Reflections on #EdCampNova

Takeaways:
My biggest takeaway was being reminded by lots of awesome educators that I have not been using my existing takeaways enough. @MrGreeneEdu showed me the cool stuff he was doing with Google cardboard, and I haven't jumped on board that technology yet. Many talked about the new Quizlet Live, and I haven't touched Kahoot since September. People who where using Google Classroom were really excited about it, and I've just kind of tolerated my school's Blackbaud LMS all year. I haven't jumped on board the gamification movement, but I'm ok with that because most students at my school are intrinsically motivated and would likely wrinkle their noses at it (although I imagine gamification is amazing for students who could use a little extrinsic motivation).

Peeps:
So many awesome new people to meet, among them @Mspatricianhfb who as an early elementary music teacher is the de facto techie at her school, @MsJForney and @Coreythornblad who were really thoughtful and insightful at the tech integration session that I facilitated, @Hawks_Chris who had an amnesty international sticker on his computer which is awesome, and @Gcmlibrary who lent her library. And of course it was lovely to again see @Techymargaret, @Libraryms, @ThatsWightman, @TimStahmer, and @Jenorr who I met at the same conference on a cold day last February.

The conference:

Flawless. So well organized. The NOVA team was a well oiled machine.

Watch the video:

Welp, for the first time in a long time I didn't do 45 minute film school. It's fun but stressful, and not really in keeping with the EdCamp model; I'm not sure if I'll do it for EdCampMetroDC. Here's last year's vid from #EdCampARL for nostalgia:

Reflections from EdCampDVIS

Takeaways:
One big takeaway was from @MrsLieberman356 who on back-to-school night will tape QR codes on student lockers which link to that students' portfolio... which seems more personal than simply emailing a link home.

My second takeaway was pure EdCamp magic. I was 10 minutes late to a session on refurbishing computers. I poke my head in and there is a guy sitting there, I figure it's a UPenn student doing his homework. Just for the heck of it I step in, and it turns out he is the presenter. No one else showed up, so for the next 40 minutes Sean Dolbec shows me how to install Linux onto a flash drive in order install Ubuntu onto old computers.

Peeps:
So many wonderful educators, among them: @kristenNsanchez (who was accompanied by like 10 amazing educators from Newtown Friends) @MEMurrayEDU (who helped me connect to the internet and works at a really progressive school called The Philadelphia School) @Kannengieszer4 (who wins rookie of the year honors by facilitating two out of three sessions at her very first edcamp) @karenjh (who helped organize a flawless edcamp and is a former FCPS edtech) and the entire Five Minute Film School team (see below).

The conference:
Free breakfast, free lunch - so helpful - I don't even have words. The only thing to improve next year is to include a sharing Slam - it's a best practice to have a Slam - usually after lunch or before the raffle. Amazing venue; my first time at UPenn.

Watch the video:
Zombie Academy, This about sums it up:

Reflections from EdCamp Hershey

Takeaways:
My big takeaway was the Teacher Walk introduced by @ChadNWright. The story goes something like this: @RGGillespie, AP at Kettle Run, was rolling out an innovative school improvement plan. They had created a book club PLC, and they wanted another option -- so they created (or stole, not sure) the Teacher Walk. A team of teachers (sometimes accompanied by students; maybe with administrators too?) walk around school, drop in on classrooms, and observe. Later on, they share what they saw with the team. There's nothing new about classroom observations, but doing it as a team and accompanied by students (!) blew my brain up a little.

Peeps:
The Hershey team was on fire: @DianaRAC13, @akaMsCrowley, @SrtaLisa, @KickKrowley, @LibrarianLister and @lisa_hollenbach -- it was my ninth EdCamp and this was as tight a ship as it gets. As I walked in, it was great to see the EdCamp home office @KSivick and @HadleyJF, and  @SenatorTeplitz (who showed up because they  tweeted him... true story), and @GeekyTeach (who was at her 39th EdCamp!). 

Here are some must-follow people: @_MrHull_ (fun and thoughtful), @DTown_MrD (was unrelentingly positive when I had tech difficulties in my session),  @castle_pants (she was all-in for the vid, see below),  @Scoots231 (one of these teachers who exudes positivity), and @iwearthecrowns (no really, she was wearing a tiara). I had extended one-on-ones with @RossCoops31 (who told me an awesome story about how he got his new job by tweeting his superintendent) and @mr_isaacs (who had great Minecraft tips).

