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"Please, No More Professional Development! By Peter DeWitt on April 17, 2015 8:10 AM Today's guest blog is written by Kristine Fox (Ed.D), Senior Field Specialist/Research Associate at Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (QISA). She is a former teacher and administrator who has passion for teacher learning and student voice. Kris works directly with teachers and leaders across the country to help all learners reach their fullest potential. Peter DeWitt recently outlined why "faculty meetings are a waste of time." Furthering on his idea, most professional development opportunities don't offer optimal learning experiences and the rare teacher is sitting in her classroom thinking "I can't wait until my district's next PD day." When I inform a fellow educator that I am a PD provider, I can read her thoughts - boring, painful, waste of time, useless, irrelevant - one would think my job is equal to going to the dentist (sorry to my dentist friends). According to the Quaglia Institute and Teacher Voice and Aspirations International Center's National Teacher Voice Report only 54% percent of teachers agree "Meaningful staff development exists in my school." I can't imagine any other profession being satisfied with that number when it comes to employee learning and growth. What sense does it make for the science teacher to spend a day learning about upcoming English assessments? Or, for the veteran teacher to learn for the hundredth time how to use conceptual conflict as a hook. Why does education insist everyone attend the same type of training regardless of specialization, experience, or need? As a nod to the upcoming political campaigns and the inevitable introduction of plans with lots of points, here is my 5 Point Plan for revamping professional development. 5 Point Plan Point I - Change the Term: Semantics Matter We cannot reclaim the term Professional Development for teachers. It has a long, baggage-laden history of conformity that does not

"Working as a productive and sensitive member of a team is looked upon by STEM-based companies as being a requirement to being an effective and contributing employee: As technology takes over more of the fact-based, rules-based, left-brain skills-knowledge-worker skills-employees who excel at human relationships are emerging as the new "it" men and women. More and more major employers are recognizing that they need workers who are good at team building, collaboration, and cultural sensitivity, according to global forecasting firm Oxford Economics. Other research shows that the most effective teams are not those whose members boast the highest IQs, but rather those whose members are most sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others. (http://fortune.com/2015/03/05/perfect-workplace/) In academia, the majority of research in STEM fields is conducted through collaborations and working groups, where a diversity of ideas need to be proposed and analyzed to determine the best strategy(ies) for solving a problem. In the technology sector, product development is done as a team, with specific roles for each individual but its success is predicated on each member of the team providing a different skill set / perspective. Thus, students who are interested in both academia and industry will benefit from learning how to successfully work in a diverse team. (https://teaching.berkeley.edu/diversity-can-benefit-teamwork-stem#sthash.mHRBJQtV.dpuf) What follows are some team building activities that use collaboration to explore and solve STEM-related challenges. Note that most of them require minimal supplies - costs."

"Regardless of whether you think every infant needs an iPad, I think we can all agree that technology has changed education for the better. Today's learners now enjoy easier, more efficient access to information; opportunities for extended and mobile learning; the ability to give and receive immediate feedback; and greater motivation to learn and engage. We now have programs and platforms that can transform learners into globally active citizens, opening up countless avenues for communication and impact. Thousands of educational apps have been designed to enhance interest and participation. Course management systems and learning analytics have streamlined the education process and allowed for quality online delivery. But if we had to pick the top ten, most influential ways technology has transformed education, what would the list look like? The following things have been identified by educational researchers and teachers alike as the most powerful uses of technology for learning. Take a look. 1. Critical Thinking In Meaningful Learning With Technology, David H. Jonassen and his co-authors argue that students do not learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking-thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the thinking processes they use-just thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from thinking. So what kinds of thinking are fostered when learning with technologies? Analogical If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood. In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as sy

"Team Teaching: How to Work with a Partner "

What makes a team truly great? What are the qualities which allow some teams to perform at a high level while others seem trapped? One approach to this question is to consider a team as though they were a meal. Thinking metaphorically, we ask what are the ingredients that make a great team and how might we combine them to produce the best results?

"Last Friday, we mentioned how Google's artificial intelligence software DeepMind has the ability to teach itself many things. It can teach itself how to walk, jump and run. Even take professional pictures. Or defeat the world's best player of the Chinese strategy game, Go. The science of teaching computers how to do things is called Deep Learning. And you can now immerse yourself in this world by taking a free, 3-month course on Deep Learning itself. Offered through Udacity, the course is taught by Vincent Vanhoucke, the technical lead in Google's Brain team."

Sometimes it is worth stating the obvious, giving time and thought to what we easily take for granted. In doing so we name the things we value most and give them the value they deserve. The value of teams is one such ideal, we know that teams have value, we probably even know what it feels like to be a part of a great team but too often we take this feeling as understood and don't stop to consider what makes it worth chasing.

"3 Reasons Why Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time By Peter DeWitt on April 10, 2015 6:50 AM Faculty Meeting.png Many school leaders walk into a faculty meeting with a single idea of how they want to move forward and walk out with the same idea. That's telling... John Hattie talks a great deal about the Politics of Distraction, which means we focus on adult issues, and not enough time...if ever...on learning. That is happening around the U.S. for sure. Recently the Assembly of NY State only furthered those distractions, which you can read about here, which means that school leaders and teachers have to work harder to maintain a focus on learning. Quite frankly, well before mandates and accountability, school leaders focused on the politics of distraction and not on learning. Compliance is not new in schools. Faculty meetings were seen as a venue to get through and something that teachers were contractually obligated to attend. During these days of endless measures of compliance, principals can do a great deal to make sure they don't model the same harmful messages to staff that politicians are sending to teachers. Jim Knight calls that "Freedom within form." In Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo quotes Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) when he writes, "Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work - unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms - haikus, sonatas, religious paintings- are fraught with constraints. (p. 190)" Clearly, constraints have a wide definition. There is a clear difference between the constraints of compliance and the stupidity of the legislation just passed by the assembly in NY. As we move forward, principals still are charged...or at least should be...with the job of making sure they offer part...inspiration, part...teacher voice...and a great deal of focus on learning. There is never a more important tim

