Group items tagged

"George Takei knows how to tell a great story. In this case, a true story of his life. The famed Star Trek actor, activist, and social media star was in town recently to give a remarkable talk as part of a very special TEDxKyoto event. I was invited to watch the rehearsal just before the live event, so I arrived early and grabbed a front row seat. George did not give a speech in the traditional sense. There was no lectern, no notes, no teleprompter. George obviously was reciting the speech from memory-his live version was exactly the same as in the rehearsal-but the speech did not seem memorized. That is, when I was listening I was not aware that he was giving a speech or a prepared talk, I was just lost in the narrative flow of his story."

"ArtSet was an impressive app that I was introduced to last week. I was presenting at a conference and one of the organisers asked if a number of the presenters could go through a workflow to illustrate how a series of apps might be able to be used to deepen student learning. The idea was the the product of one app would become the input for the next. The story of The Lion and the Mouse was suggested as an idea. Each presenter was given three minutes only. There was a cross section of both primary and secondary teachers in the group."

"It was the summer of my disconnect… I've decided to try for a different focus this summer.  I want to spend a LOT less time online and tinker with technology that doesn't revolve around a 2D computer screen. Last year at this time, I was wrapping up my look at teaching computer programming to primary students.  I had just finished submitting in my Coetail Final Project and this was the subject-matter that I had chosen for my final project.  My investigation was done mainly through the 2D environment of the computer screen.    My own children and I spent last summer participating in two online "kids camp" programs that were an extension of my Coetail Final Project.  They were Scratch Programming and Minecraft.  We worked through several weeks of challenges, earned digital badges, and posted our creations online.  Some of them were featured in a weekly Show and Tell that was streamed over the internet by Pursuitery (has some connection with Connected Learning Alliance  and Mimi Ito of "Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out"). That was a huge amount of fun but it was all pixels."

"Something that bothers me so much is when I read articles that talk about how libraries are becoming makerspaces.  Our makerspace is one component of the participatory culture that runs through our space.  Anyone who knows my story knows that my point of entry into the Maker Movement was through literacy, so for me, literacy and making have always gone hand in hand.   When I began as the Library Media Specialist at New Milford High School, I walked into a library that was similar to many school libraries in older schools.  It was very traditional looking, with tall stacks and lots and lots of books that students simply did not check out, nor have an interest in.  The collection was out of date and had not been weeded in decades.  One of the tasks for me was to weed the books.  During that weeding process, I decided that traditional nonfiction that made it through the weeding process would be sent to classrooms to build up their classroom research libraries.  I decided to keep any memoirs or narrative nonfiction that we had in our collection, since those were the kinds of books I discovered so many of our students did enjoy reading and would check out.  Amongst the vast fiction collection, we did find a few gems, but mostly we either discarded books that were no longer relevant to our students, gave them to classrooms who wanted them, or to individual students who showed an interest.  In the end, I was able to preserve just a few shelves of books.  As a result, I was tasked with rebuilding our collection."

"I was painfully bored during my K-12 education. I looked forward to college anticipating that it would be different - more engaging, more interesting, more innovative. I was wrong. My undergraduate education, except for a few bright spots, was just an extension of my K-12 education including more grill and drill with sages on the stages (literally since I went to such a large university); taking notes and taking lots of multiple choice tests. During my freshman year, I thought that if I had one wish, it would be to change the educational system (which has stayed with me ever since). One of those bright spots was being asked to read Carl Rogers, Freedom to Learn, which was published 1969 in an upper level Educational Psychology course. The big aha for me was that school systems should be focused on helping learners develop the skills for how to learn not what to learn, one that was sorely lacking in most of my K-graduate-level education and a concept and goal that as an educator I've held onto ever since."

""If you're doing all that, who's doing your job?" "People only present because they think it looks good on their resume." "She's obviously all about herself, I mean, look at what she does." IMG_5438These three statements literally were shared with me this year, along with a couple others. Some to me, some with me…all about me. It's hard to hear statements like this and NOT feel as if they are attacking you personally, even though I doubt that was the intention. (er…I hope.) Last Monday at #ISTE13 I was able to go to George Couros's sesson on "Leading Innovative Change". I'm not sure what I thought this was going to be about, but I knew I wanted to see the Couros show, :) His intent was to share how his school division created a powerful vision for innovation and share the steps to guarantee success. What I heard was a defense for all that I believe in and have tried to convey as a teacher, as a technology facilitator, and as an assistant principal. What I heard was the reason I blog, tweet, and share."

