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What's important with a PLN is not "what it does for me" but rather how I can use it to change things in education, society, or the world. Learning networks give us potential for action. For many educators, these networks function on a gift-economy basis. ...Creation, collaboration, and sharing are the true value points of a PLN.

I asked about the idea of multiple roles in education to Twitter readers and gathered a set of them. I then took this set and went through it with the class online...The result was a unique -- and colorful -- slide show exploring the evolving education profession. It's worth actually taking the time to list some of these roles and to talk about them in detail:

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:

I sat down this morning and tried to put together a comparison of 20th and 21st Century educational paradigms. This is what I came up with.

One forum that enables educators [including students, parents, community] to engage in meaningful and relevant professional development is the Edcamp model. What is Edcamp? Edcamp is organic, democratic, participant driven professional development for educators. There are no keynote presentations, there is no formal pre-set agenda, and participants set the course of the day. My thoughts on Edcamp:

The more I talk to administrators, present to school boards, and persuade educators that we can no longer ignore social-networks the more I am understanding that what schools/districts need is a new position.

We took another 20 minutes to use a force field analysis to explore the drivers and resisting factors around change. Since the presentation, I have had several requests for more details on using the force field analysis as a decision-making tool, so the following is more detail on how this tool can be effectively used in a variety of settings including education.

It is my main critique with the emotional-feel-good message of Ken Robinson's focus on creativity. First, we need to get over the view that our generation is astonishingly unique. Hasn't every generation faced new technologies to solve problems not foreseen? The present moment arrogance that invades much of school reform thinking is frustrating. And, I might as well add, the pendulum-thinking mindset that is evident in Robinson's view is damaging in the long term. See also http://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/elearnspace-its-new-its-new-george-siemens

A few concepts have longevity such as "how effective is technology enhanced learning when contrasted with traditional classrooms?". Questions like this are boring. And unanswerable given the tremendous number of variables involved in teaching online and in classrooms. I'm firmly convinced of the following: ... ...many of the previously "hot" questions about technology in education no longer interest me. Some of these include:...

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." Henry Ford

n no way, do I want to add to the burden of the already-filled-to-the-brim, new teacher stress bucket. I do however, want to share just 20 tidbits which I hope will help ease new teachers into a fun, successful school year

I want, more than anything else, to leave a legacy in education. I want what I spend my time doing to add value to the profession and to support teachers in helping their students self actualize. I also want to be part of lighting a fire that results in a learning revolution.

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.

To build upon this, we are about to embark on a "Learning Leader Project" which focuses on networking and connecting educators so that they are able to shape their own learning based on personal interests.

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.

All of these data were ultimately distilled to those 9 factors (called Key Implementation Factors, or KIFs in the Project documentation) that need to be present in a school to truly realize the full potential of major 1:1 investments. While each factor is worth a post or two in and of itself, I'll just list them here.

Project-Based Learning grabs hold of this idea and fosters deep learning and autonomy by using technology to help students engage in issues and questions relevant to their lives. This resource will direct you to a variety of resources on this approach, the research behind it, and how you can use it in your class to transform your students into engaged and interested independent thinkers

One of my core beliefs about school these days is that we need to get teachers off of the hamster wheel of the current school-day model. Teachers need time to collaborate, to plan, to innovate. And schools need to find ways to build frequent - I believe weekly - time for everyone to sit in a room and work together to make schools better.

"...we need to keep reminding ourselves that ed reform is not technology reform and that embedded, transformative technology is not simply digitizing what we've already been doing."