Group items tagged

"Within Parkland School Division, our mission is stated as the following: Our purpose is to prepare, engage and inspire our students to be their best in a quickly changing global community. As there was a lot of work to create this mission with our stakeholders and community , I looked deeply at the work that I do as the Division Principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning and how we could help make this mission come to life. As there are often overarching vision, mission, and value statements, it is essential that we look at these areas and break them down into more achievable "chunks". It is important we define "why" we do the work, but it is also important to bring these statements to life as well."

"more than just "existing" and "being good" online, it is about making a difference"

"According to Cybrary Man's Educational Websites (@cybraryman1), "a Smackdown or Show and Tell is a sharing of websites, tools or teaching tricks that you have found to be great to use. You are given 2 minutes to present the tool to the group.""

"With the increasing rate of new tech devices and web 2.0 tools being developed each day, it is very easy for both teachers and students to get excited by something flashy and lose sight of the purpose. We often have to remind ourselves to start with our learning objectives and THEN decide what technology can enhance the learning process."

"I was teaching a math class probably about 10 years ago, and I remember one of my top students (academically) goofing around and distracting others. I talked to her about her behaviour, and how although she understood the material, others were having issues and she was disturbing their work. During the same class, I remember one of my struggling students, who was often a distraction in class, doing extremely well on an assignment. I went on to praise the student for the effort and how well he worked on this particular assignment. After class, the "high flyer" in my math class came up to me and said something that has stuck to me for awhile."

"Over the past couple of years, I have had the awesome opportunity as a principal and teacher to be part of a school that adopted iPads on a 1:1 device to student ratio. I went into the program unsure if iPads would be as effective of a classroom device as traditional laptops, but have become convinced that the iPad offers more for classrooms than traditional desktop or laptop computers. Here are the ten reasons I why I have found iPads to be the perfect classroom tool."

"There are various types of student inquiry. How many of them do you know? Thanks to a post I found on Twitter, you're about to know about all of them. I watch social media closely and it's my job to share some of the hot topics on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other outlets that teachers, principals, students, and parents are contributing."

"As Abby walked into the school building she had a sinking feeling in her stomach. It was November and she had just moved into a new community. She was nervous about starting a new school midway through the school year. This was her first day of school and she kept her eyes down, nervous, not knowing what to expect as she walked into the main office. Suddenly, the office secretary called out to her in a tone that made her skip a breath, "Where are you supposed to be?  Do you have a pass?  Move on now before the tardy bell rings and the vice principal gives you a detention for being late." Each day in school offices across the country this scenario is playing out with regularity.  Although it may come across as somewhat exaggerated, those of you who have spent any amount of time in school have probably at one time or another been witness to such an interaction in the main office area.  It is these defined interactions that has led to us to ponder this question.  Have we reached the point where we are willing to allow negative interactions to drive the level of success of our students, staff and our school? What if we were to pause, step back and view our office culture through the eyes of students, parents, guests or even staff who visit the main office? What would they say?  If we manage our interactions appropriately they will leave feeling valued and cared for and look forward to their next return trip."

"It's that time of year when both teachers and students are looking forward to time away from the classroom. The sun is out, and the days are long. We enjoy our quiet time, but at the same time, we know that soon we will be thinking about the ringing of bells throughout crowded hallways. I once heard a principal explain the summertime like this: Teachers think of July as one big Saturday. They wake up with an excited energy and spend each day enjoying every possible moment. However, teachers think of August like a Sunday. They start to become more focused on the upcoming year. They work on lesson plans, purchase school supplies, and look to see what is new in the world of education to make sure they are prepared for their incoming students. If this describes your typical summer routine, I would like to share some tips and tricks to stay updated throughout the summer and make your back-to-school prep as smooth as possible."

"You may have heard the educational buzz about the free app Periscope. With this app, you can record a live broadcast and share it with followers or with the public. If you aren't familiar with the it, check out this Education Closet article from the fall: http://educationcloset.com/2015/09/15/up-periscope-reimagining-arts-integration-professional-development/ Many educators have jumped on the Periscope platform, broadcasting tips after school hours or live from their classrooms. While it is easy to sign up and follow broadcasts, it can be daunting to record a public broadcast yourself. After learning about Periscope, I thought this might be a useful tool for my school district to help teachers network and learn from one another. I ran the idea by my principal, and she was immediately supportive. To help with privacy concerns, we decided all of our broadcasts would be set to private. In order for anyone to see a private broadcast, though, our staff must be mutual followers of each other. Here's the plan we followed when rolling out a school-wide Periscope community."

"I have a confession to make.  I hate meetings. Maybe that is not entirely true. I hate bad meetings. You know the ones where you spend a lot of time going round and round in circles, yet seem to accomplish little at the end of the day.  One of those main staples of these meetings has been "brainstorming".  This process is one that has been heralded in not only meetings, but also for "Design Thinking" (here is a document on the techniques os brainstorming in design thinking from Stanford University, Institute of Design). So out of sheer curiosity, I googled "brainstorming is bad" to see what I found (not biased at all I know).  Here are a few of the articles that I read with little snippets from each."

"Think your library needs a renovation? You might be right, but before spending unnecessary money on a major overhaul, you might want to think again. I receive inquiries all of the time from schools whose library's are not used, and thought that renovating their space was going to do the trick. Oftentimes, even with a big referendum that allows for a state-of-the-art renovation, those spaces continue to be unused. The solution to turning a library around is NOT a renovation, it is the culture. Upon my arrival at New Milford High School, I walked into a library that was unused and that was referred to by my principal at the time, Eric Sheninger, as a barren wasteland.  We didn't have the luxury of a big sum of money to renovate our space, so we were forced to think of other ways to make changes in our space.  Those changes focused not on how the space looked, but on transforming the culture of the space. "