The Soulful Nature of Change

If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow – John Dewey   Over the past month, I have weeded (discarded) approximately 4,000 outdated, older books from our library’s collection as part of current renovation efforts to create an updated, modernized, technology-rich environment for our students at...

Reflections of an Ish-ful Educator

Cathy Collins In Peter Reynold’s book, “Ish,” a creative spirit learns that thinking “ish-ly” is far more important than “getting it right.” Hearing Reynolds reinforce that important message in his Ted-ish talk at this year’s MassCUE Conference caused me to reflect on my own path toward becoming an “Ish-ful” educator....

The Power of One

“I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.” ― Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One When I was younger I read the book The Power...

Tales of a Tech Gypsy – Design Thinking Through Technology

This year’s ACTEM Conference in Augusta, Maine, “Rebooted and Reimagined,” included many excellent sessions on a wide range of informative technology topics, but the session that I found by far to be the most interesting was Dan Ryder’s “Design Thinking Through Technology” workshop. Dan is a super cool human being...

Opening Doors & Hallways

I was asked recently to pull together thoughts as to why I am so passionate about studying technology. I am a digital native, though at my age someone might confuse me for a digital immigrant. I learned math facts playing Math Blaster on my IBM computer (which was a HUGE box)....

Are Your Students Research Ready?

Our students need to be ready to find, evaluate, manage, and use information in a whole new way. The avalanche of information and misinformation in a simple Google search on any given topic is overwhelming to all researchers. According to SINTEF, 90% of the world’s data (good or bad) has...

Featured Speaker Dr. Reshan Richards

Next month, I have the honor of being a ‘Featured Speaker’ at the 2014 MassCUE/M.A.S.S. Tech conference. I’ll be doing one session each day. My session on Tuesday is titled Leading Online: Leading the Learning, Leading by Learning. Following a similar format to other presentations my co-author, Steve Valentine, and...

New School Year!

A new school year is filled with excitement, a fresh start, new outfits, school supplies, and new experiences. Teachers have high hopes that their students will enter with a thirst to learn and teachers desire to quench that thirst through their instruction. However, teaching isn’t as much about the content...

Through the Eyes of a Child- A New Lens

I remember sitting in my elementary school listening to what my classmates wanted to be when they grew up. Popular choices were an astronaut, a sports player, a nurse, doctor, or teacher. Did you ever hear an eight year old say, “When I grow up I want to be a...

Tales of a Tech Gypsy – Slippery Slopes

“Educational change is not constrained by lack of technology but a lack of sociological imagination.” Diana Rhoten As a new school year begins, and our high school library undergoes a radical transformation in which outdated books are stripped from shelves and digital workstations are added, I find myself pausing to...

Tales of a Tech Gypsy – AASL Intellectual Freedom Award

This is my first blog post in “OnCUE,” and I’m happy to begin this process of sharing ideas about all things tech, library and education-related, on behalf of MassCUE. On this 24th of June and first day of summer vacation for the Sharon district, I have been frantically scrambling to...

Providing a MassCUE Online Course

MassCUE offered me the opportunity this past winter to offer an online professional development course through their site. Although I had offered online and asynchronous courses before through Moodle, this proposal involved learning and utilizing the Edmodo interface to build and deliver the course. Additionally, through this experience I was...