Show Notes:
In this episode, I spoke with Brad Shreffler (@BradShreffler), host of the Planning Period podcast, about asking important questions about flaws in education and ways to take action to improve education.
About Brad Shreffler
I am in a support role as the Digital Instructional Coach, and a former 9th grade English teacher in Central Florida. I’m generally enjoying my transfer into instructional support, but I do miss the happy ignorance of the four walls of my classroom. My daily work includes planning Professional Development, creating technology tool tutorials, helping teachers with understanding various tools, and running a student tech support group for our school.
In addition, I am the host and creator of The Planning Period Podcast. This podcast is all about educators having honest and loose conversations. It started from a series of conversations I had with a couple of different teachers about what is wrong with education and how we fix it. Teachers, I felt, were not comfortable having these kinds of conversations outside the break room, and so I set out to fix it. You can find all the episodes on iTunes or on the Podcast Page.
I graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2008 with a degree in business administration, which is obviously working out real well for me since I’m a teacher. I also have almost 10 years of experience in the tech industry, doing sales in personal electronics and cell phones during the smartphone boom.
As a teacher, I am always looking for a way to challenge and engage my students. In November of 2011, I challenged my students to do NaNoWriMo, an online challenge to write a 50,000 word or greater novel in one month. I offered them 20% of their final grade for the quarter in extra credit. In addition, in order to encourage them further to complete the project, I took the challenge myself.
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Brad’s Website:
