A hotly contested Student Government (STUGO) election this year brought out the best in our student body in Sept. 2023. Leaders like Gavin, Ryland, Adrien and Alivia were ready to hit the ground running. So for this episode, I decided to pull them in for this special episode to talk about their ideas and how they will represent the middle school. By the way, three of them are familiar with being in front of a mic - having hosted student podcasts at the end of the year in my class, in 2022. A pro...
Oct 17, 2023•20 min•Season 1Ep. 45
So much goes on in a school, we sometimes take these things for granted. In my class, there's a constant flurry of activity after school in robotics and eSports, besides tutoring, and students popping in to do homework, quizzes, and edit eBooks. And outside these walls, too! So in this episode I wanted to put together a collection of recordings I made, that capture the force field I encounter every day when I open these doors, and carry with me when I leave. Including a snapshot of an amazing sp...
Sep 22, 2023•15 min•Season 1Ep. 44
In this episode, my last podcast for the school year, I invite you to listen to the best student podcasts out of my computer lab. You'll be amazed at the topics and the discussion that ensues. Listen to Xander, Braxton and Anthony discuss social media (they called it "What's wrong with this generation?" ), Josh and his 9th grade brother Adam discuss coding ( "Coding Games" ). Gavin interviews 9th grader Andrew about the airforce program known as 'CAP' ( "A Cadet's guide to CAP" ). Ava and Georgi...
May 19, 2023•22 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Being a teacher, I’ve heard it said all too often — “Schools don’t teach these anymore!” Or that what’s being taught in schools is outdated. In this podcast you'll hear Dave Conelias talk about what school can and should do. Dave, founder of MilestoneC, an organization that helps bridge that gap between the supply (schools) and demand (industry) speaks his mind about the good, the bad, and the overhyped in tech. I asked him to weigh in on AI and other emerging tech since I interviewed him a few ...
Apr 28, 2023•11 min•Season 1Ep. 41
In my 40th podcast, I wanted to try out a new way to record it with a remote guest: Podcastle. It's a web-based platform that records multiple voices - a bit like Zoom. My guest, was Don Wilde, a software engineer and entrepreneur who once worked at Intel. Don helped me with my Robotics team many years ago. His insights into software and technology through the years has been truly inspiring. In this podcast, we talk about the inherent bias in software that doesn't happen by accident. The discuss...
Mar 22, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 40
This short episode is based on a recording of a talk by dance teacher Melanie Ellis, who spoke to our students during our morning assembly, Opening Ceremony at Benjamin Franklin High School. Ellis draws on an anecdote culled from from construction, from the book, " The Anatomy of Peace ," to explore what it means to gain wisdom through mistakes. The idea of having 'to justify' something has two dimensions. The first, which comes from construction, is about making something right. To justify or...
Mar 19, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Another live podcast! This time with three members of the cast of Beauty and the Beast. Josh Williams , Preston Hilton and Cammie Roberts . This follows the highly acclaimed High School musical in February with a cast of hundreds, fabulous sets, stunning vocals and a our amazing orchestra.
Mar 08, 2023•15 min
It's about two months since AI apps sprayed their pixie dust all across the Internet. The impact of AI on education --and all content -- is a reality we must face. So I wanted to check things out and run these apps through some testing. I wanted to check my own biases, too, and get to know what it content will look like. I put ChatGPT through several tests, and also the design app, Dall.E. In this podcast I explain how these panned out, and how we teachers are approaching this new wave. For now ...
Feb 03, 2023•19 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Over the past five years, my computer class has expanded into so many other areas that I I sometimes wonder if it should be rebranded as a Communications class. This struck me as I was grading my finals this week, wrapping things up. With about 125 students across six classes my time seems to be devoted to (a) Reading and analyzing their eBooks (b) Mixing down and uploading their class podcasts (c) Planning a photography 101 class for the last day of school. That, in addition to teaching keyboar...
Dec 15, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Another live podcast inc the gym! Trinity Wright and I co-host this podcast. At the table is the new Assistant Principal of Benjamin Franklin High School, Kristine Pullins. Also on the show is senior at large, Vance McMillen. There's plenty of advice to go around, in keeping with the morning Opening Ceremony, during which this podcast was recorded! This podcast is also featured on Fully Charged , the other podcast I produce at the school....
Nov 30, 2022•13 min•Season 1Ep. 35
This podcast was recorded before a live audience in the gym during 'Opening Ceremony,' our morning assembly. It was a first for me, to record a 'live' show. I asked Jessica Keaster to co-host it with me because of two special guests on this show: Reina Ley and Landon Madsen . Reina was on NBC's The Voice , earlier this month (Sept 2022). Also this month, Landon performed at our talent show, Franklin's Got Talent , and won third place. Both performances revealed something about all our students -...
Oct 03, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 34
What could Steve Jobs, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and Voting have in common? You'd be surprised! My guest on this show is Steve Niemeyer, a math teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School. He recently conducted an impromptu 'experiment' at our morning assembly that he hosted. Mr. Niemeyer demonstrated how a very small percentage of people end up making decisions on behalf of the majority, especially if the majority is apathetic, doesn't voice their opinion, or exercise their civic right. The l...
Sep 01, 2022•15 min•Season 1Ep. 30
How many borders have you crossed? Author Salman Rushdie, who was brutally attacked on stage earlier this month, knows a lot about borders. His books explore the concept of borders; he’s lived them. He often reminded us that we don’t simply cross borders; sometimes the border crosses us. I know a thing about borders. On a train, crossing from Germany to Czechoslovakia, stopped by heavily armed border guards. In Northern Ireland...But what about borders that are not just geographical lines in the...
Aug 24, 2022•10 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Queen. Humperdinck. Even Eilish? The record industry is on a roll. What's with this vinyl LP trend? Why the throwback to old music formats, even while Apple Music and Spotify dominate? There's something about vinyl. Just ask Taylor Swift, or Billie Eilish who have released new albums on technology that goes back to Thomas Edison. It's good for business. I've seen it said that vinyl sales spiked another 61 percent and topped $1 billion for the first time in more than 35 years. In this podcast I'l...
Jun 18, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In a classical school, fine arts is often seen as the icing on the cake, especially here at Benjamin Franklin High School. Our music program attracts thousands of people, especially this year, with our a new Franklin Center For The Performance Arts. This podcast looks at how the music and theater program come together as a 'fine art.' Specifically, I dropped in on one of Mrs. Haylee Otero's classes as she put together the annual choir concert. It was just a few weeks after the musical, Bye Bye B...
May 27, 2022•23 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Students file into a classroom. Outside, taped to the teacher's door are handmade posters praising the 'Chairman.' Others condemn the ‘dictator.’ Welcome to a history class - a simulation -- under the strict rule of Chairman Greer. Robert Greer is teaching a unit on totalitarianism in an unconventional way. He has got his 7th grade students to participate in the simulation in which there are spies, a Clothing Officer, and a Propaganda Officer. Students can earn and lose points for their particip...
May 03, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 25
On this podcast I feature a special guest, former marine and writer Elliot Ackerman, who co-authored the book, "2034: A Novel about the next world war." This was a few weeks before the war in Ukraine broke out. So for my Writing and Publishing class at Benjamin Franklin High School , I got my students to pay closer attention to how process the war. What does war mean to us as writers, but also as media consumers. We are no longer --and cannot be -- bystanders in world events. I talk of how other...
Apr 10, 2022•9 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Students in Writing and Publishing class comment on a writer, as she fled from Ukraine.
Apr 06, 2022•4 min
Jargon and gobbledygook plagues our language. In this podcast Angelo Fernando, who teaches " Writing and Publishing In The Digital Age " talks of some great role models for writers, and how to pay attention to language. In a computer and technology class we can't escape terms such as 'cloud computing,' data mining, KPIs, wireframes.. even those arcane acronyms such as DNS, KPIs, and CTRs. Do you catch yourself dropping bits of jargon in your conversation? or do you roll your eyes when someone do...
Mar 30, 2022•10 min•Season 1Ep. 22
If you look around you, many features of new technology borrow --or steal - from old technologies. Email is a classic example. It's icons and methods are leftovers from this. The envelope, and the paperclip for example. In other apps, the Floppy disc is the standard icon when it comes to saving something. In my class on Writing and Publishing, we still use notebooks, pen and paper, even though the class is computer lab. In this podcast, my guest Evo Terra, a veteran podcaster, talks about how im...
