David Carpenter

3If you haven’t read the following three articles from this past week in the New York Times, they are worth taking a few moments to take a look. Wifi Turns Arizona Rowdy Bus Ride Into Rolling Study Hall Do School Libraries Need Books? This debate style article has over 300 comments at the moment. It definitely...
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0Nicholas Bramble recently wrote an article for Slate putting forth the argument that schools should not only stop blocking social networking sites like Facebook but they should find ways to integrate them into the learning. This is old news in the edublogosphere but it is a good sign that the message is hopefully reaching...
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0Transition and change can be a large part of one’s life as an international educator. Taking the first step to leave one’s home country to live and teach in another country leads to many more steps of transition. International schools vary in how fast paced they are and how much change is going on...
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0 I am realizing that I pretty much took the paperless nature of my previous 1:1 school for granted. A couple recent experiences really drove home another reason why going 1:1 in our schools makes a lot of sense. Ever try to buy all the papers, pencils, binders, etc. your child needs for school during Ramadan?...
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0I recently attended a workshop in Manchester, Great Britain for the teaching of IB European history. Most of the participants were British and experienced A level history teachers who were helping their schools make the move to the International Baccalaureate. They shared the following excellent UK-based history sites that definitely will help me in...
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0Being an educator raising our children overseas in international and American Schools really works for our family. However, one aspect of this lifestyle I struggle with is the bubble that sometimes surrounds us as we go to school each day, attend co-curricular activities and spend much of our time with fellow expatriates. One of our...
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0Jeff and I concluded our second year of podcasting about shifting schools to the School/Learning 2.0 model. We would like to thank all of our guests who shared their insights and practical ideas to help students, teachers, administrators and parents work together in the shifting process. You can listen to shows directly from the SOS...
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0 The TPACK approach of connecting technology, pedagogy and content to use the power of their convergence is being covered in the May issue of Learning & Leading with Technology. Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, the authors of the article, also share a wiki site that provides further information on the framework. Judi Harris and Mark...
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0 The spread of the H1N1 virus reminded me of our running a virtual school in Hong Kong during the outbreak of SARS in 2003 when all the schools were closed. Our elementary team of teachers came together to create a program focusing on what we called the “3 C’s of Communication, Community and Content...
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1 Currently my students’ main collaborative tools for research recording, idea creation, project development and reflection are Mindmeister, Google Docs and their blogs.  I use these tools for formative assessment while the student teams also use them to provide one another feedback. While these tools will continue to be a part of the learning...
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0The teaching of information, visual and design literacies across the curriculum is a task many of us are undertaking. One interesting possibility to teach all three together would be to look at the world financial crisis by having our students research the validity of the numbers being shared in the media, challenge them to...
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