ohhey[blog]

Hacking Together an Auto-Tweeting Spreadsheet

A while back, I had looked at automating tweets from a Google spreadsheet to reduce the insane number of clicks it takes to do in TweetDeck and Hoo... Read more

The Line Between High Expectations and Impossible Expectations

I absolutely hate teaching bonding. The abstract nature of atoms, the minutiae of nomenclature, and the details of writing formulas bog students do... Read more

Mercury’s Transit

[In 2012](http://blog.ohheybrian.com/2012/06/venus-flyby/), [we saw Venus transit the sun](http://blog.ohheybrian.com/2012/06/venus-the-aftermath/)... Read more

I Need to Remember to Post Answer Keys

Everything I do in class is geared toward building understanding. I want students to be able to both complete the task and understand _why_ they’re... Read more

Minimum Viable Input

In software, there’s a lot of discussion about the “minimum viable product” when you’re designing something: what is the bare basic you can deliver... Read more

Assessing the Assessed

State testing. There are no words. Week two of six is halfway done. Meanwhile, I keep teaching and I keep assessing. Most of it is formative, infor... Read more

Question Mark Answers

We played Jeopardy today in class (with some major upsets coming during final Jeopardy…quite exciting) to review atoms and the periodic table organ... Read more

Why Are Questions So Scary?

I remind my students constantly that I can’t help if they don’t do one of two things: 1) Ask me a question when they’re confused, or 2) get somethi... Read more

The Remodel

Three years ago, my wife and I bought our first home. I can’t believe I haven’t written more on this before (which is partially true. I mention the... Read more

Making Seen the Unseen

My grading practices have improved this year. I’m keeping better track of information, I’m using it more often, and I’m showing students – constant... Read more

Expanding the SBG Tracking Gradebook

I mentioned Evan Weingberg’s standards-based tracking system in a short snippet a couple weeks back. I want to expand on that thought a little bit.... Read more

When Class Itself is a Distraction

I’m going to stop doing labs in one of my classes this semester. Regardless of the supports or steps I put in place, there is a general refusal (sa... Read more

Easily Filter Large Data Sets in Google Sheets

I use Google Sheets in my classroom a lot. I used to rely on combinations of the vlookup, importrange, and index/match functions to get information... Read more

The Power Game

I did something I normally don’t do: I had my students play a computer game for class the other day. We’ve just finished nonrenewable resources – s... Read more

Teaching Thoughts

Some things I’m thinking through this week, written here so I can find them later. – Evan Weinberg has a good string of posts on his blog related t... Read more

Fly, You Fools!

This semester, a few classes asked for bi-weekly review over the entire year so they can keep old material fresh. I was really happy to get these r... Read more

Don’t Call it a Sheep

Test prep is becoming more insidious. Rather than being outright drill-and-kill for the multiple choice marathon students are forced to take, now i... Read more

Above all, I must not play God.

The Hippocratic Oath really parallels education. More on that somewhere else. I cannot play at God in my classroom. I am not a dictator. My role is... Read more

Choices

Before I dive in, I think Justin Aion and I are parallels of one another in the multiverse. His day was similar to mine. — Six weeks into this seme... Read more

Learning as a Sum of Experiences

I’ve been working very hard this year to make sure students experience science – or the process of science – as much as possible. Physics and chemi... Read more

The Earthquake Lab

Waves are tricky to teach. Students feel like they already have a ton of experience with them (you’ve been to the beach somewhere, I’m sure.) and t... Read more

My Favorite Video Tool

I’ve done a ton of labs with students this month. We’re learning about waves and there are some fun demos and experiments you can use to illustrate... Read more

The Environment

My video was rambly this week. I think it’s because I have complete control over my environment, but there’s just not much I can do with it. I have... Read more

Back to the Flipping Basics

Ken Bauer has more energy than I know what to do with. I met him two or three years ago (something like that) and ever since, he’s taught courses, ... Read more

Into the Deep End with Circuits (and Batman)

I’ve been looking forward to teaching electricity all year. I’ve never done it before and I was excited about the hands-on stuff you can do. Who do... Read more

Running WordPress Without Jetpack and Why That Matters

I gave up using Jetpack a while ago on my blog because I couldn’t control where it sent information. I wish it was more modular in nature because i... Read more

Quickly Format Articles for Annotations

We’re working very hard with students on annotating articles in preparation for the new state test sections. The goal is to help them find pertinen... Read more

Play in Class

We’re playing with magnets this week in class. (We’re actually finishing playing with magnets now.) It’s been great and this is by far one of my fa... Read more

Piping You the Emails

Months ago, I turned off Jetpack on my blog. I use WordPress and Jetpack is a package of apps which handled email subscriptions, comment management... Read more

DIY Recipe Cards

My wife had been hinting that she wanted to use recipe cards in the kitchen rather than her phone all the time. So, I took a few hours and made som... Read more

Christmas 2015

I’m overwhelmed by the feeling of immense blessing and immense wretchedness each year. The birth of Christ – King of Heaven, seated at the right ha... Read more

Graduate School Final Project

I promised Stacy Lovdahl I’d post this the other day and then promptly forgot. Sorry, Stacy. I took a graduate course on curriculum development and... Read more

Futility

The end of the semester is bittersweet. It’s exciting to think of the long break coming up. At the same time, the burden of work to be completed fe... Read more

Updating the getText Extension

In October, I wrote about a bookmark application to get the text of a website for analysis in the Lexile analyzer tool. It’s a pain in the keister ... Read more

Actions Beget Standards…Kind Of.

I wanted to write this down while it’s fresh in my mind (and because it’s late). I’m finishing a graduate semester on curriculum theory and practic... Read more

Get in touch

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