bradshreff
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Appearances
Below is a list of locations and recordings where you can hear me talking more about education, technology, and professional development. And usually some ridiculousness or another. Teach Better Talk Podcast – You’re Doing Enough In 2020, the Teach Better Talk Podcast invited me on to talk about failure, finding the good in emergency remote…
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Three Biggest Data Mistakes School Leaders Make
As school leaders, we know that data drives decision-making. From tracking student progress to identifying intervention needs, our spreadsheets hold the key to unlocking student success. But too often, we find ourselves stuck in inefficient workflows, spending more time organizing, manipulating, and simplifying data than actually using it to make impactful decisions. Over the last…
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Podcast Archive
All episodes of The Planning Period Podcast are still available to listen to. Listen to me interview some of the biggest and most interesting people in education and ask them my three questions.
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My Mental Health Journey
To hear a recording of me reading this post, checkout the podcast episode. Today, I want to tell you a story. Spoiler Alert: I have anxiety and depression. I haven’t said that in public before. In fact, I’ve only said that to about five people in my life at all. I didn’t know I had…
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#ISTE19 – Virtual Reality Activities that Engage, Enhance, and Extend Student Learning
My next session for the conference is by former podcast guest, and friend, Jon Spike presenting on VR. He started with an intro activity where he had 3 volunteers join him for a game of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, where Jon is wearing the headset and looking at a bomb he has to defuse.…
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#ISTE19 – Schools Often Perpetuate Inequity by Cheyenne Batista
Monday is here, my own presentation is done, so I can really enjoy and learn now! Cheyenne Batista is the founder of Firefly Worldwide, a global consulting firm focused on helping schools and organizations with improving equity within their organization. She opened the session by specifying that schools perpetuate inequity unintentionally. This is not the…
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#ISTE19 – IGNITE Round 1
IGNITE sessions are always my favorite part of ISTE. Seeing these typically polished, organized, and fast presentations are perfect for my general lack of focus. Dr. Virginia Duncan presented on The Edge of Epiphany. She spoke about how flawed the term “think outside the box” is in professional learning. In her terms, there is no…
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#ISTE19 – Digital Differentiation with Learning Menus with Kasey Bell
It’s #ISTE19 time, and that means I get to start learning from amazing educators back-to-back. I’m starting my learning journey this year with the amazing Kasey Bell presenting on Learning Menus. As usual, Kasey owns the stage with her soothing southern accent and TONS of shared resources, mixed with hidden Google tips and tricks. Link…
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Master’s Program Paper – My Leadership Philosophy
Application Assignment To try to articulate exactly what makes a great leader is a complicated, if not an impossible task. From my experience, the job of a leader, and especially of a principal, consists of countless priorities, fires to put out, and an endless juggling act of various stakeholders. Even with that in mind, thinking…
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Master’s Program Paper – Professional Biography
As I announced on Episode 75 of the Planning Period Podcast, I have started a Master’s Program in Educational Leadership. As part of this process, I will be posting to the blog many of my completed assignments, research papers, and thoughts about class. This, is the first of those posts, my Professional Biography (school names…
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Getting Personal – A Story of Life Meets Classroom
My mom died last week. I had just finished story time with my son and was prepping a slow cooker lasagna for tomorrow’s dinner when I got the first call. 8:30 pm on a Tuesday, and it was Uncle Bill calling. There had been some kind of accident at work and she was bleeding internally.…
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Students Will Never Understand Their Place
If you listen to my podcast, you’ve probably heard that I am going to a new school this year, and in my area, students are back on campus today. I have been lucky enough in my 10 or so years teaching to have some wonderful students. My last group of students at the high school…
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#ISTE18 – IGNITE Round 2
Kyle Bowen kicked off the session talking about Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching. He had some great points about what AI really is, and ultimately shared some experiments he is working on with others at Penn State. The huge takeaway is his slides! The graphic work was excellent, from the Maslow’s Hierarchy with…
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#ISTE18 – IGNITE Presentations, Round 1
If you have followed my ISTE journey over the past few years, you know that I am obsessed with IGNITE sessions. This series of 5 minute presentations are fast paced looks at ideas presented quickly and effectively. In these 5 minute presentations, the presenter has 20 slides which advance automatically every 15 seconds. This first…
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#ISTE18 – Top Tech Tools for Teachers with Dan Kreiness
It is officially ISTE 2018, and that means I get to start learning from some amazing educators! My first session of the conference is Top Tech Tools for Teachers presented by Dan Kreiness. Let me start with that ISTE does not have its organization on point this morning. These are the People’s Choice sessions, which…
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My Time on A Word In Progress
After I asked him to be on my show (Episode 19), Derek Rhodenizer asked me to be on his show, A Word In Progress. This show is all about talking in absurd detail about specific words that educators throw around, but often we don’t have a solid definition of what those words really mean. Ultimately,…
