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Vince Breunig

The Elements of a Professional Learning Community - 3 views

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    A PLC focuses on learning instead of on teaching, drastically changing the role of the  principal. Principals continue to observe instruction, discussing issues such as pacing,  instructional data, support needed, and student efficacy. But the focus is on the instructional  results instead of on the instruction itself
Bradford Saron

McTeaching: Online Instruction | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice - 1 views

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    Cuban's always good for the role of devil's advocate. I love the analogy of Mcjobs to Mcteaching for online schools. What do you think? Are there adequate responses to the cited weaknesses of online schools? 
Vince Breunig

Whac-A-Mole Leadership - 2 views

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    Whac-A-Mole is similar to the daily routine of a principal. From the time you arrive at school in the morning until late in the evening, moles pop up. Your job is to address each mole and to prioritize which one is most important. In this article, I am going to describe the 'Six Moles' a principal must address in order to be a good leader.
Bradford Saron

Teachers and Administrators, Don't Be Scared of Technology: It Won't Replace the Classr... - 1 views

  • hese skills are not taught by rote learning alone, but rather are learned through discovery, inquiry, and exploration. Many of these skills cannot be successfully taught through an application or website, but must be experienced in class and facilitated by a teacher.
  • Just because an educational tool isn’t perfect does not mean it should be disregarded. Just because an online classroom does not replace the role of a teacher doesn’t mean that this learning tool has no educational merit. Though there are thousands of technological tools that help enhance instruction, it doesn’t mean that teachers will be rendered obsolete.
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    A must read
Bradford Saron

What Does Technoratis State of the Blogosphere Report Mean for Education Bloggers? - Th... - 1 views

  • Almost half of all content consumers surveyed by Technorati trust traditional media sources less than they did five years ago
  • Equally interesting is the fact that almost 50% of content consumers surveyed by Technorati trust the content that they’re finding on blogs—a number that rivals the 60% of content consumers who trust the content they find in print newspapers, television broadcasts and radio programming.
  • 60% of all bloggers surveyed spend between 1 and 3 hours per week working on their blogs—and the average blogger posts new content to their site 2-3 times per week.
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  • mobile blogging is becoming more and more popular. 
  • If those kinds of trends continue—or start to find their way into the edusphere—that can only mean two things: Blog content will continue to play an important role in driving conversations in all fields. My own content could be drowned out, lost in the sea of posts being published by writers who are investing more time than I am in their blogs.
  • The lines are blurring between the blogosphere and social media spaces like Facebook and Twitter:
  • Bloggers spend more time interacting in social media spaces than the average American.
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    Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. The article blends well with Clay Shirky's analysis of the death of print. This is why. 
Bradford Saron

The Digital Disruption | Foreign Affairs - 1 views

  • A similar phenomenon is occurring today in places such as Iran and Syria, where government officials seeking unvarnished news of the world beyond their borders use so-called proxy servers and circumvention technology to access their own Facebook or e-mail accounts -- platforms their governments regularly block.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      This eerily sounds like what we do in schools, which is too bad. It sort of sounds like we are running a small communist nation.
  • comparing the uncertain dial tone of the fax machine with the speed of today's handheld devices is like comparing a ship's compass to the power of global positioning systems.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      This paragraph could be an update to Clay Shirky's book, Cognitive Surplus. 
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    • Bradford Saron
       
      Like Google.
  • "partially connected"
  • breaking down traditional barriers of age, gender, and socioeconomic status
  • cell phones
  • cell-phone
  • cell phones
  • nature of civil society
  • more costs than benefits
  • connecting nations" -- places where technological development is still nascent and where both governments and citizens are testing out tools and their potential impact
  • "open by default"
  • the so-called failed states
  • Efforts by democratic governments to foster freedom and opportunity will be far stronger if they recognize the vital role technology can play in enabling their citizens to promote these values -- and that technology is overwhelmingly provided by the private sector.
  • interconnected estate
  • interconnected estate
  • to shape government and corporate behavior
  • by promoting freedom of expression and by protecting citizens from threatening governments.
  • join together in new alliances to multiply their impact.
  • offer a new way to exercise the duty to protect citizens around the world who are abused by their governments or barred from voicing their opinions
  • citizens' use of technology can be an effective vehicle to promote the values of freedom, equality, and human rights globally
  • shared power
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Shared power. It's odd that the core problem of connection through technology may be shared power. Must our core thesis be (then) how to participate in an environment of shared power or of decentralization of information or of disaggregation of opportunity to participate? Hmmmm. 
Bradford Saron