"The British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) - the post-secondary institution recognized for integrating education and industry - is announcing a partnership with Microsoft Corp. and its Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program to teach foundation computational skills for BC high-school students. This partnership recognizes the value of exposing young learners to the jobs of the future while equipping them with the appropriate knowledge and skills for success in the future tech workforce. With support from the BC Ministry of Education and BCIT, the BC branch of TEALS has already educated more than 400 students across four BC high schools. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft TEALS exists because many high schools want to offer computer science courses but often don't have teachers who are trained on the subject. To fill this gap, TEALS volunteers work with classroom teachers to team-teach students, and to equip instructors with the knowledge to teach students on their own."

"As the world economy shifts away from manufacturing jobs and towards service industry and creative jobs, there's a consensus among parents, educators, politicians and business leaders that it is crucial students graduate into university or the workforce with the ability to identify and solve complex problems, think critically about information, work effectively in teams and communicate clearly about their thinking. While many teachers agree with this premise, they don't often know exactly how to teach these skills explicitly, especially because many of the mandates and required curriculum seem to push in the opposite direction. Process-oriented skills are hard to pin down; teachers can see them in certain students, but developing these competencies in students who aren't already demonstrating them can be tricky. A few teachers in Ontario, Canada have been experimenting with tools they think could make the difference."

"This recent example aside, the idea that games can be fun and educational is starting to take hold in the educational community.  That these fun learning games can come in the form of games like Minecraft, rather than "skill and drill" games is icing on the cake for students and teachers.  The number of recent popular press articles heralding a rising trend of digital game use in the classroom has made the team at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center wonder: just how common is this practice?  And further, which teachers are choosing to use digital games in their teaching, what particular goals do they have for that game use, and what kinds of outcomes are they observing among their students? With these questions in mind the Joan Ganz Cooney Center surveyed nearly 700 K-8 teachers about their use of digital games in their teaching (a follow-up to a similar survey we conducted in 2012 with BrainPop). I wanted to share a few of the highlights from our full set of findings."

"The terms "fail forward and computational thinking" are trending recently, but what does that really mean? Computational thinking is a method of reasoning that teaches students how to solve real-world, complex problems with strategies that computers use. Computational thinking and the Design Thinking Process are frameworks for problem-solving to help address the need for 21st century skills across our nation's K-12 school system. To make 21st century skills easier to comprehend and teach, Tata Consultancy Services and Discovery Education have teamed up to introduce "Ignite My Future In School," a free resource offering professional development, educator guides, model lesson plans, and curriculum connector resources that provide educators and students with 24/7 support. Aligned to national standards, "Ignite My Future in School" provides teachers, including Learning Leaders, with exclusive, cost-free, professional development experiences across the country and the initiative inspires educators to adopt a transdisciplinary approach. As part of Ignite "My Future In School," we've identified seven effective thinking strategies to equip young innovators with valuable problem-solving skills:"

"This was the first hackathon I'd participated in. The way teams were divvied up was a bit awkward: after opening remarks, the audience was asked if anyone had an idea for a team yet - perhaps they were expecting more small groups to show up ready to go, but I think most of the people came as individuals. So instead a few people introduced themselves and said what comes to their mind when they think about tech / music / education. I introduced myself and said I liked to use Arduino to teach music and coding."

Really, it's not about the technology, is it? It's about good pedagogy, good teaching practices, engaging students, making them think, giving them opportunity to be creative and work in teams and talk and learn…

"Here's one way to get kids excited about programming: a "robot garden" with dozens of fast-changing LED lights and more than 100 origami robots that can crawl, swim and blossom like flowers. A team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering has developed a tablet-operated system that illustrates their cutting-edge research on distributed algorithms via robotic sheep, origami flowers that can open and change colors and robotic ducks that fold into shape by being heated in an oven."

"Beyond Distance is teaming up with the Australian Digital Futures Institute at the University of Southern Queensland for the 2011 Learning Futures Festival. The festival is a celebration of innovation in teaching and learning in higher education, and offers a chance for practitioners and policymakers to share their visions for the future. With handovers between Leicester (UK), Seattle (USA), and Toowoomba (Australia), Follow the Sun will beginin Leicester on Wednesday 13th April and conclude in Australia 48 hours later."

At the start of each year we arrive back from our break hopefully rested and energised. The new year brings many new opportunities including new students, new team members and new teaching programmes. We begin again the climb up the hill with a fresh group of learners arriving at our doors full of excitement who will rely on us to meet their learning needs in the year ahead. All of this means we are at risk of starting the year with a certain level of panic. There is so much to do, our students are not accustomed to our routines, we don't know each other well, there are parents to meet, assessments to be done and before we know it we are back to being busy. 

"Unfortunately, the way computer science is currently taught in high school tends to throw students into the programming deep end, reinforcing the notion that code is just for coders, not artists or doctors or librarians. But there is good news: Researchers have been experimenting with new ways of teaching computer science, with intriguing results. For one thing, they've seen that leading with computational thinking instead of code itself, and helping students imagine how being computer savvy could help them in any career, boosts the number of girls and kids of color taking-and sticking with-computer science. Upending our notions of what it means to interface with computers could help democratize the biggest engine of wealth since the Industrial Revolution."

"Earlier in the year I created a Scavenger Hunt for our Open House. It was a HUGE hit in our classroom. My kids keep asking me when they will get to scan again, so I have been working on a few new ways to integrate the QR codes into our classroom as well as looking through a few things my team created last year."