"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
Last week, my Merrimack students were each exploring a different digital tool and reporting on it in their blogs. You can find their blogs here. Some I was familiar with, like Trell0, Flipboard, Slack and Canvas. Others were new to me, including Genially, Adobe Spark, and Google Keep. Between the posts and the comments, we… Read more Interesting Week on Digital Tools
Last year, I was asked to develop a new course for a new Certificate in Catholic School Leadership. My course is the middle course in a three-course program, and the pilot group started my course this week. Given that the course focuses on technology, communication, and school improvement, I decided to have my students blog… Read more New Class New Perspectives
This coming Friday, I will be in Boston to attend the Northeastern College of Professional Studies 2018 Faculty Development Conference. I have been teaching at Northeastern for 3 years, and enjoy both the classes and the progressive approach to education that is Northeastern. Given that I live 560 miles south of the campus, I usually… Read more Upcoming Conference
My last post noted that I had started Siva Vaidhyanathan’s new book, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and the Director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. A former professional journalist, he has published five previous books… Read more Social Media Resistance is Futile
My course – Social Media and Beyond (EDU-6333) for Northeastern University has just finished its first week. I enjoy this course because of the added engagement through social media…primarily Twitter. Only 10 students this term (I am used to double that) – and over the first week, they did well, sending 72 tweets to the… Read more The Social Media Question Mark
I made some minor changes to my posted teaching philosophy two years ago and last year…but it really had not been updated since 2014…and as we all know, the world of 2018 is markedly different from the world of 2014. The web now is not as friendly as it once was, and “truth” now carries… Read more Updating My Teaching Philosophy
I always tell my students this…and some may even believe it – but one reason I love teaching in this digital age is that being a teacher is less about expertise as it is about facilitating learning…and that includes my own learning. So I tell my students that I learn as much from them as… Read more The Next Disruption
I am usually all over the annual Meeker State of the Internet report…but thanks to family visits and travel in May and June, I did not get around to perusing her 291 slides (down from 355 last year) until today. And as my Northeastern class is exploring blogging, it seemed a good time for me… Read more Meeker Report 7 Weeks Later
My wife and I had lunch today with my partner from VCU days – Bud Deihl and his wife, Susan. One of the things that came up in our conversation was the negativism that seems rampant today. Bud asked if I had anything optimistic to bring to the conversation. It was an interesting question, because… Read more An Optimist in a Pessimist World
Sometimes Facebook gives you unexpected bad news. Such was the case last week when I saw the obituary for an old shipmate, Steve Coleman. I was lucky to serve with (and teach with) Steve at my first teaching job, Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI. Steve graduated from Annapolis two years before I did, and… Read more The Passing of a Shipmate