Monday, November 28, 2011

Game-Based Learning

In this edition of the December eNewsletter, I have included some great resources and links for bringing Game-Based Learning into the classroom. How is Game-Based Learning being used in your classroom or school?

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

A World Without Power

During the Halloween weekend, the east coast got pounded with it's first big Noreaster of the season. Living in Maine, I have grown accustom to the long winters, but starting in October is a bit ridiculous even for our standards. At my house we only lost power for about 27 hours, but many people around us and certainly in southern New Hampshire lost it for almost an entire week. It got me to thinking...

We truly have started to become completely dependent on technology and the ease of accessibility anywhere at any time. I was thinking to myself, that I really had to mail in my assignment on Saturday before the storm hit, because my town of Wells, Maine has become a ghost town now that the tourist and "leaf peepers" season is officially over. It would have taken me 30 minutes to drive to a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi.

A colleague and I were discussing that the future of the military will probably no longer be investing so highly in explosives but rather in new technologies like Pulses and Pinches. These are like mini generators that when activated, will actually take out an area completely so that there is no power. The scene from "Ocean's 11" where they are ready to rob Andy Garcia's casino comes rushing back to my mind.

We were fortunate enough to have power back on at school on Monday when we returned, but it took 3.5 hours for the IT department to get our network and Internet connection back online. I truly felt useless at school in those hours and couldn't even access my calendar to see whom I needed to postpone our meeting with as it was locked up in our network.

eNewsletter November

In this month's edition of my eNewsletter, I dive a little deeper into the Apple iOS update and what it means in an educational setting.