The conference:
Basically flawless (free breakfast and lunch... so  good); here are some minor suggestions for next year. It's a good idea to have a twitter tutorial during the first block of every edcamp since it's essential and many are new to it. Using a Google spreadsheet as the schedule is an EdCamp standard; it's a good idea to make the titles clickable to bring up a collaborative note-taking page. And finally the wheel of fortune raffle was super fun, though I'd like to find an electronic equivalent of "put paper tickets in the brown paper bag that is next to the item that you want to win." :)

Watch the video:
Four pro teaching tips!

Field trip to @1776 (with #CoffeeEDU appetizer)

Takeaways:
I knew that collaborative work spaces for tech startups existed, but I thought they could only be found in Silicon Valley. Welp, I sure was wrong. There are at least five spaces in DC, one of which is @1776 in Dupont Circle. So #EDcampMetroDC members @ChipChase and @MarisHawkins organized a #CoffeeEDU meetup followed by a field trip to 1776.

After examining the 1776 website, I saw that for as little as $100 I could become a lifetime member, and I was stoked! Welp, that is a monthly fee (lol) so no tech incubation for me :-) But seriously, the space was exquisite and they have free events on Tuesdays and Thursdays; please see the video below for a tour! The Ed Pioneers alumni did a great job organizing it and making us feel welcome. More info about them: www.educationpioneers.org

People:
Other attendees included @JacquieGardy @RobertK600, @MultipleFactors, @Sum_ideas, and SienaSimon. The pioneers included @Mhfreeman11 @EliseWestDC @PStaatsdc and the Edu-lawyers (did anyone get their handle?)  I also saw @Artshumuna who I had met at Media Rise.

The Event:
There was free pizza (thank you!) and like 90 minutes of Powerpoints (people seemed to enjoy them, but I was too ADHD and I just explored the space) followed by a neat Design Thinking activity from @StanforDschool which you can find here.

Watch the Video!
This is pretty funny, for real:

Reflections from EdCamp Leadership

Takeaways:
So the head of the language department @MadeiraSchool knows a lot about international travel. She used to use expensive tour companies, but now she creates the tours herself and saves money by doing two week exchange programs with sister schools in Europe.

@MrVictorShin also knows a whole lot about international travel. He said one way to build a year abroad program is to start with an exchange program like they have at Madeira, and parlay that into a full year exchange program.

I also learned a great Periscope trick from @Sarahdateechur. She was facilitating a session, and she was live streaming, but some attendees had concerns about privacy. So she pointed her phone at the ceiling so the audience had audio and could still participate with questions. That was pretty cool.

Peeps:
So I saw @Kharima4 who took this crazy picture of her feet and the EdCamp logo and she said it was a Texas thing... and 24 hours later I realize this may be a "law of two feet" reference; I'm a little slow. I saw @sum_ideas who is a VERY talented young math/computer guy at Bullis.  I saw @Explr1 and @MABCPrincipal talking urban education, a topic I know little about, and it was very real.


The conference:
So @Joe_Mazza and his whole team did a great job organizing the conference. My only suggestion, and I'm not sure how others feel about this, is that each venue could use its own hashtag. The #edcampldr hashtag was deluged with tweets, I did not have time to sort through them, so I still have not really seen any tweets from a conference that I attended. I can barely walk and chew gum, so I could not keep up with that hashtag during the conference. For strong multi-taskers like @Sarahdateechur who can walk and chew gum and fry an egg and format her hard drive at the same time, I think they enjoyed the single hashtag... so I dunno.

Watch the video:
So we were at The Children's Guild in Baltimore; please check out this video and you will see the Amesomest. School. Hallway. Ever.

Reflections from Edsurge DC

Takeaways:
I really liked @123Dcircuits: it's website where you can virtually build circuits with breadboards and electronics, and it's free. When I was in college I was a mechanical engineer and I was always jealous of the electrical engineers because they could build awesome stuff with their breadboards and all I could do was solve stupid differential equations. If this site simplifies learning electronics, it could be awesome,

@Curriculet seemed super cool. I've really struggled with annotating electronic texts. I'm not the only one who has taken a public domain book and pasted it into a Google Docs and annotated it. Obviously you can't do this with copyrighted work. Curriculet has a solution that works with some big publishers; we'll see if the selection is good enough and if the price is right.

