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Here is my draft of an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for our elementary school. I'm eager to share it with our school community because I like the way it portrays the way we approach teaching and learning. I hope it shines light on our vision.

I worry that we don't take the time to say it often enough. How many times do you notice something stellar - even if it is small - that supports incredible learning? How often do we say it?

Despite the non-stop action, the most exciting part of this first semester in a new school has been how much we have been able to accomplish in such a short time. Not just on the individual teacher level, either, much of the work I have been focusing on has an impact on the whole school.

1. ICT IS USED TO ENHANCE STUDENT LEARNING2. ICT IS AN INTEGRAL ASPECT OF TEACHING3. PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT IS ONGOING4. PLANNING, BUDGETING and EVALUATION ARE KEY ORGANISATIONAL ACTIVITIES5. ICT INFUSION IS SUPPORTED BY COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS

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.

A year ago, I wasn't on Twitter. Now my PLN is invaluable. If every other form of PD was taken away from me, I would continue to grow and learn because of the people and resources at my finger tips on Twitter. A year ago, I didn't really blog. Now it's part of who I am. It's how I actively try to make sense of the world. And it has connected me to people who challenge my thinking and help me to be a better teacher.

We are not going to have all of the answers or a foundation of knowledge and experience to guide us, which is somewhat daunting... What we do know is that we are open and committed to the learning that we, alongside our students, are going to experience during this process

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.

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

Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas. "Chance favours the connected mind."

This time, it will look more like a jigsaw. Five students will comprise each "home" group. Each member from the home group will research a different area. However, this time they won't be researching alone. Instead, one student from each group, will meet in subject-alike groups, and become the expert on their area.

Four years ago, we began looking at a PLC model. The ideas of creating time within the timetable for teachers to work interdependently to develop common emphasized curricula and assessments, to utilize the resultant data to modify instructional practice, and to create an intervention system that ensured the success of each student were very topical for our school.

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:

But I think we will find that at the end of that battle, we won't really feel too much better, we might have said some things that we might not be able to take back, and we will be in a position where a solution may be even more distant than when we began the fight.

Great post... worth reading more than once. "...I believe the classroom should be a place that is sometimes in the world and sometimes removed from it."