Laundry List for Community Builders « 21st Century Collaborative - 1 views

  • The following is a “laundry list” of recommendations Community Developers should consider in the creation of their social community.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Sounds like the directions to set up a digital professional learning community with staff and faculty. 
  • Adopt a paradigm that views the community construction process as one of co-design that compliments and enhances your organization’s mission and values.
  • Create an emergent, evolving co-design with the collaboration of your intended members in developing a shared vision, community niche, and ongoing feedback loop on ways to improve design and usability.
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  • Utilization of a loose governance through light leadership roles in the initial launch, such as, community organizer, expert voice/subject matter expert, cognitive coaches, moderator/facilitator, help desk or support. Then build to an evolving leadership pattern that focuses on self-directed learning and self-governance.
    • Bradford Saron
       
      Cognitive coaches and support. Then comes self-direction. 
  • Careful selection of a community organizer who should have passion, vision, enthusiasm, a clear understanding of professional practice, who is visionary and must not be afraid of innovation or changes
  • Creation of profile customization, identity tools, subgroup areas and activities to build trust and sense of community
  • Creation of a tool set that should enable like-minded individuals to form subgroups around shared goals and interests
  • Tools not rules – When possible use tools to help members self-govern
  • Inclusion of expert voices with name recognition that will bring newcomers and experienced community members together to share and learn from each other
  • Initiate regular content around relevant provocative issues and help members develop a sense of ownership
Bradford Saron

Principals as Instructional Leaders-Again and Again | Larry Cuban on School Reform and ... - 0 views

  • Because principals, like teachers and superintendents, have limited hours and energy (e.g., spending time with family, friends, sleep, exercise, reading–need I go on?), they face tensions over what they should choose to do each day. Thus, choices become compromises to ease tensions entangled in their teaching, managing, and politicking roles.
  • principals and teachers having a shared understanding of what “good” teaching is.
  • Everyone wants principals to be instructional leaders but no one wants to take away anything from the principals’ job.
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    Classic Cuban, in his ability to explain and eloquently capture our experience.
Bradford Saron

The Wisconsin Vision - 4 views

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    This is the report published by the Wisconsin School Administrators' Alliance in the summer of 2010 (I think). Check out the part on A Visionary Tale on page 9. Hat-tip to Mary Bowen-Eggebraaten for forwarding this piece on to me.
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    Very nice. AND, as the report indicates, leadership and community need to be included. This means you need the school board to play a role. They are the conduit to the community. Public education has been down the transformation road before. In some ways we are not inventing anything new here. John Dewey championed experiential learning as the public education system developed a century ago. Progressive educators tried in the 1930s and 1960s to introduce experiential learning into the system. The grammar of schooling, the deep structure, the notion of "real school" all pull the system back into the status quo. We need to remain cognizant of these dynamics and consider how to address them if we want to see the promise of the ideas contained in this report become a reality. You have to connect the ideas outlined in this report to the notion of collective impact. I think this idea is key to seeing a different outcome: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/2197/
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    I want to be clear: I am a supporter of the ideas contained in the Wisconsin Vision report. I also want to be sure we take a realists view of how to make it happen. I do not want to see this effort and the ideas of CESAs 1 and 6, wind up in the history books like past transformation efforts.
Bradford Saron

The State of the World: 10 Belated Reflections on 2011 Davos Don Tapscott : : Don Tapscott - 0 views

  • The new “wiki revolutions” are so explosive and happen so fast, that there is no clear vanguard to take power, leaving a vacuum. The vacuums that result pose significant challenges for everyone who cares about moving from oppression, dictatorship and fundamentalism to openness, democracy and 21st century governments.
  • he world is increasingly complex and interconnected, and, at the same time, experiencing an erosion of common values and principles. This undermines the public’s trust in leadership, which in turn threatens economic growth and political stability.  In the words of the WEF’s founder Klaus Schwab, we need to “concentrate on defining the new reality and discuss which shared norms are required for making global cooperation possible in this new age.”
  • There are traditional risks like nuclear war, terrorism, climate change, infectious diseases, economic crisis and failed states.  But new risks are emerging everywhere. Consider something as seemingly mundane as the global supply chain. The vast networks that provide the world with food, clothing, fuel and other necessities could handle an Iceland volcano and one other catastrophe like the failure of the Panama Canal. But according to experts, a third simultaneous disaster would collapse the system. People around the world would stop getting food and water, leading to unthinkable social unrest and even a disintegration of civilized society.
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  • we will only make growth sustainable “if we make our growth inclusive.”
  • They have been bathed in bits; computers, the internet, and interactive technologies are a fundamental part of the experience of youth. To them, technology is like the air. When young people today use digital devices, they are interacting, searching, authenticating, remembering, collaborating, composing their thoughts, and organizing information. They interact with the media and know how to inform themselves and use technology to get things done.
  • China’s disciplined command-and-control style work force could ultimately be trumped by a massive force of Indian professionals who are creative, collaborative, entrepreneurial and life- long learners.
  • The irresistible force to cut government spending is confronted with the immoveable object of essential services, entitlements, military spending and extraordinary expenditures stemming from corporate bailouts and fiscal stimulation. 
  • What’s needed is a Wikinomics approach — embracing more agile, networked structures enabled by global networks for new kinds of collaboration. Nation states would continue to play a central role but can overcome their silo thinking and behavior by sharing information more effectively, cooperating on real-time networks, and basing their decisions more deeply in the processes of multi-stakeholder networks.
  • Understandably social media, mobility and the relentless digital revolution continues to drive change and cause concern in everything from intellectual property to youth revolutions.
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    Tapscott on his continued (and insightful) reflections. 
Kelly Burhop