I really liked @GoFormative. It's free and kind of like Socrative and Nearpod. I love that the founder was a Google Forms guy who maxed out the technology and then built the tool he wanted. Almost every vendor in the room had a story like that.

@News_o_matic seemed good; it's a subscription service that rewrites the news every day at three Lexile levels, and in Spanish.

Peeps:
The first people I saw were @techy_margaret and @timstahmer. My twitter joke was "Tim Stahmer is retiring, who will I talk to at conferences now?" I saw a friend of many years @MrFichter, @Sarahdateechur of course, @Kharima4 from Texas, and I met Dan @Whalen for the first time. That's the awesomest part of conferences: when you walk down the hall and see a stranger but you actually know them from Twitter and you are like "Are you Dan Whalen" and he's like "Yeah" -- that is awesome.

The other awesome story is Kharima found out about the conference from my tweet. So a Teacher from Texas who went to ISTE in Philly and was staying with family in Maryland and saw a tweet from me in Virginia then went to a conference in DC. Finally, I met @MJMadda who was super funny and @MJWints who was cool and running all over the place -- together they make the Edsurge podcast which is currently #1 on @MrFichter's podcast list.

The Conference:
I liked how Edsurge kept the vendors in check. They could only have three people, one poster, and no swag. Sure they were trying to sell to us, but I also felt like they were listening.

I also like the story of Edsurge. I'm told that a journalist from the Bay Area could not find enough edtech news, since there was no outlet that reported exclusively on edtech. So she made one.

Watch the Video:
You should srsly check out my first ever Periscope which I took at the beginning of Edsurge; you won't learn anything, but it's pretty funny:

Reflections on HackED15!

So about half of the attendees at HackED15 hailed from Kansas, Hawaii, Iowa (love @jgraber), or Cody, Wyoming. I did reconnect with awesome nearby DC people: @jenorr @journeyofjess @srtalisa and @timstahmer. 

I met some excellent new people, like @misspollock. She is so creative and fun. I sat next to her in the group photo, and we had lunch together with @jhox1 - who has been to 28 edcamps (!) which I think is a record.  Since that day, Shauna has introduced me to several thoughtful/fun edtech people like @miamayer @jennifernking and @mrlebrun.

I really enjoyed meeting @KevinHoneycutt. I’m relatively new to the tweetosphere

 and while I was evidently not cool enough for a few of the K12 power tweeters, many were great including @KathySchrock (who helped me find a name tag) and @wfryer and @cordym (who were both super cool).  Kevin blew me away; he was less interested in meeting new people as he was about connecting “young Jedi’s.” He kept pulling putting me in front of people whom he thought I should meet. Good on ya, bro.

I briefly met Peggy Sheehy, and she is amazing, and I really want to learn more about how she brings MMO's into the classroom. No one does this, and she's been doing it for like eight years.

The huge discussion circles of 25 and 30 people seemed to work for most people, but it was too much for me. I just walked around and talked to other people who, like me, were just standing around -- and that was really fun/useful.

So I guess I did not learn much about technology that day, but I did connect with some awesome people who have helped me with technology since then - and I am thankful for that. I am also thankful to @stevehargadon and to everyone who helped organize it.

How to host an EdCamp!

There are a lot of nitty gritty details to consider when you organize an EdCamp, but here are ten "big ideas" to think about as you organize one:

1. Form a committee (use people from different schools to increase attendance)
2. Pick a host location (if you have more than fifty-ish attendees, you want a large common space and a lot of breakout spaces in close proximity... if you are small enough, you may be able to do the whole unconference in the library, which is super fun as it makes the "law of two feet" much easier) and a date (pick a cold month, but don't get snowed out)
3. Create a website (like Wordpress) and a ticketing system (like Eventbrite)
4. Create (or borrow) a to-do list and assign tasks (Click the image above to see an example. It is advisable to use a cloud-based project management tool like Basecamp.)
5. Publicize it, especially on twitter (but you can have a great EdCamp with 20 people; more than 150ish might be too much).  Getting people to show up on a Saturday morning is hard, face to face asks are more effective than twitter and email blasts.
6. Arrange for breakfast food (Starbucks may donate coffee)
7. Do you want a raffle? Think hard: it's fun, but it doubles the work -- and it won't make more people come (but it will make people stay). 
8. Make a schedule (half day or full day?). If you do a full day, some people will leave at lunch. The best part about a half day is you don't have to worry about lunch plans, and you still have some weekend to enjoy.
9. Look at the websites of other EdCamps and steal ideas. Also tell the mothership you are hosting a new one; they will send you a "getting started" box.
10. If you want to do in internal EdCamp on a PD day at your school, you will save a ton of work. You only really need to do steps 8 and 9
11. It's important to greet people as they arrive and acclimate them (show them the food, the board, the swag, encourage them to talk to strangers)
12. It's important to plant a veteran in every session and start the circle introductions, Have them start the circle introduction at the beginning, and have them ask a leading question (“this session is about innovative PD, what’s the last great PD anyone in here has gone to?”)

