ronnieburt

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What Mexico Taught Me About Common Core and Standardized Testing

Originally posted on TheEdublogger. In the Fall of 2006, just a few weeks after getting married, my wife and I packed two suitcases each and headed to Mexico. We both had found jobs at an English speaking International School. I was to be the only math teacher for grades 10-12, teaching 6 different courses from Algebra I through AP Calculus. If you’ve taught before, you know that 2 or 3 “preps”…

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A Whirlwind Trip Exploring Education In Israel

Originally posted on TheEdublogger. Last month, I had the honor of participating in a week-long tour of the education system in Israel. The tour was organized by the non-profit and non-political organization, Vibe Israel. In this post, I hope to summarize the overall experience, including a day-by-day recap of the schools, companies, and people we met. In the coming weeks, look out for…

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A Mistake, An Apology, And A Lesson On Feedback

Originally posted on TheEdublogger. Earlier today I sent an email out to the nearly one million educators on our Edublogs list. The subject line had an oh so embarrassing mistake. Here it is: Your invited! Free course on blogging with students Of course you caught it immediately. I did too, as soon as it landed in my inbox. Unfortunately for me, by that time, there was no way to ‘unsend’.…

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10 Lessons in 10 Years: How One Edtech Startup Grew to 5 Million Blogs Around the World

In August, Edublogs will be celebrating its tenth anniversary. We’ve been humbled by the user base we’ve amassed over the past decade, including five million blogs across our networks in nearly every country in the world, with almost 100 million unique visitors per month. Our first homepage was all kinds of awful. Along the way, we’ve learned lots about becoming a successful edtech business.…

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Why I Bought My Kids Domain Names for Christmas

Looking for a last minute stocking stuffer for your kids? I have a weird idea!

Looking for a last minute stocking stuffer for your kids? Why not give them something that’ll last longer than candy. I just bought my 3 their own domain name. Here’s why: Domains are becoming an important part of digital identity. I see this as a digital investment. They can learn digital skills without even realizing it. We can talk about data ownership and digital footprints. Better than…

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If shipping product updates were an Olympic sport, the Gravatar team would be taking the Gold! Tons of new and improved stuff this month. Including a brand new home page, and man do I love a home page refresh. https://blog.gravatar.com/2024/07/31/better-links-simple-messaging-developer-tools-and-more/

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😲 I took a photo of kid’s school supply list, used Android’s text from image tool, pasted into Google Keep AI, and I had a list in Google Keep in seconds. Love this!

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Embrace The Generalist Doers, Too

As a kid, I dreamt of being the best at something. That didn't happen. And I'm glad.

When I was little, and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I didn’t always have a clear answer. Sometimes, I said I wanted to be a marine biologist, other times a lawyer. But I don’t remember ever saying what I truly wanted to be out loud. Frankly, I used to think about it all the time. I was actually kind of obsessed with it, but the older I get, the more I’m glad that it never…

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The Places I've Been, The Places I'll Go

Finally found a way to log the cities and countries I've visited...

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have been able to travel more than my fair share. I’ve been wanting a way to keep track of all cities/states in the US and countries I’ve visited, and I’ve been annoyed that my Google Maps timeline only goes back to ~2010. However, today I figured out a hack and will share it here! How do I add locations to my Google Maps timeline? If you can remember back to the…

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Meet Ranger — My Biggest Challenge

New year, new dog! Challenge accepted.

This post is part of the Bloganuary challenge hosted by WordPress.com. What are your biggest challenges? We lost our 15-year-old family dog in December of 2022. For the past year, our three kids have been begging for a new dog. Truthfully, I’ve really enjoyed the freedom to travel, the lack of pet expenses, and the cleaner house. But for Christmas, we brought home a new puppy that we couldn’t…

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Are Teachers Replaceable? My Review Playing With Khan Academy's New AI

I've been playing with Khan Academy's AI. Man I wish it existed when I was a teacher! Here's my review...

Another day, another AI. I’m not yet sold that chat is as good of a user experience as many are making it out to be. This is especially true for teaching and learning — where the best teacher asks good questions. And students often don’t know what they don’t know well enough to ask the right questions. I’ve experimented with using AI as a tutor with Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s…

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Meet the Four Artemis Astronauts Who Will Fly Around the Moon

Today, we revealed the four astronauts who will fly around the Moon during the Artemis II mission, scheduled to launch in 2024. Get to know them:

Christina Koch

Meet the first member of our Artemis II crew: mission specialist Christina Koch. Koch visited the International Space Station in 2019, where she participated in the first all-woman spacewalk with Jessica Meir. She began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center.

Jeremy Hansen

Representing the Canadian Space Agency is Jeremy Hansen from London, Ontario. Col. Hansen was a fighter pilot with Canadian Armed Forces before joining the Canadian Space Agency, and currently works with NASA on astronaut training and mission operations. This will be Col. Hansen’s first mission in space.

Victor Glover

Victor Glover is our Artemis II pilot. Glover is part of our 2013 class of NASA astronauts and was the pilot for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission. He’s logged 3,000 flight hours in more than 40 different aircraft.

Reid Wiseman

...and rounding out our Artemis II crew: mission commander Reid Wiseman. Wiseman lived and worked aboard the International Space Station as a flight engineer in 2014. He also commanded the undersea research mission NEEMO21, and most recently served as Chief of the NASA astronauts.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

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Introducing The Sensei + WordPress.com Bundle

Huge news! Save big and launch faster with this new and exciting offer.

Save big and launch faster with this new and exciting offer. We know that launching a new website for an LMS can be overwhelming, with numerous decisions to make, such as choosing a hosting provider and figuring out how to manage courses, payments, backups, and more. That’s why we’ve put together a one-stop solution that saves you time and money. We call it the Sensei Bundle. The Sensei Bundle…

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When you accidentally order 52 tortillas in the grocery delivery.

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A collaboration masterpiece with my two-year-old daughter.

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A Girl Scout always knocks on my door selling her cookies just as I've gotten into better habits after the sugar addiction of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. But I can't say no to those $1 per cookie Lemonades...