Tom Woodward

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A Digital Portfolio

Snapshot

Who I am

I believe learning is and should be, fun. I'm passionate about good teaching. I believe engagement matters. I like students.

I believe today's technology gives teachers and students unique access to information, media and the tools to do amazing things with it.

I like learning and teaching in novel and fun ways. This is mainly because I slept through most of my school years out of sheer boredom. I’d like to save others from that fate.

I never planned to be a teacher. I never took an education class until after I started teaching.

I took over a 6th grade class after the first teacher quit about two weeks into the new school year. It was an alternative school so the students were, shall we say, spirited. I almost died the first two weeks. Luckily, I was in a 1:1 and the way I could use laptops became a lifesaver. I could capture kids. I didn’t have to be a master classroom manager if they were excited and having fun with what we were doing. It was far easier to bring in their interests with the entire world and massive amounts of media at my fingertips. The two years I spent there really changed my perceptions of a lot of things.

Project

Whirligig Lit Trip

View Whirligig in a larger map This "lit trip" was created as supplementary material for a class study of the novel Whirligig by Paul Fleischman. It has had over 12,000 views.

Project

Journalism WordPress Theme

I customized this WordPress theme at the CSS and PHP level to meet the specific needs of a journalism professor. The images were also selected by me to accentuate the text of the articles. It is a heavily modified version of the Grid Focus theme.

Project

Selected Images

This is a selection of the photography and image work I've done. This slide show represents a cross section of my interests. You can see a lot more of my photos on my flickr page.

Project

Blogging Bestiary

I like to have something fairly interesting to start things off that hints at what's to come without making too much sense. I want to create a sense of intrigue. This image is put up as people come it so they, hopefully, begin to think and wonder about how in the world this weird guy is going to make a relationship between a bestiary and a ...

Project

Three Teachers

Three teachers talking about project based and student centered work that incorporates technology. I shot and edited the video.

Project

21st Century Skills Video

This is a quick introductory video that is part of a larger initiative focusing on 21st century skills. I didn't film this footage but I came up with the concept and editing.

Project

The Revolution Will Be Syndicated

This presentation from November of 2008 was done in Second Life as part of the NMC Rock the Academy Symposium. I co-presented with Jim Groom from the University of Mary Washington. Session Description The coming revolution will be syndicated through a web of feeds making ideas ever easier to find. Sharing will no longer be the exception, but the rule. Enduring these hard, transitional times takes not only ...

Project

Internet Safety Comics

This comic series was created to address some teacher training needs in the area of Internet safety in a fun and entertaining way. This was a solo project. more

Project

RSS Zen

A RSS Presentation with a humorous Zen theme. This was presented to our county ITRTs. It is now an interactive Quicktime movie which you click on to advance the slides.

Project

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is an exploration of sound words through comic-style fonts and unusual pictures. This presentation is designed to engage students and set a solid example for them to emulate in their own onomatopoeia presentations.

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Presence

Where you can find me on the Internets.