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"The Managing Complex Change model puts language to that which makes some schools successful while others struggle. The model looks at five components necessary to create a desired environment. These include vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan. If any one piece is missing the model indicates results schools will experience including change, confusion, anxiety, gradual change, frustration, and a false start. When thinking of successful schools such as Science Leadership Academy, The MET, The Island School, The iSchool, you will find they have all those components in place. On the other hand, when I hear teachers lamenting about their school failures, the model brings clarity to the fact that one or more of these components are missing. Below is the chart that lays this out. Following the chart, I'll take a look at what each missing component might look like in a school environment. As you read, consider which, if any are components, are missing at your school. save image Lack of Vision = Confusion When I hear exasperated teachers spinning their wheels, working so hard to get ready for all the various mandates and requirements, but never feeling a sense of accomplishment, it is clear there is not a tangible school vision that has been communicated. In some cases this is because what is being imposed does or can not reconcile with what the school wanted for their vision. Skill Deficit = Anxiety My heart goes out to those with a skill deficit. They are required to implement a curriculum they are not trained in using or being evaluated via measures with which they are not familiar. Or…they are put into a position they were not trained for or prepared to embrace. Social media provides a great medium for helping these teachers get up to speed, but when the outreach occurs, the anxiety is abundantly clear. Lack of Incentives = Gradual Change It is not unusual for innovative educators to feel like and be perceived as misfits. Islands onto their own

"I have spoken a lot recently about my frustration with a lack of apps that help teach children to code. Largely this frustration is centred around the resulting perception of ICT and edtech this limitation gives our schools. If a school invests wholesale in a set of iPads then the ICT curriculum for these children can be based largely around internet research, movie making and a collection of multimedia authoring apps. And though I love my iPads and iPad lessons the aspect of struggle or challenge for children using these devices is not always apparent or indeed talked about."

"What is true is that change is constant. It's also getting exponentially quicker. This is not only in education, but in many fields of work. It's taken a while for change to pick up the speed with which we now see it in the classroom, but it has always been there. So, how do we handle this as teachers and school leaders? How can we keep the frustration and desperation from boiling over and hurting all potential progress? More importantly how can we make sure the frustration and desperation does not trickle down to our students and impact their learning experience in a negative way? Well, we can start with these guiding beliefs:"

"Children with dyslexia can have trouble with many aspects of literacy, including learning the alphabet, recognizing letters, following a sequence of directions and mastering the rules of spelling. Having a son with dyslexia, we tried many things to help him with his frustrations. We used a lot of compensatory techniques and one web-based program that is now an app. Below are six apps that aim to help kids and adults with dyslexia. "

" sometimes get these secret emails or direct messages from some pretty amazing thinkers in education, talking about how they feel really constrained by the leadership in their schools. Sometimes after speaking, I get teachers in near tears thinking of "what could be" in their schools if only their administrators started reading blogs, looking at twitter; just something to push their learning. It seriously hurts to see the pain in the eyes of these teachers because they just want to do what is best for kids, yet they are feeling extremely constrained. They feel they are not in a situation where they can serve students in the way they feel would help them best in the future. The paradox that they face is that they stay and be frustrated or leave and feel they have abandoned students that need their help. This is an extremely tough situation."

"Today's app review is about Keeper - an app for securely storing and accessing your private information and passwords. Keeper takes the frustration out of having to remember tons of passwords for different websites, and as I've found out, makes quickly accessing different educational and administrative websites a breeze."

"Every new classroom project must satisfy available resources within three dimensions: 1) time, 2) money and 3) physical space. The 2016 New Media Consortium Horizon Report for K-12 Education anticipates that makerspaces will be highly adopted in schools across the country within the next year. Maker education and makerspaces are the hot topic in STEM education right now. Over the last year I have worked with many teachers in a professional development environment who are simultaneously enthusiastic about the idea of a makerspace, and frustrated by the limitations of space in their schedule, budget and classroom layout. We all want a makerspace, but how do we make that happen within these constraints?"

For Halloween 2016, I did a version of Halloween Wars (a Food Network show) with my two classes of gifted elementary learners. I am sharing this lesson through my blog post as it reinforces how I approach lesson planning and teaching. Background Information Principles that drive my instructional approach. regardless of theme, include: Instructional challenges are hands-on and naturally engaging for learners. There is a game-like atmosphere. There are elements of play, leveling up, and a sense of mastery or achievement during the instructional activities. The challenges are designed to be novel and create excitement and joy for learners. There is a healthy competition where the kids have to compete against one another. Learners don't need to be graded about their performances as built-in consequences are natural. There is a natural building of social emotional skills - tolerance for frustration, expression of needs, working as a team. Lessons are interdisciplinary (like life) where multiple, cross-curricular content areas are integrated into the instructional activities."

