That’s a good thing for our brains. Not so much for the edtech industry which counts on selling devices to schools. My Notes Writing by hand…improves memory and recall of words, …

SAnews: Alamo Colleges Offer Bachelor Degrees

Great announcement: Exciting news! You will soon be able to earn your Bachelor’s degree at any of the five colleges in the Alamo Colleges District. These programs are tailored to meet the demands of growing industries such as nursing, operations management, cybersecurity, and cloud computing. …

Survivor's Guilt: How Do You Handle Coworkers' Layoffs?

In education, I’ve noticed how important is for people to always be upbeat and positive. It’s a bit of a strain having to endure people doing their best to avoid losing it. If something bad happens, it’s important to acknowledge it. “Big” Reasons for Layoffs. What do …

UNESCO released a 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report

UNESCO released a 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report. As you might suspect, the report makes these claims. The Fading Attraction of EdTech I had a laugh (then a cry) about this image: Image above via Larry Cuban on Technology in Schools as cited by Dr. Gary Ackerman (@garyackerman@qoto.org) …

Ruthlessly Evaluate Every Classroom Tech Tool

I love the title of this article by Jessica Grose: Every Tech Tool in the Classroom Should Be Ruthlessly Evaluated It makes me think of a gardener ruthlessly pruning roses in a garden, pulling out weeds, making space for growing things. Ok, that’s the extent of my gardening knowledge. …

The Budgetary Cliff: 2025

This has to be the scariest article ever…what will the impact be on all those professional learning facilitators, conferences, and more as the education budgets for countless districts implodes? How far will the shockwave reach as schools reduce in force? How will teachers caught in the mushroom …

Inflammation and Long-Term Memory Connection

When your students say, learning hurts their brain, believe them… New research reveals that the process of remembering something long-term comes at a cost – specifically, inflammation in the brain and DNA damage in nerve cells, as the memories get ‘fused’ into neurons and stored. But …

Moving Files Around

Interested in moving large files from one device to another? I know I was after setting up an obsolete Win10 machine with Linux Mint to give it new life. One of the things I want to do is quickly move files from one device to another. While I had experimented with Syncthing, I had failed utterly …

Converting RSS Feed to OPML with Claude.ai

Perhaps, I’m easily amazed at how AI makes hard things easy. I stumbled across a micro.blog RSS feed file earlier this morning, saved it to my phone, then, maybe, went back to sleep. Later this morning, I tried to import the micro.blog RSS file into Feedbro, a fantastic browser-based RSS feed …

Burn It Down. Goodbye, Windows 10

Have a Windows 10 device in your life? Then it may be time to look for that exit strategy. Running a Surface Book laptop, I realized that I didn’t want to mess with Windows 10 craziness. So, I decided to trade it in for GNU/Linux machine. Of course, I decided that before finding out that the …

Changing Image Creation Dates #TechTips #ImageModification

“How do you change the time a screenshot was created?” asked a friend yesterday. What a curious question, I thought. “What’s up?” I asked? So, she explained the situation that required a file that she generated after a deadline to have a certain date and time. …

What Is Valued at Work vs What Matters

The things bad managers value in their employees? Technical skill Lack of complaints about stupid ideas managers foist on staff in their bid to be relevant, innovative, responsive to the market Obedience Initiative aligned to organization goals, but not too much Patience while company takes forever …

What To Do: Chronic School Absenteeism

What is high-impact tutoring? Could it involve more human relationships and connections, more personalized learning? …preliminary research released earlier this month found that high-impact tutoring could increase attendance. A study by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford …

MyNotes: Pew Research on Teaching

Yep. Accurate. More than half (52%) of educators tell Pew Research Center that “they would not advise a young person starting out today to become a teacher,” according to a survey of more than 2,500 educators conducted in the fall of 2023. Read more

MyNotes: Teacher Pay Incentives Research

…researchers studied what happened in…Dallas, Texas, – when teachers were offered significant pay hikes, ranging from $6,000 to $18,000 a year, to take hard-to-fill jobs. In Dallas, the incentives lured excellent teachers to high-poverty schools. Student performance subsequently skyrocketed so much …

3-2-1: School Shootings and Licensed To Carry

Are you licensed to carry? I often reflect that it’s better to stay home and not go out given the Wild West scenario. But you know what? The Wild West wasn’t this crazy. Schoolhouses were respected. After Sandy Hook, and several other school shootings, it became evident that …

Systematic Disconfirmation: Smartphones in Schools

This is an AI-generated post that applies the process of systematic disconfirmation to smartphones in schools. Mainly, the claim that smartphones enhance rather than detract from learning in the classroom. Applying Systematic Disconfirmation to Smartphone Bans in Schools Identify: Determine the …

3-2-1: SEL and Critical Race Theory (CRT)

Anyone who watched a teacher work through the pandemic, facilitating remote learning, knows how important teacher-student relationships are. There are people out there, though, who think kids are being indoctrinated at school. Unfortunately, some see SEL as a problem: “What’s clear is that there is …

Pencil and Paper...Rules?

Earlier this week, I had a chance to revisit my thoughts on educational technology in the classroom. “We need to get back to pen and paper,” said a colleague today. The statement was a reflection of some of the conversations going on at the State level. A part of me cringed a bit to hear …