This semester at Columbia I am facilitating two courses with two different course management systems. At Columbia's School for Professional Studies, we're using the Canvas LMS. At Teachers College, we're using iTunesU. It's actually been quite helpful to be working in theses systems in parallel and understanding the affordances and limitations of each system, especially when viewed through the lens of teaching and course style. Right now I am definitely enjoying the iTunesU aspect more as it is challenging me to be more creative with how not only the platform but the tool that it runs on (the iPad) is used in the design of activities and sharing of materials. With Canvas, it is required to think of the "lowest common denominator" as far as what else students might have access to (a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, an internet browser, and not much else).

The pre-order page for Blending Leadership: Six Simple Beliefs for Leading Online and Off is up on Wiley's website and includes some very generous feedback from thinkers that Steve and I greatly respect. The book cover is also finalized. Image is below.

There are 5 tracks here, 4 which were recorded by my 2 year old son and then 'quantized' on Garageband for iOS. The drums, bass, and electric guitar were quantized to 1/16 notes and the electric piano was quantized to 1/4 notes. I then exported the track to my Mac, extended the "A part" and "B part" and added a live guitar track. It actually sounds pretty good considering it's basically an open time signature.

One of the first use cases I found for screencasting almost 10 years ago was to record short videos for my students to view (via a substitute teacher) when I was called for jury duty in New York City. I remember it very clearly. I recorded a video modeling the solutions to one of the more difficult problems from the homework in an Algebra class and then I had a short video that modeled a variation on factoring quadratics that was new to the students. From that point on they just worked in small groups on some problems and tried to puzzle through them. When I returned to class after two days (I didn't get selected for a trial) the students said they enjoyed the experience though I could not see myself making my entire class structured this way. It did lead to me having the students create explanations of problems which then of course fed to my interest in screencasting as a means for demonstrating understanding. Below is an example of how a teacher might record SHORT videos to support instruction when he/she is not able to be with students whether it is before, during, or after class.

I am going to be co-facilitating a blended course at Columbia's School of Professional Studies with the Dean of the School and corporate learning expert Dr. Jason Wingard. I've started reading all of the texts that students taking the course will also be reading and have found. As I read, I have been taking my notes as sketches, practicing the technique Brad Ovenell-Carter used when doing the illustrations for Blending Leadership (which is now available for pre-order, by the way!) Below is an example of a sketch.

Bass & Guitars: Me
Drums: Garageband
Synthesizers: My Kids

At Douglas Kiang and Beth Holland's session at the EdTechTeacher Innovation Summit, they asked participants to get into small groups and try to "remix" the traditional game of Rock Paper, Scissors. Many people decided to add twists to when there is a tie. My group got so far as to say that if there is a tie, the 'tying object' gets removed but then some sort of bad consequence happens for both people if there is a tie of the remaining 'dominant' object. We didn't get as far to figure out what that was. We also considered an ante structure whereas a tie builds up the pot. Fun way to get thinking.

Today in San Diego I facilitated an iLab session called an EE MasterClass. Below are the slides used during the session and here is a link to the downloadable slide deck if you want to use it yourself. It showcase both Interactive Whiteboard and Collaborative Whiteboard.