How Much Time For Personal Growth Do You Have?

http://www.flickr.com/commons/ It’s Saturday. Do you: Play 18? Visit some garage sales? Go to that winery you’ve read about? Do yard work? Grade papers? Other? Everybody has the same amount of hours in the week and days in the year. And, each month has 8 weekend days. Many (most) of the teachers I have worked with […]
I Write For Me – Who Do You Write For?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/klytemestra/ Last week I attended Edcamp Austin. Then I sat down and started writing a post about my day. I didn’t get very far because I wasn’t feeling well and the creative juices just weren’t flowing. So, the next day I started again. I re-read what I had written, fixed typos, wrote a few more […]
Am I Really Going To Do An Edcamp Again?

I’m thinking about doing the whole edcamp thing again. There, I said it. After my last foray into running an Edcamp (Edcamp Manor) two years ago, I vowed I’d just attend them and never try putting one on again. I wrote about creating the edcamp in an early blog post. Then, I wrote about my frustrations […]
The Future Look of My Edcamp Presentations

Original Central Texas Edcamp First, we all need to agree that one should never, NEVER, do a sit-n-git session at ANY professional development. This is especially true for edcamps. Just putting that out there. If, for example, you have to start a portion of a PD with the phrase, ” I apologize, but for the […]
We Need To Avoid the Calculus Syndrome, Thoughts After ISTE 13

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smbmsp/ The post-ISTE13 comments and blog posts I’ve been seeing have me worried. There are many educators who are now questioning how basic some of the sessions were and how we need to ensure there are discussions and not just presentations in the sessions. I think it’s time for a quick reminder of where we […]
PLN’s Help When You Least Expect It

On October 3, 2007 I opened my Twitter account. My wife had been on for a while (since it was introduced to the public the Spring before at the SXSW conference). If you go onto Twitter and look me up (@cfanch ) you’ll see that I have one list of people to follow: Edpros. Most […]
Nothing to Write About Today…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbgrigby/ I really want to write a blog post today. I wanted to write one yesterday. This past week was pretty busy so I didn’t think about it. But I wanted to write a post last weekend too. It’s not like I don’t have anything to say about PBL. It’s not like I haven’t read […]
Edcamps Are a Must

If you’re reading this and either went to Edcamp Waller or another edcamp recently then I want you to send this to some friends who didn’t go so they can read what I have to say. Edcamps are the greatest thing since, well, just about any professional development (PD) you or I have ever been […]
Edcamps Don’t Have to be Techy

http://edcampcolumbus.wordpress.com/ This weekend there was Edcamp Houston but I had to miss it even though it was right down the road (about a 4 hour drive but in Texas that’s almost neighbors!). As I was looking through the Twitter stream coming out of there I was envious of those in attendance but I was also hit by […]
That Left Out Feeling

http://www.flickr.com/photos/letsbook/ Ah, summer. That time when teachers pack up their classrooms and move to the pool or the beach. They are out there hiking, fly fishing, and sailing. Isn’t it great only working about 40 weeks of the year! That’s 12 weeks of kicking back and doing nothing. If only that […]