Working on audio and producing podcasts has been one of my favorite professional activities for the past few years. Podcasts are places where anyone can tell their stories to a larger audience and be heard. I am lucky to get to produce this podcast with Kiera and this month’s podcast provides some great insight into one of the innovative teams in Utah: Utah State Board of Education’s Digital Teaching & Learning Team. As a team, they support so many activities throughout the state, but two key activities have played a key role in many educators’ lives: the Digital Teaching and Learning Grant, which has provided funding for Utah schools to provide updated tech to teachers and students, and the Personalized, Competency-Based Learning grant, which encourages student choice and voice in our schools. Check out the podcast to learn more about this group, their work, and how it has influenced technology use and culture in Utah schools.

There was a point reading Education Nation where all I could think about was Spring/Fall 2020. Milton Chen wrote Education Nation over a decade ago when many of the ideas he espoused (personalized learning, technology driven learning, blended learning) were radical. In fact he points, like Sir Ken Robinson, to the idea that ‘alternative’ schools should be the norm; meaning skills based, deep learning based instruction should take the place of traditional teacher as lecturer instruction. I would like to think that these radical ideas are now normalized and used nationwide to create the titular ‘Education Nation’. However, one lesson I took away in Spring/Fall 2020 was we are working to build our capacity for these ideals, but we are not quite there yet. The book ends on a optimistic note by examining what a potential future would look like where the practices he discusses are integrated into schools. Although that optimistic chapter was based in the 2020 school year, I agree that the picture he creates is one that educators are working towards and building capacity for.

One of the most striking things about Our Kids is just how honest it is about the conditions facing students, 1950s-2000s. Many times while reading through the myriad narratives and individual case studies I saw myself. Many of the narratives suggested hardships brought on by the internal and external issues facing the family structure, whether a familial loss, a lack of training for careers, drug/alcohol issues, and mental/physical illness. While reading I would drift a bit to think about the issues in my own life and my will to succeed, but I would also think about individuals that I grew up with and built communities around in my early life: were these the struggles they faced as well? Do they understand the prevailing winds in our US economy and history that may have influenced their success?

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.

In October, I was priviledged to present to our Utah C-Forum group about some creative projects that I have been a part of recently. First off, I taught a bit of photography including ghost photography, digital badges, and solarized portraits (example to the right). I also taught a bit about how to record and use podcasts in your classroom. It was such a great experience to share all the creative processes that I have been using in my work.

A few years ago I was fascinated with Adobe Character Animator. I had my yearbook students make their own avatars and then make photography explainer videos. It was just so much fun to play around with little cartoons and make a video with my voice. Adobe just upped the game with a web version that relies on an audio recording of your voice. It takes that recording, auto animates to your voice including arm and head movements. The whole process of making the video to the right took me about 10 minutes

Over the past few years, I have been privileged to be a part of the discussion surrounding Personalized, Competency-Based Learning in Utah. I started out as a teacher of record on the advisory committee meetings, now as a statewide trainer, I have been able to develop courses and lead sessions on PCBL and the framework within Utah and beyond. It is work that makes me proud to work in Utah education.

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.

Earlier this month Dani and I were lucky enough to sit down with Utah’s First Lady Abby Cox and her Deputy Director of First Lady Initiatives Sarah Allred about the Show Up for Teachers Conference. If you are a Utah educator and you did not attend the summer conference, make sure to look for announcements for next Summer’s conference. As you will hear in the podcast, the goal of Show Up for Teachers was to help them feel pampered. From point one entering the conference, I felt it.

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 months ago I was asked to start a new web series for Utah Education Network about Google tools teachers can use. Nicole, my producer, and I decided to make these videos fun, maybe a little goofy, but entertaining. This month, within a discussion about extension activities, I believe that I have achieved that goal. Just watch the first minute to see what I mean (really, as if you can’t tell by the Viking helmet). However, in the video I explore a few options for educators to use in their classes for early finishers for extension activities.

Last night, I was lucky enough to run a Twitter Space for the ISTE Community Leaders Twitter account with Erin Dowd. Erin had just finished her Expert Webinar on Creativity earlier in the day and it was so great to just sit and talk about creativity and how to share it with students in our classrooms. If you are unfamiliar with Twitter Spaces it works almost like a call-in radio show allowing a host to add speakers to talk and share their ideas with whoever is in the room. Shout out to Greg Bagby for jumping in last night with some great questions.

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.

About a year ago Adobe announced Project Shasta, an online podcasting tool for revising and editing podcasts. I joined immediately. I loved the simplicity and getting a transcript as I spoke, but I just didn’t want to add something that was in beta to my podcasting workflow. A few weeks back, Project Shasta was rebranded as Adobe Podcasts and is working towards being a full part of the Creative Cloud.

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.

If you ever spend time with me, I will probably wax poetic about the phrase, “Becoming”. I love the idea that no matter how good we are at our jobs or naturally talented at anything, we are constantly in the state of ‘becoming’, or trying to continually push ourselves and learn everything we can to be consistently better at what we do. That is why this weekly post is called “Developing Educator”. I don’t think anyone is perfect at teaching or the myriad works happening to support educators and students worldwide, so we all are developing, or becoming, educators as we work, build, connect, fail, and grow. It takes time and effort to build what we want to be, even if we may never get to perfection. We still strive to be better.

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.