geek.teacher

I was featured in yet another TeacherCast. I guess I really do sound like that. We talked about the past, present, and future of the Edcamp movement.

Chris McGee has made the most comprehensive checklist for organizers of an Edcamp that I’ve ever seen.

I did a podcast with TeacherCast. We talked about iPads. Do I really sound like that?

I had a second grade class I had in the lab today.

This week I have a metric crapload* of classes coming to the computer lab to do an online assessment for the Symphony Math program. On the scale of online assessments I’ve seen over the past 14 months since I started as a Technology Specialist, I award it the highest praise yet: it’s quick. It takes about 20 minutes.

Before the students started in the assessment, their teacher gave some of the standard boilerplate about trying their best to show off what they really know. She told them to take their time answering each question to make sure they got it right.

Diligent students being diligent students, they did.

Here’s the interesting part, though: at one point in the assessment, students receive the instructions to answer the following questions as quick as you can.

This, of course, provides a fascinating bit of cognitive dissonance to watch play out. Fully 1/4 of the class raised their hand when they got to that point to clarify the teacher’s expectations of them.

Is it wrong that this really worries me?

*as opposed to an imperial crapload, naturally