My first year of teaching graphic communications and computer applications were intense experiences. I’d just graduated with a masters degree (in music) and suddenly I was thrown into a new job that I hadn’t precisely prepared for! But I had a lot of computer experience and I set about designing lessons on that experience as… Continue reading Reflections on Teaching
Author: John
How to perform advanced tasks in Microsoft Word
Topics Mail Merge Forms and Templates Recording Macros Using Footnotes and Endnotes Creating Bookmarks Tracking Changes and Comments Envelopes & Labels Creating a Table of Contents Mail Merge Mail merge is a function whereby you create a template of communication, such as a business letter, and replace the information therein with specifics such as name,… Continue reading How to perform advanced tasks in Microsoft Word
Slidedoc(k)ing
I am a detail oriented person. I recently read a colleague’s dissertation and before I could get to the details in the writing, all I could see where inconsistencies in the use of spaces and punctuation. For sure, it was a draft and some people work that way—getting their ideas down first and worrying about… Continue reading Slidedoc(k)ing
Extracting Email Addresses
So email can be a pretty seamless tool for most of us to communicate with others; sitting at a computer, it’s easy to create a message, send it, and when received, to read. That’s not even worth saying. And I’m not here to make a commentary on how inefficient email can be in the workplace… Continue reading Extracting Email Addresses
Curriculum as Jellybeans
Part of me wishes we could redesign our curriculum. Not mine, not any specific schools’, but all of it—by pouring jelly beans out on the table. I think maybe what we teach is as important question as how students will learn it. So some have the idea that mixing up traditional notions of “in school”… Continue reading Curriculum as Jellybeans
The 2020 Symposium
For the past four years, I have organized an end-of-year “symposium” for teachers. This event has included a budget in excess of $10,000 and from 2017, 2018, and 2019, we included a second day of team building which included a trip to Busch Gardens, Segway Tours in Richmond, and white water rafting on the James.… Continue reading The 2020 Symposium
A time for courage
These are my own thoughts, written on time away from work. Some years ago I sat in a planning meeting with my colleagues—we all worked for a preK-12 school division in Virginia—and we were discussing the set of core values we would use in our next strategic plan. We’d done some work to identify our… Continue reading A time for courage
The Lonely Lecture
Since schools closed due to COVID-19 in our area, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the creation of digital content for students. There are a couple of “new jobs” teachers are undertaking in the preparation of online materials. These are, I think: teacher as curator, and teacher as creator. Often times for… Continue reading The Lonely Lecture
Apple Keynote
My colleagues and I have published a number of blog posts on using Apple Keynote—both on the Mac and on iPads. I’m really happy with the way they’ve turned out. We cover the following: Drawing Tools Sound and Audio Graphics Animation Using Keynote to Promote Higher Levels of Cognitive Engagement Using Slidedocs to support your… Continue reading Apple Keynote
Florence
In college I took a music history course and it just so happened that our professor was an expert on the music of an Italian baroque composer named Claudio Monteverdi. We ended up spending a lot of time on early Italian baroque music and I can still remember the lectures about the Gonzagas, the Medici,… Continue reading Florence