The best teachers on film...

I've been thinking about this for a long time. There are lots of movies about teachers, teaching, working with students... and as we all know a lot of them are, respectfully, garbage (The Substitute, I'm looking at you).

And yes, there are the "inspired by true events" films like Freedom Writers, but even those, I feel, take far to many liberties with reality and are more nuanced marketing machines than actual depictions of the majority of teaching. Don't get me wrong, Freedom Writers is a great story, and I have no doubt Erin Gruwell made a lasting impact on her students, but she only taught for 4 years and then moved on. Yes, she is helping educate future teachers and working on her foundation, but lets be honest, how many of us teach for 4 years and then continue a career as a "teacher"? Not many. For many of us 4 years is just the beginning.

So, here is my list of the movies and teachers I feel are the most true to the profession. These are the roles I feel get at the core of what we do, most often through nuanced subtly most audiences probably don't even notice...

So many passwords, so little time....

Takeaway: There are lots of platforms that will require a password, figure out a system for yourself to keep them all straight, and use single-sign in options when possible...

Facebook, Twitter, personal email, work email, online banking.... The amount of digital accounts we seem to have these days is at times overwhelming. How do we keep track of all the accounts and passwords and stay safe and secure?

Here are a few things I do, and often recommend to colleagues...

Going Google - An Overview of Google's iOS Apps

Just because Google & Apple are public competitors doesn't mean their platforms & services don't play nicely on your devices...

Google and Apple have a very contentious public relationship. Apple even went as far as to announce Bing as the search engine for the iOS 7 version of Siri at the World Wide Developer Conference back in June (for those who know Apple's history with Microsoft, a switch to Bing, owned by Microsoft, is a big deal - Google is still Safari's default search engine, so Apple is hedging a bit...).

All this public contention doesn't mean Apple's iOS devices aren't great platforms for accessing & running Google's app offering. I work in a Google Apps for Education school and every teacher has an iPad. We mix & match Google & the iPad on a daily basis to get the most out of each.

The best part of the Google iOS app suite is they are all free!

Here is a quick primer on a few of the Google apps I use the most on my iPad...