"Kaiba Gionfriddo was born prematurely in 2011. After 8 months, his lung development caused concerns, although he was sent home with his parents as his breathing was normal. Six weeks later, Kaiba stopped breathing and turned blue. He was diagnosed with tracheobronchomalacia, a long Latin word that means his that windpipe was so weak that it collapsed. He had a tracheostomy and was put on a ventilator - the conventional treatment. Still, Kaiba would stop breathing almost daily. His heart would stop, too. Then, his caregivers 3D printed a bioresorbable device that instantly helped Kaiba breathe. This case is considered a prime example of how customized 3D printing is transforming healthcare as we know it. Since Kaiba's story, 3D printing in medicine has been skyrocketing. And the list of objects that have already been successfully printed in this field demonstrates the potential that this technology holds for healthcare in the near future."

"t didn't take long for Michael Godsey, an English teacher at Morro Bay High School in California, to realize that his decision to use a public radio podcast in the classroom was a wise one. It wasn't any old podcast he was introducing to his classes. It was "Serial," the murder-mystery phenomenon produced by reporter Sarah Koenig of "This American Life," which already was transfixing a wide swath of the adult population. "Even if they weren't into it, I told them it was the most popular podcast of all time, and that was interesting," Godsey says. He needn't have worried. The podcast seized his five classrooms of 10th- and 11th-graders. "I had kids cutting other classes so they could come listen to it again," he says. "Kids who were sick, who never did their homework, were listening at home." Godsey is one of a growing number of educators who are using podcasts like "Serial" to motivate their classrooms and address education requirements set by the Common Core state standards. Improving students' listening skills is one of the essential components of the new education mandates, and using audio in the classroom can be an effective way to promote listening."

"I'm one of four teacher facilitators for our Junior Coding Club. We meet once a week during second nutrition break to code. The group's made up of many beginner coders, but also a couple of advanced coders. At lunch today, one of the advanced coders came rushing into the classroom, so excited to share his news. He decided to put a hold on Code Academy, and start using Scratch. During the week, he used the computer version of Scratch to create a flight simulator. This simulator was truly incredible! This Grade 4 student was so thrilled about what he did, that it was hard not to also feel thrilled. While it was wonderful to see this student so passionate about learning, it was also amazing to hear all of the thinking behind his choices. I was honestly in awe! He thought of everything. He even researched to find out the details about planes at take-off, and used this information in his simulator. He could explain all of his choices and the thinking behind these choices. In this short video clip below you can hear just a tiny snippet of this explanation."

"I leaned over the shoulder of a student in the library. She was quietly working with headphones in, and completely focused. What caught my attention is that she would continually lift her phone up over the textbook, and then jot something down on the paper to her left. It was a motion and process that she repeated at least seven times before I headed over to see what was going on. As I got closer I could see that it was a math textbook, and her paper was filled with equations, problems, and steps. I thought to myself, that sure doesn't look like my math homework, which was always a mess of numbers and lines and eraser marks from messing up! What happened next caught me by surprise. Not because I couldn't believe it, but because it changed the way I viewed math forever."

""I'm going to practice radical empathy now," proclaimed Toshi, a 40-something male executive, to a small group at workshop offered by frog in partnership with Fast Company at SXSW this week.  "Hi, my name is Maddison and I'm a teenage girl," he says. From there he describes an experience of belonging that Maddison (a young professional woman sitting across from him) had felt at summer camp. The most compelling part of his narrative was not that he was retelling the story from her perspective, but the fact that she was sitting facing him, their knees touching while she smiled and nodded. Once he was done, it was her turn to do the same for him as a way to introduce each other to the others in the group. Maddison and Toshi had never met before this morning, but their connection even during those few minutes was undeniable. Ditto for the other two people in the group."

"Excerpted from Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies For Joyful Classrooms (c) 2017 by Timothy D. Walker. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton.  Schedule brain breaks Like a zombie, Sami*-one of my fifth graders-lumbered over to me and hissed, "I think I'm going to explode! I'm not used to this schedule." And I believed him. An angry red rash was starting to form on his forehead. Yikes, I thought, what a way to begin my first year of teaching in Finland. It was only the third day of school, and I was already pushing a student to the breaking point. When I took him aside, I quickly discovered why he was so upset. Throughout this first week of school, I had gotten creative with my fifth grade timetable. If you recall, students in Finland normally take a fifteen-minute break for every forty-five minutes of instruction. During a typical break, the children head outside to play and socialize with friends. I didn't see the point of these frequent pit stops. As a teacher in the United States, I'd usually spent consecutive hours with my students in the classroom. And I was trying to replicate this model in Finland. The Finnish way seemed soft, and I was convinced that kids learned better with longer stretches of instructional time. So I decided to hold my students back from their regularly scheduled break and teach two forty-five-minute lessons in a row, followed by a double break of thirty minutes. Now I knew why the red dots had appeared on Sami's forehead."

