ohhey[blog]

Reclaiming Jekyll

In December, I moved off of WordPress to Jekyll. This is easy to do with GitHub Pages, but I wanted to self-host because keeping a SSL certificate ... Read more

Dynamic Data Validation with Apps Script

My coworker, Kat, needed to set up meetings with our 13 elementary schools. Appointment slots would have been a lot of clicking back and forth on c... Read more

Goolge Apps Script Knowledgebase Suite

This is another entry into the “fun, but probably not feasible” folder. A colleague and I have been trying to show the importance of getting a know... Read more

Planning a Flipped Unit Part 4

Now it’s down to the What of your unit. Standards have been identified and selected, themes established, and your main mechanism for assessment has... Read more

Will Hide Ads in Exchange for Bitcoin

Several articles swirled around early this week about Salon.com’s (sorry, not going to link it) new ad-blocking choice to users. You can: Disable y... Read more

Planning a Flipped Unit Part 3

Once you know why you’re teaching what you’re teaching, you need to define how you’ll know what students have learned or not learned. What task(s) ... Read more

Rebooting My Coaching

I planned, and ran, a really unsuccessful series of PD for a group of teachers this year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wise enough to accept the non-suc... Read more

Planning a Flipped Unit Part 2

The biggest portion of the circle, the Why, defines everything you do in the unit. Before planning a single activity (or lesson), it is important t... Read more

Planning a Flipped Unit

The idea for this series was sparked when I was helping some people research sample flipped lessons for a curriculum workshop I was facilitating. I... Read more

Moving from WordPress to Jekyll

This is a long post in several parts. Jump to different sections using the links below. Introduction Exporting WordPress Hosting Comments Updating ... Read more

New Tab Flickr Background Extension

I’m part of digital-only secret Santa exchange. It’s a cool idea…you’re assigned someone you may (or may not know) and tasked with coming up with a... Read more

Slides Tweeter Update 4

I thought I was ready for some beta testing of the Slide Tweeter AddOn. Unfortunately, I’ve run into a snag with authenticating some of the code. W... Read more

Slides Tweeter Update 3

(Part 1, Part 2) I’m excited. A beta version of the Slides Tweeter AddOn will be ready this week. Two major updates helped get it to this point: Go... Read more

Link Google Forms to Bitly Automatically

Note 2024-03-20 - This post has been updated with a correct video embed as well as a GitHub Gist link for the source code. The code has not been te... Read more

Slides Tweeter Update 2

A short update to my post about tweeting Google Slides presentations after some work this weekend. – Working AddOn menu prototyped. – Check if a us... Read more

Tweeting Google Slides Automatically

An app called Keynote Tweet has been around (in various working and non-working states) since the late 2000’s and let users auto-tweet images of th... Read more

Glaringly “For-Profit”

Audrey Watters shared a Bloomberg article this morning on Silicon Valley-based AltSchool which is closing locations to focus on “strategy” and a “p... Read more

Drawing Shapes Is Hard

My wife is putting together a simple gift for our niece. Lest I spoil a surprise, I’ll be vague about the specifics. It required some hexagons. We ... Read more

Badging Patterns

Some more, mostly unfiltered thoughts on badging programs run at the K12 level. (Initial thoughts for some background from back in August.) – Artic... Read more

Parsing a JSON log feed with Python

I have several Google Sheets doing several things on their own through Google Apps Script. I’ve started to make it a habit that each action is logg... Read more

Indiana Education Paired Texts

March 2017 – Indiana to lose $56 million in public school funding under Trump budget September 2017 – Indiana receives $59 million grant to expand ... Read more

Ideas for Apps Script in Google Slides

Google Slides got a big update from Google this week, notably the inclusion of AddOns and Apps Script functionality. The UI updates are nice (grid ... Read more

Date Countdown in Sheets for Triggers

I have a Google Sheet which displays all upcoming PD in the district. It also tracks registrations for people through a web app. I’ve documented th... Read more

Outsourcing, EdTech, and 1986

Outsourcing education doesn’t look like robots taking over our classes. It happens when we willingly turn over the tasks of teaching to machines wi... Read more

Digital Teaching and Learning is Great (Until It’s Not)

The nuances of digital teaching and learning are often lost on Twitter and off-the-cuff blogs. Posts long enough to explore some of the finer point... Read more

Adding a Bullet Journal to my Work

I took most of the summer off from writing, but now that school is getting back into swing, it’s time to start thinking out loud again. Back in May... Read more

Ultra-Specific Classification

The edu-blogification of ideas gets overwhelming. Six years ago, I went to a workshop on using videos to help with my instruction. We called it the... Read more

Getting Busy with todo.txt

Keeping a todo list has always been a struggle for me. I have a notebook, I have some stuff in Google Keep, I’ve tried Google Tasks, Any.do, Rememb... Read more

2017 End of Year Notes

In what’s become a half-tradition, some unfiltered thoughts as I finish another school year. – Splitting time between teaching and instructional co... Read more

Using Someone Else’s Videos in Your Class

In November 2015, an independent model showed YouTube received around 500 hours of video content uploaded every minute. There are 1440 minutes in a... Read more

Update to Endnote Generator

If you’ve used Endnote Generator in your Docs, thanks. I posted an update this evening which will retain the formatting of your footnotes. So, if y... Read more

You Are the Product

The New York Times profiled Google’s rush into education over the last eight years in a long piece this weekend. Some initial thoughts: – The value... Read more

Tech Training Outside of Content

Our district is distributing 13,000 iPads in the next 24 months. We have ~1,300 staff who need to be trained on instructional methods with technolo... Read more

Desmos in Science

I’ve wanted to try the Desmos activity builder for a long time, so I finally did. We were finishing up the nervous system, so I grabbed a graph of ... Read more

Badges? We Might Want to Think About Stinking Badges…

Some initial, mostly unfiltered thoughts on digital badges from a professional development perspective: Most badging programs are too simple. They ... Read more

Get in touch

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com