Ken Messersmith's Blog (9)

A hyperlink has two parts. One part is the words you want your reader to click on to follow the link and the second part is the URL of the page you want to go to when the link is clicked. Here is how to create a hyperlink. 1. Type in the words you want to use as the hyperlink. 2. Select the icon that looks like two chain links from the blog edit window.

… Continue

I found this video to be very informative about how to be more effective at putting together Google searches. Continue

A good friend and colleague stopped by my office a couple of times today. He was not enthused about a lecture he was going to give today and was having serious doubts whether he could deliver it without inducing a coma in his students. He teaches two sections of the same class. One of the sections is online and the other is a traditional face-to-face class. Much of the content of the course is written down in a textbook that students are required to read. He does not lecture to his online stude… Continue

For a long time now I have used the term "learning activities" when referring to what teachers design and carry out as they go about their job of teaching. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about moving ownership of learning from the teacher to the student. The term "learning activities" implies something that the teacher provides in the hope that the students will learn as a result of the activities. I am now thinking that we should refer to our creations as "learning opportunities". This term… Continue

To become a teacher is to take on an awesome responsibility. If I am a science teacher and do not get my students excited about science, I deprive the world of a potentially great scientist. If I am a writing teacher (and all of us are writing teachers) and do not get my students excited about writing, I deprive the world of a potentially great writer. To fail to get children excited about writing, math, science, reading, music or any other area of study is to cripple them for life. They can no… Continue

The K12 Online Conference is a world wide conference of teachers. It functions just like most conferences with keynote speakers and breakout speakers selected by the group hosting the conference. The difference between this conference and the traditional conference is it is totally online. The keynote and breakout sessions are all video presentations created by the presenters and posted online at the time of the scheduled presentation. There are two nice features of this type of conference. Fir… Continue

Michael Wesch is an anthropologist. One of his YouTube videos has been viewed over 6 million times. He had done some interesting work with his students. Here is his presentation last summer at the Library of Congress where he describes some of the things he and his students have learned about this phenomenon. The examples he gives about the power of YouTube around the world are very interesting. What does his work tel… Continue

I am reading a book called, "Disrupting Class" by Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson. They predict, using disruptive technology theory, that, "by 2019, about 50 percent of high school courses will be delivered online." Can this be an accurate prediction? They cite four factors which will drive this movement: 1) comput… Continue

Welcome to my first blog posting on thinkteaching. I thought I would talk a bit about why I created this site in case anyone cares ;-) We all know that social networks have become the primary way our younger generation stays connected and communicates with each other. They don't use the old Internet chat rooms or email anymore but use their social network page instead. I watch my students come into my computer lab/classroom each day and the first thing they do is open their FaceBook page to cat… Continue