The Thinking Stick

Jeff Utecht – Educator, Consultant, Author

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  • searchstory

    Using Search Stories to Teach Search Skills

    Last year one of the best ads released during the SuperBowl was this simple ad by Google Shortly after the release of this video Google asked you to make your own search stories. Simply go to http://www.youtube.com/searchstories and start creating your story. What a great way to teach students search skills. Give students and start and end point. For example in 3rd Grade I might give students: Rocks...
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  • 1517793269_0c24dd9a7b_m.jpg

    At the speed of a click

    (Scribefire, my blogging platform finally updated to work with Firefox Beta 4 so now I'm back!) I had the most incredible experience today. First of all I'm loving working with the high school kids. They just 'get it'. I don't have to explain things at a very deep level and we can just fly through the technology stuff and get down to business. And when I mean fly....I mean.....at the speed of a click. Today...
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  • Facebook

    It's time to face the facts Facebook is the new Google It has become both a noun and a verb With over 400 million users it is the largest social-network on the web Everyone, including parents and teachers are already using it Parents are getting younger......they get it Facebook has replaced e-mail for many people Facebook has more privacy settings then most Internet sites Not using Facebook to...
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  • 4344960203_da55d29ca0_m

    Getting Started in Ed Tech

    Everyone has their signs for when summer is over and a new school year is upon us. For me that sign is a 17+ hour trip from Seattle back to Bangkok. Plenty of time to change your state of mind and a clear sign that the new school year is just around the corner. This summer while in the States I had the opportunity to meet many new comers into ed tech. It seems more and more schools are starting to understand that...
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  • Tracking Independent Reading in high school

    As I started talking about in my last post, we're in the process of setting every high school student up with a blog to use as an e-portfolio. To help you wrap your head around why we're using blogs as our container for this, I suggest downloading and reading the Free PDF I produced at the end of last year. Once you wrap your head around the idea that these blogs are just a container that we can link into and out...
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Flickr ID: Wader

Do you support People or Platforms?

Mar 20th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Random Thoughts

10 comments

As I sit here in my hotel room an hour away from starting my official Apple Distinguished Educators (ADE) training this question keeps popping into my head.

Do you support People or Platforms?

Flickr ID: Wader

It’s an interesting question…that I continue to reflect on. We all have strengths and weaknesses in the computer programs/platforms that we know. But do we some time support the platform rather than the people?

Is there a difference?

Can you support people without supporting a platform?

Just some questions that are running through my head as I start my 5 day training on everything Apple.

More >
ADE, apple, conference, Questions
My Travels

Conference Week

Mar 17th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Int. Education

4 comments

So let me cut through the smoke and mirrors and really tell you why this coming week is important to me.

Simple….on Tripit.com I’m trailing David Warlick in the number of countries I’ve traveled to this year. As an International Educator….that’s just wrong!

I won’t pass David this coming week but I’ll tie him going into the opening of Baseball Season and we all know from there it’s a whole new ball game.

This coming week I’ll start my travels in Singapore where I’ll be brainwashed attending the Apple Distinguished Educators Asia Institute. I was suppose to attend here in Bangkok last year, but thanks to More >

ADE2010, conference, conferences, earcos, ETC2010, NESA2010
IMG_0717.jpg

Blogging Process – Find Your Flow

Mar 14th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Random Thoughts

11 comments

Brian Grenier wrote a blog post back in 2007 that I think I missed where he asks the question how do you write a blog post?

Miguel Guhlin just wrote a great post in response to Brian’s thoughts. In my COETAIL course yesterday we had a great discussion around how blogging was going for those in the class. All of them just 5 weeks into blogging. It was interesting to hear that many of them say blogging as publishing. That they had a lot of drafts waiting to be published but they wanted them to be “perfect” or “publishable”.

“The thought that other can read More >

blogging, Chrome, COETAIL, Flow, google, scribefire
ISB 1:1 Timeline

The Next Phase of Technology at ISB

Mar 4th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Int. Education

6 comments

ISB 1:1 Timeline

Last week our IT Director, Chad Bates, gave a presentation to the ISB School Board outlining the next phase of technology use at ISB. The phase includes a plan to go 1:1 starting next year with grade 6 students.

It’s an exciting time to be at ISB and I for one am looking forward to rolling out the 1:1 program over the next couple years.

As part of his presentation Chad went over the history of technology implementation at ISB over the past 10 years. As I sat there reflecting on how far we’ve come with technology in just the past More >

1:1, isb, laptops, Technology

Facebook, Privacy, and Cyber bullying

Feb 20th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Random Thoughts

46 comments

Just returning from a full day of thinking and teaching starting with Saturday school and talking to some students who got in trouble for cyber bullying on Facebook. I love getting the opportunity to talk to students about their social world and continue to find it fascinating on their views of what they consider “their world”.

My wife, being the school counselor, had the job of teaching Saturday school today and together we came up with a plan that we hoped was A) Educational B) Not so fun….after all this is Saturday school.

I only had the opportunity to spend an hour More >

Cyber Bullying, facebook, isb, Middle School, Privacy
Google Chrome Logo

My Google Chrome Extensions

Feb 18th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Random Thoughts

6 comments

Last week Google Chrome updated itself on my MacBook and now allows Chrome extensions. I’ve almost completely moved over to Chrome as the speed of the browser just blows both Firefox and Safari away in my experience…and the way it handles gmail, gdocs, gwave, and the rest of G is just smooth. What’s been holding me back from making the full switch were the Firefox extensions that I have come to rely on. But now that I have most of them, I use Chrome 90% of the time.

Extensions slow a browser down as it’s extra code that needs to be loaded, More >

Chrome, extensions, Google Chrome
Google Buzz

Bring Buzz to Edu Apps

Feb 17th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Random Thoughts

7 comments

Google Buzz has been out for a while now and has been slowly making its mark on the social-networking scene.

As I’ve been investigating Buzz (a.k.a. playing with it…but investigating sounds so much more important!) and how it changes social-networking, it hit me the other day how this might just be the communication tool I’ve been looking for in schools ever sense Twitter came out.

I’m hoping that Google brings Buzz to the Education Apps soon. There are a lot of schools (including mine) that are embracing Google Apps and taking a serious look at using the set of tools as the default More >

google, Google Apps, Google Buzz, isb, Twitter
Flickr ID: ArabCrunch

Proper typing out, thumb typing in

Feb 12th

Posted by Jeff Utecht in Random Thoughts

8 comments

Flickr ID: ArabCrunch

Just as I’m having conversations again around why we should or shouldn’t teach typing in our schools technology has once again moved us into another typing realm. The thumb typing.

I’ve watched more videos than I care to count about the iPad (my thoughts here) and in a recent survey to our students here at ISB revealed that almost 70% of middle school and high school students have either a Blackberry or iPhone. Second hand iPhones are being sold on the cheap at the moment at our school, as high school students trade them in for Blackberries and the More >

BlackBerry, education, ipad, iphone, sms, texting, typing
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