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Google Sites - No Degree Needed!

Sometimes you hear your friends start a conversation with, "So... I did a thing", and it usually either means they had an embarrassing moment in public or made a mistake they have already learned the lesson from. So, I did a thing. I made a Google Site. I thought this was what people who go to college and get a degree in business marketing do. Turns out, anyone can do it. No degree (or student debt) needed!  My Google Site was designed to be a resource hub that allows educators and leadership staff to organize, search, locate documents, and ask for help on course assessment and accreditation. It's a sandbox for me, so it's not finalized or supported by a certain university. It was good practice and exposure as I look for an Assessment Specialist/Curriculum Manager role in education. If you want to see what it's like, click here . Coincidentally, I was talking to a couple of my pre-teen students while playing a card game, and one of them bought a used mower to star...
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Teaching Students Online Safety... But Not Like The Dentist

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  Every time you go to the dentist, they make sure to remind you to floss your teeth (because everyone does that every day, and after every meal, and before you brush, because it allows your toothbrush to do a better job). For most people, they nod and agree with the dentist, "Yes, of course I floss. Yes, of course it's important. Yes, of course I will." Yet only about a third of Americans floss their teeth. Unfortunately, similar attitudes can be observed when it comes to talking to young teens about online and internet safety.  When I taught 6th Grade Tech class, there was a fun slideshow that took about 2 days for our class to get through on many online safety things: texting, posting videos, commenting on social media, and sharing personal information on scams. It was a light course that related to 6th graders well, but it didn't prevent teens from making the exact errors that were outlined in the course. Why? "Because it's the Dentist's job to tell ...
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Google Earth - Are We Modernizing Education Tools At The Cost Of Genuine Understanding?

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Google Earth was one new tool that I found really great if I'm bored or want to envision what my next vacation could look like, but I found it difficult to see how I can use it in an 8th grade Math class.  I was able to find some creative ways to use interesting geographical locations as origin points on a graph, and practice different translations. That was the easy part. The difficult part was finding interesting places. I'm not good at geography, never have been, but I really relied on Google searches for geometric anomalies to use for math class. I thought about trying to do a slope problem with Mt. Everest, but as I thought about how a middle school student would try to solve a question like "Use two points on the mountain to estimate the slope of Mt. Everest", I can guarantee they would just do a Google Search, "What's the slope of Mt. Everest?" and get the answer way faster.  Now, on that note, I think the importance of understanding slope surfac...
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