In the last month, I've been fortunate to attend two conferences, and from both I've gotten good ideas for digital and game-based learning.  In today's blog entry, I'll share my reflections with you! Play Make Learn 2024 Play Make Learn is an annual conference first started in 2017, and is held at the beautiful University of Wisconsin campus in Madison, Wisconsin.   True to its name, it's a drawing together of teachers, librarians, crafters, and digital and analog game publishers for the students of Kindergarten through higher ed.   You'll see sessions and displays on ..read more

Welcome, and thank you for checking out my blog!  I have been involved in education since 2005, but never seriously tried to blog before.  My "About Me" profile sums up my educational background succinctly, but I will add that becoming the first District Technology Integration Coach of Shelby County is definitely the motivation to begin blogging now. Therefore, I am committed to making meaningful and ongoing posts, but most importantly, making my blog a useful resource for others. That's how I started my first Edtech Elixirs blog entry exactly ten years ago, on August 1, 2014.  ..read more

As a former high school English teacher, I always felt pressured to provide useful, personalized feedback quickly.  Digital tools like the Comment feature in Google Docs became popular just as I was leaving the classroom, and certainly shifted the paradigm when it came to giving "just in time" quality feedback. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence, we are on the precipice of the next generation of digital feedback that can transform teaching.   For some time now, genAI chatbots like ChatGPT already offer an augmented opportunity to comment on student writing -- if you are will ..read more

Lexie Bewley-Gilley is a high school social studies teacher at Bullitt Central High School (Bullitt County Public Schools in Kentucky).  After attending some sessions on game-based learning at KySTE 2024 -- and in particular, how tabletop role-playing could be a part of a classroom -- she was excited to attempt a new lesson near the end of her own school year.  KyEdRPG friends like Chad Collins and Michelle Gross definitely were an inspiration! @CollinsClassSC @michellegross This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen! Helping students reach mastery by keeping them engaged and ..read more

It's been a big month for generative AI updates!  Back on May 13, ChatGPT announced ChatGPT-4o (as in "Omni"), a "new flagship model that can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time."  In various short videos, that new "reasoning" was demonstrated in pretty remarkable ways.  Fire up the app on your laptop, and it actively listens and even participate in your meeting (providing insights and summaries), or it can tutor you on understanding a math problem.  Open it on your phone, and it can translate between two speakers in real time, referee two ..read more

As I previewed in a previous entry, I attended and presented at two conferences in March, but I've been busy since then and haven't taken the time to write a reflection on what I saw and encountered! So in today's entry, I'll share some highlights.   GAMA Expo The international GAMA Expo was at the recently renovated Kentucky International Convention Center, the first of its three scheduled years in Louisville.  I attended the day of my own presentation and the following day.  Not surprisingly as it is mainly a closed-to-the-public industry trade show, the majority of sessi ..read more

Chad Collins has been with Spencer County Public Schools (KY) since 2013, first as a middle school social studies and ELA teacher, and currently as the campus Gifted and Talented Teacher for Spencer County Middle School (SCMS) as well as Spencer County Elementary School.  He is also one of the SCMS Academic Team Coaches, which led to the start of the journey that is the basis for today's blog entry. Not long after Chad began at SCMS, the principal Matt Mercer wanted to try something different during fifth period schoolwide: Mercer envisioned all students receiving extra time for reading a ..read more

 Hello friends!   This blog entry is fairly short, but since I had several upcoming appearances, I thought I would put them all in one announcement. Last weekend, I had the good fortune to virtually meet Melody McAllister and be her guest on the Growth Over Grades podcast, produced by SpacesEDU.   The focus of our talk was on game-based learning -- in particular, tabletop role-playing games in education, and KyEdRPG!  The episode is scheduled to drop February 29.  (I'll update this blog entry once it streets.  Meanwhile, give them a subscription so you'l ..read more

Recently, I was flattered and honored to be the guest of Season 2 Episode 2 of Education Perspectives, a podcast hosted by Liza Holland.  Our talk ranged from edtech to game-based learning.  You can listen to the episode on your favorite platform from here. On the podcast, one of the topics I briefly discussed was the need to shift from a "Credit Recovery" system to one of "Credit Discovery."  I wanted to extrapolate on that subject for today's blog entry, Credit recovery, as educators well know, is a pretty common hallmark of the traditional educational system.  For a ..read more

Hello everyone, and welcome to 2024!  Hope you had some happy and restful time with family and friends over the winter break. Back in December of 2022, I published a blog entry titled "How AI Will Save Education."  It was just a few weeks after ChatGPT 3.5 had debuted on November 30, and as I put it back then, it "exploded into our zeitgeist seemingly out of nowhere, and it feels like something foundational has rapidly and irreversibly shifted in education...indeed, the world."  There was a lot of strong feelings in the air: wonderment to be sure, but also fear.  And there ..read more