A tribute to Grandfather Smith, Great-uncle Gene, and other heroes

I usually write about learning and in a way, this post is no different. As a child, I learned a lot about “being a Smith” from my grandfather. He sat me on his lap and said stuff like, “Smiths are hardworking”, or “Smiths are stubborn,” or “Smiths are honest.” Simple things [...]

Professional Development Meme

About a week or so ago, I came across a “Professional Development Meme” on Clif Mims’s blog.  The directions for this meme are below.
Directions
Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up [...]

“School is profoundly broken”: Roger Schank’s visit to BYU

On Monday and Tuesday, Roger Schank visited BYU and gave several presentations. I was able to attend three of them. I have attempted to make sense of my notes for each presentation. Dr. Schank would be the first to point out that the lecture I heard is different from the one he [...]

Completing the comment challenge

This is the last day of the comment challenge (for me anyways, the real last day was yesterday).  I’m glad that I participated in the challenge because I gained confidence.  I’m no longer feel too scared or too shy to leave a comment on a post I find interested.  Also, I found some blogs and [...]

Transferring knowledge gained in the comment challenge to the classroom

What lessons did you learn about what it means to “speak up” through comments that is applicable to working with students? What did you learn about how to deal with things like dissent, asking questions, communication, etc. through this process that might influence your teaching practices, either on or off-line?
Completing comment challenges required active participation.  [...]

Comment Challenge 29

Comment challenge 29 is to write a commenting guide for students. I would want to involve my students in the process of creating their own commenting guide, one that they could with their future students. The collaborative tool that I would use for this is Google Docs (because most of my students won’t [...]

Blog commenting strategy – Comment Challenge 28

I currently have no blog commenting strategy. While participating in the comment challenge, I tried to complete the challenges given and attempted to comment more often on the blogs I regularly follow. That was it. I read Caroline Middlebrook’s post on blog commenting strategy and can see how having a commenting strategy [...]

Personal Branding — comment challenge 27

This challenge comes at an interesting time for me, since I am moving to Virginia in about five weeks and am in the beginning stages of a job search.  This challenge made me think about the quality and quantity of information about me available to potential employers via the Internet.
To examine the quality of information, [...]