Double Virginia EdCamp!

So I went to the first EdCampNova at Rock Ridge High School in Loudon County. There was an amazing group of educators there, mostly edtech people from Fairfax and Loudon county. I think my biggest takeaway from the experience was that you don't need a ton of people to have a great EdCamp. Many people wanted to come but could not because the original date was snowed out. But 20 awesome educators proved you can still have a great conference.

I learned a bunch of stuff. Two conferences that I learned about were the Nova Maker Faire and Active Loudon Plus. It was inspiring to hear Gretchen Hazlin's (@libraryms) experiences with creating a maker space in her library. It was also inspiring to hear Jen Orr's (@Jenorr) success with using Donor's Choose to enhance her classroom. @TechyMargaret was a great facilitator and made me feel welcome as soon as I walked in.

And then three weeks later I attended EdCampArlington. The team of ITC's, including Joan, Marie, Meredith, and Kerry to name a few, did an amazing job. They really knew how to make it fun, from the stickers to decorate your name tag to the photo wall complete with wacky costumes. They were able to fit four session in one large library, which was a really innovative setup. It allowed for great flow between the sessions and lots of interesting side conversations. In separate breakout rooms, people are nervous about using the law of two feet because it can seem rude. I met the good people of Alchemy learning and Phil Shapiro's tech petting zoo was really neat. I also learned about the arcane hiring process for APS ITC's.

In my "45 minute film school" we created the film "How NOT to EdCamp" and it turned out great thanks to three intrepid APS teachers Suzanne, Emily, and Erin. My tweet got retweeted 12 times, which is a new record for me :)

The Best Collab That My Wife and I Do

So here is the best school project that I do. It's a collaboration with my wife (it's actually her brain child). The Tide Turners Club at The Lab School is a group of students invested in endangered wildlife and sustainability. Every summer we co-teach a three week long class, but this is not like a summer school class of yore. It's 21 days packed with fun and learning; here is the breakdown:

Week 1: Intenstive study week. We pick a sustainability issue, usually an animal in crisis, and study it in class for a week. We also learn basic film-making skills. (My wife teaches the biology, I teach the filmmaking). During this week we go on a field trip to the zoo and create a "practice" travel log movie.

Week 2: We travel to learn in depth about the wildlife that we studied in week 1. This year we went to Florida to study manatees. Students were expected to shoot extensive footage of their experience.

Week 3: We return to the classroom to document the week in film. Every student creates a travel log of their experience. The footage is shot on their phones and emitted on their iPads. Students also curate an exhibit of still photos of the trip in the school art gallery.

Yet another amazing EdcampMetroDC

So the good people of #edcampmetrodc hit it out of the park again. Hands down the best value in edtech PD. Great people, great learning, and oh yeah it's free.

I think my favorite takeaway was learning about Naina Boveja's start-up which matches students with NGO's around the world for a win/win internship (NGO's need people to do stuff for free, students need meaningful stuff to do). Are you serious??? Sounds awesome. More here:

http://e-collaborate.org

I also enjoyed "things that sucked" which apparently is an edcamp staple. I just wish the name would change to "things that suck or rock" since both sides are considered. (I was hesitant to go since the title was negative, but the facilitator Tara Linney was fantastic).