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#MADPD Building Staff Morale as an Instructional Coach
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting a session on building morale during #MADPD. MADPD (or Make a Difference PD) is an full day online conference for professional learning put together by Peter Cameron and Derek Rhodenizer. This year, over 100 teachers presented either a session on a topic they were interested in, or a…
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Pursuing Survival… Guest Post by Kristen Iannuzzi
“For decades, terrorists and mass shooters trod their separate paths. Then Columbine. Eric and Dylan fused them. School murders had been done; Eric envisioned a school catastrophe. A new template was born. The spectacle murder. Performance without a cause. Just demonstration of personal power.” -David Cullen, Columbine I was a freshman in high school when…
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Disconnected Day
Anyone who know me, knows I’m a technophile. I’m an instructional technology coach, a constant Twitter user, and podcaster. I Snapchat most of my life, text friends, have multiple active Voxer groups, and take tons of pictures of my son. My phone is in my hand constantly. Last week, I popped into my friend’s office…
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My Time on the Personal Playlist Podcast
I had the amazing honor of being asked to be on Noa Daniel’s Personal Playlist Podcast (BTW, notice I didn’t say “recently”. Because this post is 4 months past due. Because I’m awful). While Noa is a phenomenal and inspiring educator (if you doubt me, check out Episode 23 of my show with her), her…
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Google Add-On: Class Folder Creator
As a teacher at a one-to-one school who uses G Suite and Canvas as an Learning Management System (LMS), few things are more annoying than the “You must request permission” screen. This happens a lot for my teachers and I. You give an assignment description on Canvas, the student creates their work in a Google…
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On a Field Trip with My Son
My son’s kindergarten class went on a field trip to a farm recently, and I had the chance to chaperone the trip. First of all, it was really interesting being a chaperone for another school, another group of kids. With kindergarten field trips, the ratios are something around 5 kids to each chaperone. With that…
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I’m Done Holding My Tongue In Class
It only seems fair to start this post with an admission. I am a gun owner. In the past, I was even a member of the NRA. I was born in Georgia, have family that still lives on hunt-able land there, have gone hunting myself. I’ve made the arguments myself that people having guns makes us…
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I Am A Valuable Brand
Ok, so admittedly, that title makes me a little uncomfortable. It’s a strange statement, and gives me the impression of someone with an inflated ego and unhealthy dose of arrogance. But, how am I wrong? Dr. Will’s words on Episode 30 of my show about teachers needing to make their money have been bouncing around…
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I Know Just Enough To Fake It
I am an expert in nothing. Popular advice about building an online presence, a blog, a podcast, or even a twitter account, is to make sure you don’t present yourself as an expert in everything. I have that part down. The problem is, I don’t hit the second part of that advice, which is to…
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VoicEd Gratitude Exchange and Holiday Special
Our VoicEd Family is celebrating the holidays by doing a gift exchange, and we are giving the gift of thanks! No money, no gadgets or gizmos, just a chance to tell another VoicEd creator how great they are. 14 VoicEd Creators signed up for a name exchange, and today, names were assigned. From December 18th…
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Why The Teacher Moral Standard May Be Necessary
A few weeks ago, I learned that a teacher my little brother Travis had as a kid was arrested and charged with stalking his ex-girlfriend. It was a pretty intense case, as the news reported it, including thousands of calls and even putting a GPS tracker on her new boyfriend’s car. The news piece was…
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Story Speaker – Part 1
On Google Teacher Tribe Podcast last week, I heard about a Google Docs Add-On called Story Speaker. In the description on the show and on the Add-On page, it was said to be for making choose-your-own-adventure style stories that connect with Google Assistant to be read aloud and choices made through voice. I remember the…
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Admin Balance Panel
Tomorrow on VoicEd Radio, I will be hosting a panel discussion on administrator balance with special guests Derek Rhodenizer, Brent Coley, and Mary Vetter. This came about because a couple months ago, Mary came to me and asked “How do I make sure I’m not hurting or upsetting teachers, but also give them the necessary…
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My Time on APlusEdTech Podcast
A couple months ago (yes, I’m behind big time), I was interviewed for the APlusEdTech Podcast. This podcast is hosted by Ashley McBride, who I was lucky enough to just sit down at a table with during ISTE. Ashley asked to talk with me because she wanted to learn more, and share with her audience,…
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My “One Thing”
Recently, I had the chance to be on an episode of OnEdMentors on VoicEd Radio. I was joined this particular night by Sarah Anne Lalonde (who you might remember from Episode 17 of Planning Period Podcast) and Stephen Hurley (who will one day not be so busy that he can’t be on my show…). In…
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It’s About Time We Upset Some People
The admin team at my school (principal, assistant principal, and coaches/instructional support) are doing a book study of Rick Wormelli’s Fair Isn’t Always Equal. We’re going through two chapters a month, and each month have a meeting facilitated by a different pair of participants to review the chapters in some way. In our most recent…
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NaNoWriMo Update
