Kevin Brookhouser

Inevitably, I have students who show up to my class on the first day of school telling me what they want to do for The Twenty Percent Project. “I want to write a novel. I’ve always wanted to write a novel. I’ve tried several times to write a novel, but now I have the chance to do it for a class and I think I can do it. Can I write a novel?” “Yes, a novel is a great Twenty Percent Project. Start thinking about who your audience is, so you can interview them before you begin writing.” “I always wanted to build a website.” “Good. What kind of website.” “A website for teenagers.” “Better. You know that audience better than I do, so you would be well suited for that. Is this a website for all teenagers?” “A website for teenagers who want to raise chickens.” “Yes. Run with it.”  What’s so great about a website for teenagers who want to raise chickens is that it has a niche audience. Before the internet, media producers had to reach the broadest audience possible in ...

Last week one of our math teachers asked me about a tool that could graph an equation and then superimpose that graph over an image. I didn't know of one, but I did a little research using my newly minted Advanced Power Searching credential. Several searches and video tutorials later, I think I found a solution. Here's the video.

Until this week, I've been using three different tools to supplement my professional learning community: Twitter, Google Groups, and a discussion board hosted my the National Association of Independent Schools. I'm sure I'll use these for the foreseeable future, but I think the landscape is going to change significantly with the launch of Google+ Communities. Google Groups and other online discussion boards have been around for decades and are certainly functional. But they've been around for decades and feel slow. The Twitter PLCs I belong to gather around hashtags. For example, once a month we meet on twitter using the hashtag #geniushour to discuss our 20% projects. 20% Time = Genius Hour. The problem with these hashtag meetups is that all of my followers who are not remotely interested in 20% time, or teaching for that matter, get flooded with completely irrelevant tweets. Google+ solves this problem because conversations can rally around specific topic...

I have at least seven Google accounts. I have a personal account, a school account, an old school account, an official Brookhouser trainer account, an account I use for the school's YouTube channel, an account I use when I volunteer for the SPCA for Monterey County, and a few that were created for me when I was training others in their own domains. I only use three of them on a daily basis: personal, school, and school's YouTube channel, but I do use them daily. My workflow had been Chrome for personal, Firefox for school, and Safari for YouTube. That way I could stay signed in without logging in and logging out over and over again. Yes, Google does allow multiple sign-ins in a single browser, but I don't recommend it. Then on the Google Educast, Sean Williams, Chris Betcher, and Diane Main taught me to create "multiple instances" in Chrome. See the clip here . Since I followed their instructions, the entire way I interact with Google has changed and becom...

Had a great conversation with Chris , Fred , and Google's Tasha Bergson-Michelson  about A Google a day , and the Power Searching with Google class. I also talked about my 20% project and this video of my students presenting their work.

Last night I joined Fred Delventhal, Diane Main, and Sean Williams for the Google Educast.