Thanks to everyone who went to my 15 minute film school session. I'll make a video to capture the content from that class. Until then, here is my portfolio, lots of ideas to check out:

www.mattfratt.com

And here is a list of awesome student film festivals that I've actually submitted to:

• StudentCam (C-SPAN)
• Pendragwn Youth Film Festival
• MCPS Environmental Film Festival
• AU Eco Comedy Festival

I've never done these but they are probably awesome:

• White House student film festival
• http://baltimore-highschool-film-festival.org
• Speak truth to power
• Girls impact the world film festival
• 90 second newberry
• reelshowint.com
• http://glpfilms.com/education/student-film-project
• http://www.nwf.org/young-reporters-for-the-environment.aspx
• http://www.48hourfilm.com
• http://www.fourpointsfilmproject.com
• www.tivadc.org
• http://projectingchange.ca
• Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation film contest
• Bethesda Film festival
• Friends Film Festival (Baltimore)

My colleague Jason Jakaitis told me about these nationwide ones: 

• Cineyouth in Chicago
• Screenagers in Berkeley
• SF Intl has a robust youth program
• Teen Truth Film Festival
• DocuJam in NY
• Josiah Media Festival in Austin
• Tower of Youth in Sacramento 

On Twitter

(edit: I wrote this before I understood lists. While I still think some could tweet less than they do, all I needed to do was create a list called "MattFratt's faves" where I tucked away all the people who I felt I needed to read EVERY ONE of their tweets.

To maximize social reach, you have to follow everyone with whom you share a vision - in my case, teachers - then it's up to you to filter your feed so that you read the tweets you feel you need to read.)

The Dalai Lama tweets about twice per week. Meditate on that.

I want to love twitter, but it's difficult right now. Everyone has some interesting things to say about their passion (education in my case), and I want to hear everything they say. But many of these people tweet dozens of times per day.

I have about 15 minutes per day that I can budget for Twitter. I think that's about par for the course for many working adults. I want to learn new ideas, and what better platform than Twitter? But 15 minutes is about enough time to scan maybe 200 tweets, click on four or five items that are interesting, and explore these items. So at this rate, I can follow about 150 people who tweet once or twice per day.

Twitter is a platform for sharing awesome ideas with the whole world. Does anyone really have more that one or two awesome things to share with the world per day? I don't think so. I wish most people would be excruciatingly judicious about what they tweet. We are tweeting to the whole world; let's show some restraint.

Of course this "1 or 2 tweet per person" ideal has some notable exceptions. When you are attending a conference, or if you are in weekly tweetup like #edchat, then you are effectively in a chat room and you have a lot to say. And of course if you are a young person who is still in school, then by golly you tweet all day about Aston Kutcher's breakfast or anything else that you fancy. 

I'm having a very hard time finding interesting people who are judicious about tweeting. I subscribe to less than 30 people. I'd like to find more, but it is not so easy. It seems like people are either totally absent from twitter, or they are twitter junkies and tweet a jillion times per day; there does not seem to be much middle ground.

Highlights from #EdCampMetroDC

So I love taking away nuggets from conferences. The organizers of today's EdCamp Metro DC were wonderful and the day flowed effortlessly. Here are a few highlights from today:

@jcwastler shared a great idea for a PD day: declare one afternoon to be a  FedEx PD day. At the start, share two guidelines 1) You should develop an idea that enhances student learning 2) You should present this idea at the end of the day. Brilliant. Reed @Rggillespie shared another amazing idea: at his school he organized a PD day that utilized the Edcamp model: a spontaneous, teacher-organized PD day.

Every year I meet wonderful people. Bill Hulseman of Stoneridge was awesome; all he does is organize Stoneridge's amazing community service program. Those kids do two full school days of community service per month. So great. Of course Jonathan Fichter (@MrFichter) was an all-star and I'm grateful that he managed a TodaysMeet backchannel during my session on integrated technology. 

Brain research is not my bag, but Glenn Whitman's team really seems to be on to something with the CTTL. At a thoughtful session about classroom design, people liked idea paint and seemed interested in hokki stools. 

Highlights from AIMS Tech Retreat 2012

BYOD: Three schools from Baltimore (St. Paul’s, Bryn Mawr, Garrison Forrest) are launching similar Bring Your Own Device programs. High school students had to bring either a Windows or a Mac laptop (iPads did not meet the requirement). Each school had about 1 loaner for every 10 kids. Help desks would try to troubleshoot problems but would not crack open the computer to fix it. Middle school students were required to buy a specific laptop because most students did not already own a laptop, and teachers wanted uniformity for that age group.  Kids used either cloud apps or were required to have an Office suite so software differences were not a huge issue.  All schools had dedicated labs for classes that required advanced software, like Photoshop. Schools trained teachers in Cloud software by department in advance. To help with security, students operated on a separate, robust wireless network.

One to One iPad: The BYOD laptop presentation was in sharp contrast to the 1:1 iPad experiment at Green Acres, who require students to bring an iPad, and teachers and students are doing well with it.  More than one way to skin the cat, apparently.

  I was concerned the device may not be sophisticated enough for middle school, but that was not their experience. The common thread was investing time for teacher buy-in, through summer iPad loans and discussions of how to integrate into existing lesson plans. 

School Databases: There was no school that had a single database with one record per child. They have several databases, sometimes with data shuttling between them. Some objected to Blackbaud’s insisting they could do everything for a school and refusing to play nicely with legacy databases. Some were dissatisfied with PCR Educator’s level of service.

Personal note: This year I thought I'd stretch and go to sessions designed for Tech Directors rather than Tech Coordinators. While I learned a bit about the back end of school tech, in retrospect, I probably should have gone to more sessions geared toward teachers. There's always next year :-)

Commoncraft Videos for Earth Day

Please click here to see student-created Commoncraft videos created for Earth Day, featuring the stories of endangered animals. This project is simple:

--Research an endangered species (we used a single Google Doc editted by the whole class)
--Organize the research into one of three categories: basic facts about the animal, why it's endangered, and what is being done to conserve it.
--Write the script, cut out the pictures, rehearse, and shoot.

Duly Processed

Five months ago, two students were bored in my class and asked if they could work on something more challenging, so it was suggested that they enter a film contest. Congratulations to Lab School of Washington eighth graders Simon Yeo and Tucker Hemphill, who won 3rd prize in C-SPAN's 2012 StudentCam competition for their documentary, Due Process in the Digital Age. There were over 1200 entries, and Simon and Tucker will split $750 prize. In September Simon and Tucker were bored in my integrated technology class, as they had extensive technology experience at summer camps. So they asked for a more challenging assignment, and on many days they worked on this film rather than working on the normal classwork. Simon and Tucker will be interviewed on C-SPAN at 9:15 AM on April 9th. Please find the film by clicking here. 

Non-Standard

After sitting through a webinar by an accomplished professor regarding Common Core Standards, I wished he had done the following research: gather a few hundred successful adults in a room from a variety of careers: law, construction, music... (and define "successful" almost any way you want -- salary, prestige, influence...)

Then give them a test that reflects the Common Core Standards. If any appreciable number of successful people answer a question incorrectly, then there's nothing standard about that parcel of knowledge; it would be removed from the standards -- and instead gently placed in a pile called "guidelines."

Seriously, would someone please ask Barak Obama to "know and apply the Binomial Theorem for the expansion of x + y)^n".  Has anyone ever done research like this?

Seven Tips for a Teen Power User

(obviously all of these should suggestions should be done with guidance from a parent)

1. Be Mark Zuckerberg: learn to program. Start with (my personal fave) Scratch, Alice, and Gamestar Mechanic. From there move on to CodeAcademy, Codea, and Game Salad.

2. Be a gamer, but with a purpose. Create a Minecraft server with your buddies. Start a clan/guild for a multiplayer game. Play quality multiplayer PC games (Blizzard, Valve).

3. Read biographies of interesting Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Start with Steve Jobs, The Facebook Effect, and The Google Story

4. Start a Youtube channel. If you need ideas, make a screencast featuring a play-through of your favorite video game, or make a tutorial about anything you are good at. Promote it on Twitter to get views.

5. Go to summer tech camp like ID Tech and TIC

6. Read the best tech blogs, start with The Verge and MacRumors 

7. Follow the best tech writers, start with David Pogue, Walt Mossberg and TED.

Integrated Tech meets Current Events

Here's a can't miss formula for integrating a current events unit with animation. Most every joke on the Daily Show has the same formula: set the joke up with a straight recounting of the current event, then follow with the punchline by answering the question, "What could happen next?" So Rick Perry botched the legal voting age, what hilarity could ensue? Here's what a few in my class came up with bit.ly/xEyZ7G. I used Flash, but it could work with Xtranormal.com or paper and pencil cartoons.

Working as Lintended

Yeah, yeah it's an edtech blog. Who cares. If this isn't a teaching moment, I don't know what is. I really don't care much for pro sports, but this is shaping up to be the greatest come-back sports story of all time. I just read some of the backstory: best player in Cali but no college scholarship; best player in college but undrafted in the NBA; cut by two of the worst teams in the NBA, sleeps on his brother's couch, and the first time he is EVER allowed to start a pro game, he takes a sorry team on a four game win streak and scores more points in his first four starts than any player in recent history... Quick let's pool our money and get the movie rights...