So guess what?

I received a wonderfully encouraging email from Learning Technology Coordinator Kimberly Kalem. Not only does she like what I’m doing (thanks!), she has opened up a whole new world to me, with technical terms and formalized academic research that relate to what I’m doing.

For example, we discussed these ISTE standards, which Ms. Kalem tells me educators use when writing lesson plans and goals, and she feels PuppetMaster easily meets the following standards for students:

• Creative communicator
• Empowered learner
• Digital citizen

She also talked to me about the SAMR model and Blooms Taxonomy, “which pushes teachers to create lesson where students can recreate their learning. This is where I fell in love with PupperMaster as I see it has a creative tool that students can use to recreate their learning of a concept.”

Yes, that was a quote. When somebody says they fell in love with my app, I have to quote them. And when it’s exactly the type of user whose opinion matters so much to me, I couldn’t be more pleased!

I have tried to use common sense and basic research to make sure what I’m building is something that’s good for the kids who are using it, and that supports the efforts of teachers everywhere. But it’s really the professionals like Ms. Kalem and all you educators out there who can tell me if I’m on the right track.

I look forward to upcoming conversations with Ms. Kalem about this, and with anybody else out there who’d like to share opinions and make requests. Please, give me a shout! I want to hear from the teachers in the trenches, the school administrators, the homeschooling parents or really anyone. (You can email me, tweet me, Facebook me, whatevs.)

***

UPDATE: Ms. Kalem and a colleague of hers were kind enough to make time to speak with me. Besides a lot of cool stuff I learned about the educational technology ecosystem, I also found out that they have Adobe Creative Cloud at schools!! Who knew? Kids today are way more sophisticated than I was. That means they might like to try my Export to After Effects beta. That reminds me, I should really write a post about that… stay tuned!