There is no box

thinking out loud about technology, education and life

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K-12 Superintendent, reformed IT guy, educator, 1:1 evangelist, life long learner, father, husband, geek, ex self-propelled field artillery turret mechanic, GCT, CCTO, INFP

Category: Commentary

  • So That’s What Rain Looks Like #ISTE2015

    I was reminded what rain is this week at ISTE. Visiting Pennsylvania from drought stricken California, I had forgotten that rain can go horizontal. Even when it rains in California, it generally doesn’t defy gravity to whip underneath umbrellas like it did here in Philadelphia this week. In driving to and from the airport, I…

  • The Missing Literacies – Networking to Learn #iste2015

    The Missing Literacies – Networking to Learn Kids sitting in rows of desk. Silent classrooms. Individual worksheets. This is not how we learn in the real world. It was my experience in school, as it still is for many. But I went to school BT (Before Twitter) and BGHO (Before Google Hangouts). The extent of networking…

  • The Missing Literacies – Learning to Search #iste2015

    The Missing Literacies – Learning to Search Back in the day it was reading, righting and rythmatic. Thinking about it, being able to read well to make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn made sense when content was primarily accessed in a structured and sequenced finite resource, aka the textbook. Being able…

  • How Many Days Out Of The Classroom Is Too Many?

    In my teacher life, I spent a considerable amount of time out of the classroom. Well, classrooms, actually. I didn’t have my own classroom. I shared two classrooms with two other teachers. But it wasn’t all sad face, I did have a closet of an office for when I was wearing my IT hat. Got…

  • From unCon to edCamp for #CUE16?

    This year, CUE brought back the unConference with #cueUnCon. I spent Friday morning of the conference over at the Hard Rock talking pedagogy, curriculum adoption and Google Apps. That was a big win for me personally because the CUE annual conference can sometimes feel overwhelming with all the tech tools. It was great to just…

  • When Deleting A Google Apps Domain Is The Only Answer

    Warning, do not try this at home. I deleted my school’s Google Apps Domain for Education today but probably not for the reasons you might think. Ok, technically I cancelled the subscription which deletes all accounts and data, but same thing. You see, somewhere along the line, our GAFE domain got flipped to a Nonprofit for…

  • Mobile Device Carts and Spaghetti Power Cords

    Mobile carts are a necessary evil in classroom 1:1 programs. I’d much prefer to send devices home with students to keeping them locked away when school is not officially in session. Be that as it may, we have a lot of carts. For our last round of chromebook carts, we went with the Aver TabChargeCT2.…

  • #FutureReady Comes Full Circle

    Mike Magboo’s (@allurbaser) latest post hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d honestly forgotten that at Le Grand High School, we were doing 1:1 netbooks running ubermix way back in 2009. I know if feels like I’ve been doing 1:1 forever, now I remember why. In hindsight, for being on the bleeding edge, we got the basics…

  • Raising the Bar for Technology Services in Schools

    I’m in the middle of a nightmare scenario with our current wireless access point provider at the moment. Our 8-month old Aerohive AP230 access points randomly freeze up after 30 days and stop passing traffic until we reboot them. It’s a particularly insidious bug that has disrupted classrooms and consumed a significant amount of my…

  • Off to #CUE15

    And I’m off. Heading to the Airport. Soon to be at CUE15. I can’t believe it’s CUE time again. As a CUE Board Member, we receive status updates throughout the year about conference preparations, but it’s actually here! While I’m not presenting this year, I do have some Board duties to perform. If you see…