I’ve been a Granna for 6 1/2 weeks now. I’ve had the privilege to keep my new grandson while my daughter works a few times already. I look at him and I see his mother’s nose, which is also my nose. This caught me by surprise- to see myself in my grandson. As a mother of adult children, I’ve gone through those steps of seeing the physical attributes of myself in my girls. I’ve also seen my personality and emotions in my children. I remember telling someone one time that I knew I had some good traits but the ones that stand out in my children are the ones I wish I hadn’t passed on! …

Meeting the Alexa Education Team

Earlier this month I had the delightful opportunity to virtually meet Marissa Mierow and Kate Trinh of the Alexa Education Team. As most of my readers know, I have been speaking about the potential that voice assistants could have on education for several years now. To have the opportunity to chat with Marissa and Kate was like a professional Christmas day! We chatted on many things regarding Alexa and learning, and through it all their excitement for the possibilities of using Alexa for educational purposes was evident in the way they spoke! …

2020–2021 Educator,

Sweet teacher…I’ve been seeing you prepping for school. I’ve watched you post your socially distanced classroom without all the cushy flexible seating that you loved having. I’ve seen you but your masks and put them in baggies for daily use. I’ve seen you think about the strategies needed for face to face instruction that can still remain relational. Well done.

I would also suggest that you go ahead and adapt your school’s choice of a learning management system- whether its Canvas, Google Classroom, or something else. Now is the time to push daily instruction through your LMS so your students can see how you will utilize it. Now is the time to introduce new tech tools that could possibly be used in a synchronous or asynchronous environment as well. Help your students become tech savvy now so that the learning curve isn’t so great if faced with a “March 2020” again. Now is the time to plan ahead. For yourself and your students. If you forget to publish something in your LMS when they are in front of you it’s far less of a big deal than if everyone is virtual. …

Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, I see you realizing people have upped their usage of using voice assistants for learning- you are recognizing it, blogging about it, and creating interesting dialogue opportunities. COVID-19 will change education forward. I challenge you to create voice opportunities for educational purposes in the future! Hear my request below:

• Is now the time for districts to be considering voice assistants for educational purposes? There has never been a time in recent history where school systems have had to adjust, adapt, and acknowledge their weaknesses as they have right now. COVID-19 thrust the concept of future education into a realm that many districts were not prepared for. Now is the time for districts to be considering many different innovative ways to meet student needs in low cost, no cost solutions that can adjust to possible “at home” learning.
• In a time where low touch/no touch is valued, are IT departments truly considering all the options that might best meet needs? It is fair to say that most districts have said a hard “no” to the use of voice assistants in the classroom environment due to both valid and invalid reasons. Are IT departments continuing to critically consider voice as an option to meet needs forward based on the current requirements for the way schools must educate students safely? Could voice have an immediate impact on connectivity of students to information in a way that creates less concern for spreading viruses? I believe the answer is yes! Many school systems are facing major budget cuts and will need to truly look for innovative opportunities that have the highest impact per student because of funding. Systems would be remiss in not considering placing a $30–60 device in a classroom that connects all students to outside information via voice interface instead at this point and time. …

It has been a while since I have taken part in a Twitter chat but last night I found myself with some time and joined the #Edtechchat. It has always been one of my favorite chats because topics always seemed very relevant to my previous roles in education.

I found myself becoming very involved in the discussion on “The Future of Edtech Budgets.” The questions were good ones and as a former K12 instructional technologist, I find myself worried about the future of edtech in schools right now. My last post explains some of those reasons.

As my friend Alex Podchaski pointed out in this tweet “Unfortunately, Forbes, NYT, and many media outlets are already calling this a failure of edtech because of the lack of planning in so many districts — they fail to see that it wasn’t the tech that failed but the policies governing its use #edtechchat.” It saddens me to see a blanket statement like these from well known media sources because I do know there were many schools across the country that were prepared and responded well to the quick changes needed. But, that statement is also correct on many levels. There are districts across the country that are still teaching from a 20th century approach and could not adjust to the needs of online teaching. Which led to these two twitter posts by me that seem to still be resonating with…

I’m convinced that education should never be the same as it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. I also know that educators around the world feel the same. The magnitude of change that happened for students and teachers in the last few months is like no other in the history of modern education. Some of it was good change, some of it was bad change, but all of it was an industry striving to do what they have been called, empowered, and blessed to do…instruct others. As I said in a previous blog post, most educators in today’s classrooms were not trained to be online teachers. …

Yesterday while painting in the blistering hot of the middle of nowhere Alabama, I found myself thinking about the unrest in my country right now. I found myself thinking about the privilege I’ve experienced in my life- growing up in a family with a mother and father present and engaged, being taught to see life through a gospel perspective, never being hungry, never fearing the neighborhood I lived in, not having to buy my own first car, not having to pay for college. Some of that is just due to privilege that I often call “blessings” but I know it is also weaved into white privilege and that’s the part that is hard for me to understand and grasp. White privilege doesn’t mean my life hasn’t been hard at times, it means my life hasn’t been hard because of the color of my skin. …