"While project-based learning has existed for decades, design thinking has recently entered the education lexicon, even though its history can be traced back to Herbert A. Simon's 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial. So why the resurgence of these ideas? Lately, I have heard teachers and school leaders express a common frustration: "We are _______ years into a _______ initiative, and nothing seems to have changed." Despite redesigning learning spaces, adding technology, or even flipping instruction, they still struggle to innovate or positively change the classroom experience. Imagine innovation as a three-legged stool. Many schools have changed the environment leg, but not the other two legs: the behaviors and beliefs of the teachers, administrators, and students. Consider this conundrum: much of what we know about teaching comes from 16+ years of observation as students. In no other profession do you spend that much time watching the previous generation before being told to change everything once you take control. Without the framework or scaffolding for that change, it's truly unreasonable to tell educators, "OK, start innovating.""

"Social media is fascinating.  It's the double edged sword of the 21st century.  It can highlight the good and it can put a magnifying glass on the bad.  There is a story going viral right now about a teen having her birthday party alone. I love that this teen is going to be flooded with cards that will likely mean more to her than any of us can comprehend.  It's going to be a really awesome surprise for her. But, then I start to get frustrated.  The string of people proclaiming, "I'm sending a card," goes viral.  Everyone proclaiming how terrible it is for this teen to be alone on her birthday.  Everyone who must not have any true idea of what autism is really like for families, for children, and for the world."

"Have you found some amazing and cool videos on Facebook, and you are looking for a way on how to download them to your computer? Maybe, you have tried to get them, but you didn't find a solution or a working way. Really, it's so frustrating when you come across awesome videos on Facebook and you find yourself unable to save them to your PC for offline view. But no worries anymore, even if Facebook doesn't provide an option to download and save videos to your computer or any other device, In this post, I'm going to share with you a fantastic trick that will allow you to download any public or private video from Facebook without using any software or plugin. So, let's get started!"

"Designing your own 3D printed parts is a skill that every person who owns a printer should have or be actively acquiring. The power to design exactly what you want feels incredible when you actually have it, and the lack of those skills is incredibly frustrating when they present themselves. More from Weekend Watch Weekend Watch: This Hydraulic Press Channel Is Crushing It Weekend Watch: "Ron's Stuff" Is a Collection of Kinetic Wooden Sculptures Weekend Watch: "Geek Builders" Blends Geeky and Practical in Videos Noe Ruiz over at Adafruit has an ongoing educational series called "Layer by Layer". If you skim back through the playlist, there are over 40 videos about designing for 3D printing."

"Now that the iPad Cart in my building is up and running ( a process that was frustrating, confusing, annoying and ultimately rewarding ), it is time to start using the iPads in classrooms. "

"Individual Education Programs (IEP) can be difficult to put in place at the best of times. IEP's are sometime a source of concern and frustration. The more informed people are about the IEP process the better the IEP can be. Parents will normally work with teachers to develop a plan to help the students succeed in school. The IEP assists this process by describing the goals the whole team sets for a student during the school year, as well as any special support needed to help achieve them. Here are a number of apps that make managing and collecting data for the IEP Process just that little bit easier."

"Guided Access, or what we to call "Kid Mode", is a fantastic addition to iOS that lets you lock an iPhone or iPad into a single app. Well, great when it works as it's intended, but it appears there's a pretty frustrating bug that makes the feature work a little too well once it's enabled in iOS 6 with some apps: triple-clicking the Home button doesn't summon anything and you're stuck in an app! This leaves you unable to leave Guided Access mode, but here's a workaround to get out of it until the bug is resolved:"

"Whether you agree with homework or not, chances are it's going to cause a battle in your household at some stage. Memories of tears, frustration, raised voices and stern looks come back to me as I reflect on those evenings of parent 'bonding'."

"Two 5-year-old boys, one with autism, were having some friendly playtime when they had a communication breakdown. One boy didn't respond to the other and walked away. The ignored kid got frustrated and pushed over a small staircase, causing the first boy to fall. Their speech therapist, Jordan Sadler, decided to address the issue by recreating it in an iPad app called Puppet Pals. She restaged the scenario as a movie, even taking photos of the room for the background and of the kids for the characters. Using the app to show an instant replay of the scuffle, Sadler and the kids identified what went wrong and then recreated the scene, this time making better decisions. Creating custom stories to help kids learn communication skills or understand complex situations is just one of the ways parents, therapists and educators have taken advantage of tablets to work with kids with autism."

"Connecting with each other comes to us more easily now that we can just tap away on a keyboard and chat with a person who lives over 3000 miles away. Finding information knows no boundaries with Google on every computer in the world. Below you will find 25 social media tools for education. As educators, this means access to more, faster, which is thrilling and mindboggling. However, it can also be frustrating and confusing with so much to choose from. How do you know which platform is the best for your goals? Which social media organization has the best resources and community? Which one would help you communicate better with your students? All of these questions flutter through our minds as our eyes wander through the gallons of information we search through. So, to simplify this daunting task for teachers, the following list consists of the best social media for teachers."