Welcome back to the Sustainable Teacher, I hope your week so far is going as smoothly as possible, and that you have found this episode at just the right time, whenever that time might be for you.  This episode will be a conversation about EdTech, but more so on the technology that is teacher-facing, and less student-facing.  

Oftentimes in conversation and professional development involving educational technology, the focus is on student-facing technology and what newest tool can be used to have impact in your lessons.  Although It's not bad that this is the main focus, it’s not the only way that technology can benefit a teacher and a classroom.  So in this episode we’ll be talking about teacher tech and how to leverage technology to make a part of your day more sustainable, and the part of your day we’ll focus on in this episode is parent communication.

Sure, technology, in most areas, is great.  It improves efficiency and even...

"I don't learn this way," a student said in the second week or so of the new school year.  At that point students had taken notes from about two videos in our first unit of the course, and this was her (as it was for most students) first flipped classroom experience.

"I just don't learn this way, you know, from a video," she repeated. 

In an attempt to be patient and empathetic I tried reiterate what I was hearing her say, and then to be honest with her in a respectful manner.  So I said, "I hear you saying that taking notes from a video is new for you, and that you're used to taking notes from a teacher standing at the front of the room, is that right?  Well, let me ask you this... when you want to learn something new that you see someone do on social media, for instance you LOVE someone's new look and how she put on eyeliner.  What do you do to learn how to do it the exact same way?"

"I look it up on Youtube. [long pause]  O, I get it."

She understood...