Mr McLaughlin Web Blog

I have been teaching with a Smart board for 8 years now and have gathered some tips. I use SMART brand boards; however I am sure these tips are similar for most brands. There is a great tool that will snap a picture of the screen and put it into the note book program. It…

The ability to edit photos has become an indispensable tool in an educators box.  I am a math teacher and in order to create assessments, worksheets, study guides, lesson presentations…etc. I need to be able to edit pictures, create drawings, and combine elements of them both into one element on a page.  Until the last few…

I am taking a course on online teaching and I would like to start a conversation with you all about online teaching strategies.  I will be making a course at the end of this year and would love to have input from the DEN.  So if you teach online or take a course online what…

What is a MOOC? (see video below) It is a Massive Open Online Course.  Most times it is completely free.  Carnegie Mellon offers “No instructors, no credits, no charge.” Forty public universities will offer free online courses with full credit starting spring 2013.   Why would a school do that well in an effort to entice potential students…

Hello to all readers of the DEN Techformation blog series.  We had a good run for a while and then took a bit of a break.  Let’s jump back in and get stated again.  What do you think?   If you are interested in writing a post in the DEN Techformation series let me know…

 I just finished reading a post in Education Weekly that was given to me by my principle Chuck Malone . He asked us to comment on it with respect to our content area using google+ and I thought I would re-post it here. “Pick compelling subjects: help students frame big but specific questions;” (Deeper Project Based Learning, Tom Vander Ark)This…

 had an interesting conversation with a student the other day about motivation.  This seems to be a hard time of year for students to be motivated to do any work.  The sun is out the weather is nice and the beach is calling.  His main thought was that grades did not motivate him at all.…

Google Apps it’s more then just Google Docs with a catchy slogan.  It’s real power is in the App Marketplace.  There are 90 apps just listed under the EDU category alone and most of them are free.  Just click on the App Marketplace link or search google for App Marketplace and you will get to the…

It has been two months since the birth of  Techfomation. We have had lots of great posts. We learned about WeVideo, Discovery and iPads , Haiku Deck, Evernote, Weebly, Mindjet, Twitter and Education, and Powtoon. It has been great but we are not even close to done yet!  We have scheduled post on EasyBib, Google Apps, Smore, Sock Puppets (app), CAST UDL resources and CAST Science Writer,…

I just found out about a free resource that I think would go great with a Discovery video.  CoverItLive.com is a live blogging site.  Live blogging is where comments are posted to a blog while an event is going on.  It is used to cover sporting events, speeches and other news worthy events.  However never let…