As I talked about in my recent post Why Teachers Should NaNoWriMo, I am embarking on the NaNoWriMo journey, and some of it will be taking place here on my blog, so I want to give an update on the kinds of posts you’ll see over the next month. For NaNoWriMo this year, I am…
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Flipped PD Update – Not All Good News
When I started out on this endeavor, I had the best of intentions. I was full of energy and excitement. Even when the first online session wasn’t as attended as I would have liked, I figured, “Hey, it happens. They’ll get it next time.” And they did, as I explained in this blog post. After the…
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Why Teachers Should NaNoWriMo
There is only a week or so left in October, and that means National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner. NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge for people to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (November 1st through 30th). It comes out to 1,667 words per day of pace. The general idea…
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Las Vegas Thoughts – Change We Can Make
58 people are dead in another of a myriad of senseless attacks on innocent people. And like every other time this has happened, we are all in an uproar. Gun control 2nd Amendment Freedoms Democrats Republicans Prayer Action It just goes on, and on. In circles. Sure, we want change. Most people (I would argue)…
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Being a Parent at Open House
Last week, I attended my son’s Kindergarten Open House. For the first time in my career, I sat in the room while a teacher talked about her class. It was a surreal experience for me. For one thing, there wasn’t a lot I didn’t know. Systems that teachers use to monitor grades, test the students,…
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Automated Google Appointment Calendar Follow-Up Emails
Do you use Google Appointment Slots and wish you could have an automated thank you message with a survey link included each day? Well, you can! A couple years ago at #ISTE, one of the EdTech Coaches mentioned using the Google Appointment Calendar feature in Google Apps for Ed. It’s really easy to setup and…
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Flipped PD Update
It has been a week, and it is time for a Flipped PD update. When I last wrote about this, only 4 people had finished the online learning component. After a follow-up email the next day from myself and another from my principal, and given the extra two days to account for procrastination, at the…
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High School Football Fan – A Troll or a Patriot?
It’s the Friday Night Lights time of year, and among many of the “other duties as assigned” for me is being at the games to monitor students. I have the distinct honor of standing on the track and spending 3+ hours staring up at the student section of our stadium to make sure they’re not…
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Flipped PD – Day 1
Today it started. This morning, I tweeted out my nervousness, because when I got to work, I published the first Flipped PD course and sent an email to the staff explaining the process. Today, I release my first Flipped PD session to my staff. I’m nervous…will they do it? Will they like it? If not,…
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Sprint #1MillionProject
The digital divide is a real thing. Many students do not have internet access at home, and many do. It is easy, especially for anyone reading this blog, listening to my podcast, or working walking down the street in most areas, to forget that there are still families out there that don’t have internet access.…
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The Connected Educator Back-to-School Blues
Most teachers lament returning to work. While parents are ready for their little darlings to stop harassing them every hour of every day about going to the pool or theme parks or bowling or anything but sitting on the couch so we can work, teachers have the opposite. Our summer break is over, we have…
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Lamenting the Loss of Audio
After Jennie Magiera talked so passionately during her ISTE Keynote about telling our students’ stories, and our true stories, I decided that I would make it my mission this year to do exactly that. I would wipe away all pretense from my blog, remove the glossy coating, and just be real. In the effort of…
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Flipped PD and The Future of this Blog
My summer is over. Let’s all lement that for a moment. Ok, moment is over. Time to talk about the future. Listeners of the podcast have probably already heard that I am obsessed with changing the PD model at my school. As I transition from Digital Coach to Curriculum Resource Teacher (in charge of all…
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#ISTE17 – Flipping PD to Create More Powerful Face-to-Face PD Opportunities
This is my last session for today, possibly overall. I’m probably most excited about this, as throughout these last few months, knowing the role I’m working my way into, have been toying with the idea of changing the PD models. After the last couple days, I’m obsessed with changing everything and flipping PD. Kerry Abbott…
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#ISTE17 – EdTech Insights: Teacher Hacks
This session takes place in the middle of the Expo Hall, which is really odd. It’s loud and distracting. They are organizing the session into three parts, Hacks for 12 Years & Under, Hacks for 13 Years & Up and Hacks for Any Age. Vicki Davis starts it out with hacks for 12 and under.…
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#ISTE17 – Tuesday Keynote Jennie Magiera
The keynote opened with things I didn’t see. There was a delicious breakfast involved and I regret nothing (Panchito’s for breakfast tacos…get the Lyft over, you won’t regret it). By the time I got in and seated, someone was talking about cilantro. Seems random, but it was about growing against all odds. The cilantro is…
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#ISTE17 – 5 Key Trends Transforming Teaching Today
If I’m being honest, I’m mostly in this session because Vicki Davis is hosting. She is a full time teacher who has a DAILY podcast called the 10-Minute Teacher podcast. It’s a hosted panel discussion, hosted by PowerSchool, and Vicki is moderating. On the panel are: Marlo Gaddis, @mrhgaddis Dr. Scott McLeod, @mcleod Dr. Richard…