iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

I’ve been teaching college English for more than 30 years. Four years ago, I stopped putting grades on written work, and it has transformed my teaching and my students’ learning. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

It’s a pretty safe bet that most teachers will be doing some form of online teaching in the coming year. Maybe you’ll do it full-time, maybe it will be some kind of hybrid model, but one thing is for sure: This time around you won’t be dropped into it without warning.

So with this chance to take a breath and do more thoughtful, intentional planning, the next question is What do we do differently? What shifts do we need to make in our face-to-face teaching practices to make the most of online learning?

Free Tools from Leading Education Organizations to help students learn through the COVID-19 Crisis

Wide Open School is a free collection of the best online learning experiences for kids curated by the editors at Common Sense. There is so much good happening, and we are here to gather great stuff and organize it so teachers and families can easily find it and plan each day. "

AI is already here. And our students need to be ready. By learning to create with AI, today’s students will change the world in ways we can’t yet imagine. Teachers are the most important link to developing the new generation of AI-savvy learners, workers and leaders. Are you ready to help students create the kind of AI-enabled world we will all want to live in?

If you’ve opened this post hoping to read something brand-new, you might be disappointed. There will be no fancy bells or whistles here.

That’s because a lot of the strategies we’re going to talk about are things you’ve already done; some teachers have probably been doing them for decades. You just might not have known exactly why they worked or how to harness them in the most optimal way.

That’s what cognitive scientists have been doing, trying to pinpoint exactly which activities work best for storing concepts in long-term memory. Over the past few years, we’ve been following their progress: In our 2015 study of the book Make it Stick, we first talked about the concepts of retrieval practice, spaced practice, and interleaving. These concepts were also addressed in the 2016 post Six Powerful Learning Strategies You Must Share with Students, and in 2017, where I made a strong push again for using more retrieval practice in our teaching.

Since the release of Apple’s iPad, there’s been an ongoing debate about whether or not the device should be used in schools to teach kids. Both sides of the argument were explored on The Verge, with one teacher stating that the iPad has helped him save time in grading, returning papers, and printing lesson documents. While another teacher said that while she has been able to use the iPad in the classroom to engage her students, it can also come with a little backlash: “Once they’re used to using the iPad, it’s more difficult to engage them in activities that don’t include a digital component.”

Teachers can’t seem to agree when it comes to the real effect of the iPad in classrooms. In spite of this, it can’t be denied that the iPad has made a positive impact when it comes to educating kids. I’d argue that if educators knew the proper purpose of iPads (in the classroom), and have a good system of managing student behaviour, iPads can indeed be very effective in the classroom.

If you can get past the distraction of cute animal videos, video game highlights, and other nonsense, you can find excellent educational videos on YouTube. But even then it's not enough to just share the video with your students either in your classroom or online. When sharing videos with students in an online format, add some questions for them to answer or ideas for them to consider as they watch. Here are five tools that are good for doing that.

We all feel anxious sometimes. Maybe it is going into a new situation such as starting a new job, or having to have a difficult conversation. The feeling of nervousness and anxiousness is completely normal, and an evolutionary necessity. However, for some people, like me, that feeling of anxiousness never goes away. You live with it day in, day out, and it can have quite a detrimental effect on your life and mental health.

I was diagnosed with social and general anxiety disorder about eight years ago, five years into my teaching career. Prior to this I thought that I was a little shy and a worrier, but when this was coupled with depressive episodes and insomnia, “I will not let these issues prevent me from doing what I love.”my health took a dramatic down-turn. I felt that even the smallest mistake was the end of the world and that everyone was judging me as inadequate and incapable, not just as a teacher, but also as a human being. I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried at having to face and interact with people the next day. I would stay awake all night trying to get everything perfect, from the lessons I would be teaching to the way that I would dress. I would run through conversations in my head, planning what I would say in advance so that I wouldn’t make social mistakes. It was exhausting and, in the end, I required a short stay in hospital to help me regain my physical as well as mental health.


The one thing I was certain of throughout this whole episode was that I wouldn’t let these issues and diagnosis destroy my teaching career. I realised that I would need to make some changes, create some coping mechanisms and tell people what was going on. I love being a teacher, and I will not let these issues prevent me from doing what I love.

With artificial intelligence (AI) on the rise, educators have increasingly reflected on how this might impact teaching in the coming years, with some of the more scary predictions even suggesting that machines could one day replace teachers altogether. This fear is largely unfounded and an unhelpful way to think about AI and education; rather than posing a threat, when used correctly AI could actually be the very best sidekick for teachers in the classroom.

It is a universal truth that early career teachers are overwhelmed. Between classroom management issues, lesson plans, and grading, we’re oftentimes drowning. With all the pressure to simply survive our first few years of teaching, doing anything else in the name of improvement may seem impossible. As a second-year teacher, I have days when I find myself treating life’s necessities, like sleeping, as if they were optional activities.

We want to become better teachers, but it can be exhausting. These are low-stress, realistic, and enjoyable ideas that you can use to squeeze being a better educator into your hectic new teacher life.

Last semester I lived through one of the most profound and sudden changes to education in modern history - the release of ChatGPT at the end of November. When I introduced my students to the new technology a week later, there was an extraordinary amount of excitement and creativity, and also a lot of anxiety (mostly from me) about what this means for the future. That anxiety has spread everywhere in education. And now I am teaching in the first full semester in a post-ChatGPT world. I have written extensively in the last month about the need to embrace this new technology in education. Now, I am trying to do just that.

All of my classes have become AI classes. And I wanted to share with you the experiments I am running to integrate AI into class (I will update you later in the semester about how they are going).

On January 13, 2023, the CTL offered a session on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in teaching & learning. The slides and key resources are available below. A recording of the session will be added to this post once it’s available.