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Rachel Salinger is a high school English teacher at my school, St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is passionate about literature and about giving her students learning experiences that arm them with the skills they need to be thoughtful and good stewards of our future. I asked her to share her recent project on my blog because I think it is a stellar example of how traditional teaching and learning strategies can be effectively combined with digital tools for a deeper student learning experience. I referenced this project briefly in my recent EdSurge column and wanted to be sure to highlight it in detail on my blog. Introduction In my CP sophomore classes, we read Macbeth over the course of a few weeks. The students really enjoyed the play (surprisingly!) and I wanted to do a more creative assessment at the end instead of a typical paper or test. In the past, I’ve done an iMovie project with Macbeth but really wanted to do something different this year. I met...

I was lucky enough to be part of an Ignite breakout session at ASCD's Empower 2018 conference in Boston, Massachusetts this weekend. My co-presenters were impressive educators from throughout Massachusetts. My Ignite was focused on the changing research and education around screen time. Please watch, think, and comment.

The goal of assessment has traditionally been to measure student mastery. With that mindset, some students measure high while others do not measure up. While that seems pretty cut and dry, it can be problematic. The students who measure high tend to always measure high. And the students who don't measure up tend to experience disappointment over and over.  For students who experience continued success, the consequence is that they believe in their abilities and continue to challenge themselves to achieve more. For students who don't measure up, the consequence is that they learn not to trust their own work and fall into a cycle of self-doubt. They tend to avoid challenging tasks and always take the easiest path to completion. Why Students Prefer Creative Assessments When students are able to go through a creative process (rather than taking a traditional test or quiz) to demonstrate their learning, the process includes benchmarks at which students receive feedback from thei...

One of the most important values I hold as a professional coach for educators is that I must model risk-taking with new strategies and tools constantly in my work. If I take a risk and use the tool in a professional learning workshop or as I facilitate a meeting, then my colleagues will see the potential of the tool in their own classrooms. Now that we are halfway through the school year, there are a few tools that have caught fire after my digital learning colleagues and I demonstrated their use whenever we could. Adobe Spark Post To facilitate professional learning or even co-teach classes of students, often I create slides with prompts or instructions. Spark Post allows me to create more beautiful designs that inspire my learners to think bigger or make more connections. When words are cleverly paired with an image, mood and tone are more evident and the audience will not just process the information. They will feel or experience the information. One of my favorite examples...