Praising Teachers While Bashing Them | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice - 0 views

  • This naked bipartisan effort to exert power over teachers comes at a time when rhetoric praises teachers and recognizes their crucial role in the lives of children yet actual policies end up smearing all teachers with the tar-brush of selfishness and self-interest in this unrelenting attack upon teacher unions. Related Articles
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    Teachers are praised and bashed at the same time.  
Guy Leavitt

Web Overtakes Paper for News, 47% of it Mobile| The Committed Sardine - 0 views

  • Pew and the Knight Foundation in a new study has said the web has finally overtaken newspapers as the primary source of news.
  • The tablet played a role and was growing rapidly in adoption; about seven percent of Americans had an iPad or another tablet in January, twice as many as those who had one in September.
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    The growing power of the Web
ron saari

Google Reader (1000+) - 0 views

  • fair ways of assessing classroom effectiveness that include test scores but go far beyond these limited numbers. Such sane efforts, however, get forgotten in the wake of wave after wave of anti-teacher union tirades.
  • In doing so, they have narrowed the role of schools to being an arm of the economy reinforcing the fiction that all U.S. schools, not just urban ones, are lousy and that “effective” teachers and schools can solve poverty, put every kid into college, and end the skills gap with international competitors.
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    A good article about teachers and unions
Bradford Saron

Alan Gershenfeld: Game-Based Learning: Hype Vs. Reality - 0 views

  • Project-based learning: Games are interactive, "lean-forward," and participatory. They enable players to step into different roles (e.g. scientist, explorer, inventor, political leader), confront a problem, make meaningful choices and explore the consequences of these choices. Games can help make learning more engaging, relevant and give students real agency in ways that static textbooks simply cannot.
  • Personalized learning: Games are designed to enable players to advance at their own pace, fail in a safe and supportive environment, acquire critical knowledge just-in-time (vs. just-in-case), iterate based on feedback and use this knowledge to develop mastery. Games can help teachers manage large classes with widely divergent student capabilities and learning styles through embedded assessment and individualized, adaptive feedback.
  • 24/7 learning: Games offer a delicate mix of challenges, rewards and goals that drive motivation, time-on-task and a level of engagement that can seamlessly cross from formal to informal learning environments. Given that kids spend more time engaged with digital media than any other activity (other than sleep), games can enable an increasing portion of this out-of-school digital media time to effectively reinforce in-school learning (and vice-versa).
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  • Peer-to-peer learning: Games are increasingly social. Whether they involve guilds or teams jointly accomplishing missions, asynchronous collaboration over social networks or sourcing advice from interest-driven communities to help solve tricky challenges, games naturally drive peer-to-peer and peer-to-mentor social interactions.
  • 21st Century skill development: Games are complex. Whether it is a 5-year-old parsing a Pokemon card or a 15-year-old optimizing a city in SimCity, games can foster critical skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, systems thinking, digital media literacy, creativity and collaboration. Given that many of the jobs that will emerge in 21st century have not yet been invented, these 'portable' skills are particularly important.
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    Although some of the stats may be uncharacteristic of most of Wisconsin, this seems well presented-especially the bold points of strength for gaming. 
Bradford Saron

The Use of Educational Video Games in Knowledge Retention | 1 to 1 Schools - 1 views

  • Chances seem good that video games, once con­sid­ered only an obsta­cle to get­ting home­work done, may take on an impor­tant role in edu­ca­tion in the near future.
  • he two groups that used video games to pre­pare demon­strated a marked increase in knowl­edge reten­tion. The increase was attrib­uted to the psy­cho­log­i­cal effect of par­tic­i­pants being able to engage their minds to a greater degree than that of the group that pas­sively observed the Pow­er­Point presentation.
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