During the Thanksgiving break, I spent a lot of time thinking about Shankar Vedantam’s TED talk. The idea is simple: the person you are is not the same person you will be in 5 or 10 years, maybe even tomorrow. Given that we will all change in myriad ways, many unknowable to us, how can we plan for that future self? Shankar offers simple ideas: stay curious, add humility to your work, and to be brave in our choices. We often forget to look beyond the few minutes each day we have to reflect on our lives; what Shankar is proposing is that we think about the person we will become and start building towards that goal today. Simple, but not common.

Each month I help build out a newsletter for Utah’s Google Educator Group (GEGUtah). This month we have a great recap of a recent Google event in Utah, a GEGUtah Leader Spotlight, and some great resources from UEN, UCET, and the Utah Teacher Fellows.

I am a big fan of grants. They help teachers find the money to support their professional development and curricular needs. Whether you are looking at a grant for materials or to travel the world, there is a grant to help you fund your idea. However, I have found that many educators are unaware or under-aware of the grants available to them as educators. So, in order to help with awareness in Utah, I created this Wakelet collection that I add to a few times a year. It has national and local material and travel grants to apply for throughout the year. As a recipient of many grants, I would encourage any educator to find a grant that meets their needs and apply.

A few years ago I was lucky enough to be able to fund a trip to Chicago for ISTE. I was so excited to speak to new people, learn about everything I possibly could, and just explore EVERYTHING. Throughout the week I was able to meet up with a few new people including a bunch through the Global PLN. Erin, or her pen name E.E., led a lot of the excellent activities that week. Flash forward a few years and she has just released a new young adult novel and I was lucky enough to pull her into recording with Dani and me for UEN Homeroom. The episode explores how and why to write for students, exploring difficult topics with students, and how to be a global participant in your classroom.

Welcome to week three of #30daysofCanvas 2022! This week I am trying to incorporate some personal elements into each design. All five of these designs feature my photographs from the last few years. Join me for a tour around the world with the photos that I love to share with the larger community. As always, check them out below, click the gifs to head to Canvas Commons (login to Canvas first), and then download the design into your Canvas course. Remember that each of these designs is completely customizable by using Google Drawings or Canva, so feel free to edit them, but I would also love to see them. Share them back with me either via matt@teacherwinters.net or @TeacherWinters on Twitter. Enjoy!

Welcome back for week two of #30daysofCanvasHompages! This week I am digging into some diamonds and building some connections with the larger world through these designs. As promised there are five new designs below that will link you to a Canvas Commons page to upload the design into your course. Remember from there, you can either make a customized copy of the image using Google Drawings or there is a link to the Canva design to make your own copy of the gif version of the design for your classroom.

I love collages. Not just amazing collage art a la punk zines, but any collages that create new art and movement out of existing art. As a teenager I used to make collages on the walls of my room; I would cut up music magazine, old copies of National Geographic, and newspapers. These collages were often funny, serious, and irreverent all at the same time. I would sneak in jokes just for me and be amazed when friends recognized my jokes. I took a required art course in college and had the option to make my own final project in the course.

In August 2020, I had kind of an insane idea. I planned out to make 30 free Canvas homepage designs and put them out through my blog. At the time, like many, I was helping teachers to get prepared for the online component of learning for the school year and had spent a lot of time in Canvas training sessions, either presenting or learning. One thing that was fairly consistent was the emphasis on designing a homepage for your classes to meet their needs. This meant that many educators spent time designing their homepage and connecting design to the practical needs of their classrooms. However, many teachers needed support to meet the needs of an online learning component. So, I decided to use my burgeoning design skills with my Canvas knowledge to build out 30 homepage templates for teachers to use in their classrooms free of charge.

Maybe it is my nostalgia for the 90s or my years of overpaying for bits of plastic with music on them, but there is something to holding a physical media object in your hands. CDs, DVDs, and A-Tracks all feel different than the several thousand songs I have on my iPhone. A CD has artwork that people put work into, it has a lyric sheet, and sometimes, as noted by many a punk kid, other bands to check out and/or a reading list of all the amazing books and zines that informed the music.

In my last school, there were two science teachers that both had open play chess boards available to all students when they came into the class. They marked each day who made moves and when it was the teacher’s turn to move. It was a great way of exchanging with students and engaging them in the classroom beyond content. However, I always worried about those chess boards being moved, pieces tumbling to the ground, and losing their place. It happened on occasion and it was always an issue. So, why not move this online, and make it a customizable board.

If you have ever been on a video call with me, you know that I love music (also see my SongEDU series). My background is the fruit of years of dead format collecting and I love sharing it with anyone who jumps on a call with me. Music continues to get me through difficult days and fuel me on the good ones. So, while keeping that in mind, I wanted to develop a way for our students to share what they are listening to. I used to do this informally with students every day. “What’s are you listening to?” and they would immediately apologize, but then I would explain that I really wanted to know. Learned about some great artists that way, but I never really formalized it into a practice in my classroom.

There is a comic book store/game store near my house that I go to at least once every couple of months. Usually to check out missing issues of on going series that I need to read, but often I find myself looking for a long time at the vintage trading cards. They have this great section of vintage superhero and movie trading cards and, even though I know I don’t need them, I always pick up a pack. There was just something magical about picking up these little cellophane packages when I was a little kid and even as an adult popping those packages open is just a little too much fun. I always loved the vintage 90s Marvel cards. The artwork was always rad and before the internet it allowed me to know about all the characters without buying all the series.