Feb 16, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Cybersecurity, to simplify it a bit, is all about the good guys (or white hats) going after the bad guys. Actually, the industry calls them Bad Actors. Actors? For guys who could bring down airplanes, or cripple a city’s power grid, that's an odd label. But it’s a real thing. If you’ve heard of cyber intruders hacking, say, a webcam in a child’s bedroom, or the term Zoombombing (where someone could crash a Zoom conference call, or take control of the microphone) then you would be thankful that t...
Dec 23, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 20
This semester, my Junior High students produced more than a hundred eBooks, and published them on the eBook site, Flipsnack. You can find them here . They came up with their own titles. Though they were free to choose any genre, any subject, there was a wide variety of non-fiction this year. Let me give you some context: The eBook project is their capstone project to prove that they understand the applications, and their common document formatting features. By that I mean layout, design, fonts, ...
Dec 16, 2021•10 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Don Meyer is a man of many parts. In his youth he grabbed his a guitar and lugged along his Bridgestone mountain bike to spend time in Europe. His plan? To spend a year in Italy. Working on his Master’s degree he felt the tug of renaissance literature — John Webster and Shakespeare in particular. “I just wondered,” he says, “why Italy in particular, held such sway in renaissance literature.” He had noticed that so many playwrights in England used Italian plots, characters, and settings and it pi...
Nov 15, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Sweden’s major export for me was always ABBA. Until Ikea came along. Now Spotify steals the limelight. Sweden’s major export! It’s a service that’s in just 23 countries shy of the United Nations. Its 2,000 plus employees are in 16 countries - they speak 21 languages -. But unlike other foreign-born apps that landed on our phones (Tik-Tok, for instance) Spotify brings with it the company’s defining values: collaboration and fun! It’s very different from the cultural DNA of, say, iTunes, or Pandor...
Nov 10, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 18
When you hear the word cloud, what immediately comes to mind? Perhaps iCloud, if you’re an Apple user. Or Cumulus clouds, perhaps? But there's a different kind of cloud - one that doesn’t even exist - the Oort Cloud - and a story of how exciting science can be. Stephanie Quick’s class is an elective. At 6:30 in the morning! This period is known as a ‘zero-hour’ for a reason. When I walked in, the air was thick with magnetic fields, and planetary bodies. Soon students were discussing black holes ...
Nov 05, 2021•15 min•Season 1Ep. 17
For my Technology Speaker series at Benjamin Franklin High School, I kicked off the semester with a speaker from Google. Patrick Krecker . It was timely as I had just completed teaching units on the roots in the Net. How none of what we access on the Web (or Google) would be possible if not for a man named Tim Berners-Lee. Patrick has a gift for explaining complex ideas with metaphors. He talked about security holes, and the ongoing pursuit hackers and the role of ‘white hats.’ I was glad he per...
Oct 19, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Facebook , it was revealed las week, has been tearing communities apart. It ignored the red flags that showed that its platforms were having a disastrous impact on countries and not just communities. Countries! Whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee of Facebook, brought to the surface many concerns we discuss in class, and what teens, pre-teens and families may or may not realize. In this podcast I focus on what the term 'Civic Integrity' (a term Haugen used) means, and six takeaway poi...
Oct 13, 2021•8 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Isura Silva uses two phones but Twitter is not on any one of them. He considers himself a ‘voracious’ consumer of podcasts but is careful about staying too long on the grid. Isura is my kind of tech guy. He’s certainly no technophobe, nor is he a cheerleader of everything that Silicon Valley burps up. His insights into why technology could do our bidding, and not control our lives is refreshing. In this podcast Angelo Fernando picks his brain on how he got to this place -and into AI. What's behi...
Sep 28, 2021•23 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Robert Lasco is a science teacher with an eclectic background - he has visited more than a hundred countries, jumped out of an airplane, and served the country. He has the demeanor of a Dickensian character, but the mind of a scientist. Oh, and he happens to know cryptography! In this podcast I pick his brains on why science matters, and how it fits into classical education.
Aug 10, 2021•27 min•Season 1Ep. 14
I recorded this episode during the summer break, on a topic close to my heart. Well, a topic on which I occasionally weigh in. We teachers tend to reward clarity; the red marker is brought out when we spot clichés and redundancies. But here's the thing. We - yes we grown-ups - are often tempted to toss in jargon into everyday speech. Even I catch myself in jargonizing mode. So in this episode I wanted to talk about the current crop of jargon that has been finding its way into our conversations. ...
Jul 20, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 13