""You don't need to teach us.  That's what Google is for." That was the message a student shared with a surprised audience of educators during a popular technology conference. The students went on to say, "If I can't figure something out I prefer to watch a YouTube video or text a friend rather than ask a teacher." The other students in the room nodded their heads in agreement. Many teachers understand this is how today's students prefer to learn, but what does that look like? As danah boyd recently shared on her site, "too many students I met were being told that Wikipedia was untrustworthy and were, instead, being encouraged to do research. As a result, the message that many had taken home was to turn to Google and use whatever came up first. They heard that Google was trustworthy and Wikipedia was not." Here's what happen when you do that."

"I have a couple of more 3D printing projects that I haven't written about this year, but by the time this posts it will be the last day of school, and I feel like this would be the right time to reflect on what a year of 3D printing in the classroom was like. I started the year with a lot of ideas and excitement, but I wasn't really sure how the year would pan out. Looking back now I couldn't be happier. The level of learning that occurred this year was more than I expected. As excited as I was at the prospect of using a 3D printer in the classroom, I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to figure out how to tie it to the curriculum. I wondered if my students would be able to understand how it works and be able to use it effectively. I was concerned that I wouldn't have time for projects with all the other demands that happen in a classroom. My concerns were overshadowed by the novelty and the excitement of the printer. I think that is what many of my students felt too. They were curious, excited, and bewildered."

"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

"Last week, I spoke at a TEDx event hosted by the Upper Perkiomen School District. It was an unforgettable experience and I was honored to be a part of it. Once the video is edited, I'll share my talk on this blog. So, one of the things I loved about the event was the STEM-related, maker projects they showcased. Students demonstrated their apps and games they had created. We got the chance to tour a design space with 3D printers, CNC routers, and, more importantly, a group of empowered students who were owning the creative process. I found myself gushing about this space -- about how cool it was to see kids going through the design process actually testing out prototypes. I remember, at one point, saying to a student volunteer, "Don't you wish more of school was like this?" He shook his head. "Not really. It's not really my thing." "But you get to make stuff." "I get to make stuff all the time. Have you ever been a part of a theater production?" he asked. "It's called a production for a reason.""

"I was 11 the year my summer camp director transformed the regular schedule, procedures, and lingo that we were used to-into the most memorable, enriching experience I had ever encountered at that point in my life. I had no idea that he had 'gamified' the week; I just knew that it was the best summer ever. Instead of grouping us by numbers, we were named after the Greek alphabet. We competed daily against the other groups in volleyball, softball, kickball, and on the final night -a chariot and Olympic flame opened an epic Olympic Game contest at midnight. The director, or 'game master' as we were inclined to call him, even made everyone reset the clocks and watches-so we never knew what the real time was, the entire schedule was set on some sort of crazy alternate schedule. Now I realize that it probably allowed him to sleep in and us to stay up later, but we were none the wiser. Daily we played games, wrote skits, went swimming, and competed for cleanest cabins. We did all the regular stuff, but it was more fun because there were rules and boundaries and points and collaboration and competition and a clear, mutual understanding of goals and performance and criteria for success. As a student, I got to learn more about the power of 'gamifying' something, and what effect it had on learners."

"One of the things I was keen to do this year in setting up an in-house research centre at Wellington College was to have a small number of students partner with us on our project with Harvard faculty on Growth Mindsets and Grit. A key point for me was what does this research actually look like in the classroom and and at the level of the student? Another goal was to have them help us in designing a survey by having them pilot test some of the more problematic questions so we could get as reliable data as possible. We asked the students to read some of the literature and research in these areas and then had a series of group discussion with them where we discovered a huge range of things that was really helpful in helping us understand Growth Mindsets from multiple perspectives. "

"Twelve years after landing my first teaching job, I was invited to interview for a position in a nearby school. Job interviews had been in my rearview mirror for so long that I wasn't sure what to expect. But it didn't matter; I had a job already, and this changed my perspective completely on this one. I decided that I was going to ask the interviewers a few questions of my own. Principals routinely end job interviews by asking candidates if they have any questions. Most teachers struggle with this. Many will simply say, No, or ask when they can expect a decision. Some ask questions they believe will be endearing; things like, "Are there committees I can join?" or "Can I get into my room early?" I realized in the last job interview I ever had that my questions were the most important ones, and the last thing I was concerned with was sucking up to the principals. After all, in a way, I was interviewing them. Walking back to my car that day, I knew I wouldn't take the job if they offered it to me, because they struggled to answer the questions I asked to my satisfaction."

"Flashback to the first day of school in August 2014. It seems like such a long time ago but was less than a year ago. The door to the new Makerspace was open at lunch time (I always like to keep a classroom door open when I am in there). Students came in to check what's there. Was I ready? Not exactly, far from it. Was the room ready? I didn't think so. Were the students ready? Yes, of course. They were ready yesterday. How could I say no when the door to the room was open and the children were asking? That has been the mantra the entire year in the Makerspace. I responded with a smile and welcomed them. They did it all… They …``