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On the Connected Principals blog, 24 administrators from around the world share best practices in education. They come from the U.S., Canada, England and China; they come from private, public and independent schools; and they come from different perspectives and experience levels.

The conventional wisdom in education is that any school reform--be it curriculum, instruction, assessment, or teacher professionalism--is most likely to take hold in schools that have strong leadership. The same holds true for technology.

I agree with Dave's observation. We have four elementary buildings in our district, each with a different principal and each with a distinctive leadership strength. It's just like when I was teaching, I tended to teach to my strengths and had to remind myself to be well-rounded, but my classrooms definitely had a technology slant to them. Now as a building principal, my staff professional development is also slanted to the technology side. That part comes easier to me. I just have to work harder at curriculum and instruction pieces when I "marry" them all together.

A few weeks ago I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be amazing to experience an entire school day in the life of a first grader?" I glanced at my calendar, noticed, despite being few and far between, there were some days without any scheduled meetings or commitments. Right then and there, I blocked off days for every grade level and specialist class in my building.

1. School District borders matter less and less when it comes to professional learning 2. Ideas, not roles are dictating the people I connect with

# I will provide you with an extra prep per week ("A Fed Ex Prep") for 6 straight weeks. This would be prep-free for you as I would prep whichever subject the you would like. The time is also negotiable (ie. if you would rather have 2 periods a week for 3 weeks). # This time will be self-directed to ANYTHING you want with the only goal that you must DELIVER your ideas.

Although Ashley loved basketball, this was his first year playing on an organized team (grade 11). It was not that Ashley did not have a desire to play earlier, but because of his low grades and poor attendance, school rules prohibited him from doing so.

Douglas Reeves's consulting website (The Leadership and Learning Center), where he keeps full PDF text for many of his articles, past and present. SCORE! Check out this treasure trove of reading "when students improve the quaintly and quality of their writing, they improve in reading comprehension, math, science, and social studies."

"It was hard! As a teacher, I think sometimes we say that technology is going to make teaching easier. It's not. It's going to make it different."

Observing a Classroom? Watch the Students, Not the Teacher

Here are three tools that educators can provide students to help prepare them to "self arrest" in the event of an academic or social slip. Personal Relationships: Connectedness: Educational Autonomy:

You have to have strength in order to be an effective leader. The question here is not as much about being strong as it is about how you exert that strength. We can either exert our strength through strength or we can do it through being soft.

Learning goes deep. Evidence of higher order thinking.  Real and substantive conversations.  Personal learning.  Autonomy, mastery, purpose, choice, self-direction. 21st century skills integration. Reflecting