Sunday, March 17, 2024

Flippity "March Madness" Bracket Template

Although I am not much of a sports fan, I can't help but notice the building excitement surrounding college basketball this time of year. With March Madness beginning, people everywhere are studying the tournament bracket and making their predictions.

Beyond sports though, the bracket format actually has a lot of educational applications for student learning. Besides college basketball teams, a wide range of topics can be placed into a bracket and then the students can compare each item to determine which they think best meets a criteria.

This can be a fun activity that ties into something they are already familiar with, while encouraging critical thinking skills and content knowledge.

There are many tools and templates for creating such a tournament bracket activity, but one excellent option is the free template provided by the Flippity website. In this blog post we will take a look at how to use the Flippity template for a March Madness style learning activity.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

My UCET-UELMA 2024 Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again be presenting at the UCET / UELMA 2024 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 19th and 20th.

I always look forward to an opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from others.

You can get all of the details about the conference including registrationpresenterssessions, and more on the conference website at:


Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting at UCET / UELMA 2024, along with any associated resources. Please feel free to join me for any of these sessions. I look forward to sharing, learning, and chatting with you!

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

AI Tools and Student Data Privacy

Artificial Intelligence tools can be such amazing time savers for educators, helping to generate assessments, create lesson plans, develop rubrics, re-level text passages, draft emails, and so much more.

However, in the excitement of running everything through an AI chatbot it can become easy to get careless with the information we share with it.

When educators use an AI Large Language Model chatbot in a K-12 educational setting, there are several types of information we should avoid submitting to protect student data privacy and to comply with laws such as FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) in the United States or GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the European Union.

In this blog post we will take a closer look at this issue including examples of data we should not share and suggestions for protecting data privacy while still being able to benefit from these helpful AI tools. As always though, I am exploring and learning about these topics right alongside you, so please share your ideas and suggestions.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

My MACUL 2024 Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again be presenting at the MACUL 2024 Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 13th through 15th.

I always look forward to an opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from others.

You can get all of the details about the conference including registration, presenters, sessions, and more on the conference website at:


Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting at MACUL 2024, along with any associated resources. Please feel free to join me for any of these sessions. I look forward to sharing, learning, and chatting with you!

Saturday, March 9, 2024

My NEOTech 2024 Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again be presenting at the NEOTech 2024 Conference in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio on March 12th.

I always look forward to an opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from others.

Here are the key details:
  • The conference is FREE!
  • You can attend in-person at NEOnet in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
  • Or you can watch the sessions virtually through a live Zoom stream
  • Or you can watch the recordings afterwards
Whichever way works for you, this is a great event that is not to be missed! You can learn more about the conference and register for FREE at: http://neotechconference.org/

Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting at NEOTech 2024, along with any associated resources. Please feel free to join me for any of these sessions. I look forward to sharing, learning, and chatting with you!

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

What's New in Google - February 2024

Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from February 2024, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our February 2024 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:
  • Connect Google-using educators
  • Share the latest Google Workspace news and features
  • Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
  • Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools
  • Ask questions and get answers
The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the February 2024 meeting:

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Responsible Use of AI in the Classroom

When it comes to artificial intelligence in education, I like to consider myself an optimistic realist. 

I see the positives and I see the negatives, but I believe that in the end we will be able to properly address the concerns, while using the benefits to improve teaching and learning for educators and students.

Many times I talk about the benefits of AI, which you can see in many of the videos and resource documents I share. For example see:
On the other hand I also address the potential misuses and concerns about AI, such as in my session:
Recently though I had the chance to dive a little deeper into what it means to use AI responsibly in the classroom. Specifically this dealt with addressing legitimate concerns about bias and inaccuracies that can come up when doing AI activities with students.

As a result I took some time to expand and revise the directions I provide to teachers for doing projects such as the AI roleplaying interview or AI debate activities. I also had the privilege of speaking about these ideas in more depth on a recent episode of the "Shukes and Giff" podcast.

See below for all the details on my updated teacher guidelines, as well as the recording from the podcast discussion. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on these topics, as I am learning right along with you as we explore how to use AI responsibly, but powerfully, in the classroom.