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In my earlier post, I mentioned how Twitter played such a prominent role in the TLt experience. There was another theme that threaded through almost every presentation and deep into the private conversations; the importance of family. I've never been to a conference where so many presenters boldly expressed how their family motivated them to share, learn, and create. My family sacrificed quite a bit for me to attend this conference, and I greatly appreciated being in the presence of others who recognized the importance of incorporating family values into your work life. Everyone I met was just a pleasure to be around. I would like to share a little about some of them. I can't list everyone I met, because I didn't spend much time with some of them, but hopefully I can help you get to know a few of those with whom I connected.

Great website for those who want to teach about food production and farming.

Website to teach you about how the food got to you! This is a really neat website for elementary teachers who discuss food production. There is a resource for teachers as well. As a farm girl, it is great to see a site that discusses the importance of farming. This is so important for kids to understand. We garden at our school and it is great!

This study breaks a lot of the stereotypes people may have about use of the Internet. It also presents important information for libraries and schools.

Wow -- this longitudinal study shows that all generations show "google generation" traits with over 65 year olds spending 4 more hours a week online than some of the younger ages. It argues that libraries must adapt to the digital mindset AND that young people are lacking in information skills! This is an important study for all educators, business leaders, AND students on the Horizon project. Another reason to remind ourselves that we base practice on RESEARCH not STEREOTYPES!

Wow -- this longitudinal study shows that all generations show "google generation" traits with over 65 year olds spending 4 more hours a week online than some of the younger ages. It argues that libraries must adapt to the digital mindset AND that young people are lacking in information skills! This is an important study for all educators, business leaders, AND students on the Horizon project. Another reason to remind ourselves that we base practice on RESEARCH not STEREOTYPES!

World History : HyperHistory Online navigates through 3 000 years of World History with links to important persons of world historical importance; civilization timelines; events and facts; and historical maps

Great points from Stephanie Sandifer on cheating - when she talked about how she cheats every day by using a copy of something from a coworker - I may have already linked to this but it is so powerful, I came back to it! Here were my thoughts for Stephanie: "I love how you say that you're "cheating every day." Certainly LEARNING is important, but to me, learning how to find answers and solve problems is the MOST important skill. Some teachers and I were discussing how some kids have book knowledge but fumble at doing science experiments! The practical knowledge eludes many that are good memorizers and what is a good education. To me, rote memorization precludes many from "feeling" educated (because of their poor grades) and makes many think they ARE educated (because of their great grades) when in fact we are indeed testing the wrong thing! Great points here!"

Great post by Ben Grey on his participation in Constructing Modern knowledge - he hits several things including the fact that many at the conference said that computer programming should be mandatory for all students and a presenter who said that the problem with today is that too many people have a voice. My comments from Ben's blog are below. Great conversations happening here! Programming - OK, on the programming thing, here are my thoughts. In our curriculum our objective is not as much a specific LANGUAGE. One year I may use HTML with Javascript, this past year I used LSL - what I want kids to know that when they encounter programming and coding that there are certain conventions. Some are case sensitive, some are not. How do you find out how to add to what you know about programming? Do you know where to go to find prewritten code? Can you hack it to make it work to do what you want it to do? We spend about a week - two weeks but I require they know how to handcode hyperlinks and images - they are just too important. But to take 12 weeks or 6 weeks to learn a whole language - yes maybe some value - but to me the value is HOW is the language constructed or built. What are the conventions and how do I educate myself if I am interested in pursuing. What comes out of this time is kids who say either "I never want to do that" or "this is really cool, I love coding." They are doing very simplistic work (although the LSL object languages were pretty advanced) but since we don't have a full course nor time in our curriculum, I do see this as an essential part of what I teach. I'm not teaching it for the language sake but for the sake of understanding the whole body of how languages work - we talk about the different languages and what they are used for as part of Intro to Computer science and have an immersive experience. To me, this is somewhat a comprimise between leaving it out entirely or forcing everyone to take 12 weeks of it. I

The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV) Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet competing demands from multiple stakeholders. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach. It's posted in four installments: 1. A Taxonomy of Reflection 2. The Reflective Student 3. The Reflective Teacher 4. The Reflective Principal It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective. 4. The Reflective Principal Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model) Assume that a principal (or instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision, project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to pick a few that work for you.) Bloom's Remembering : What did I do? Principal Reflection: What role did I play in implementing this program? What role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in place? Bloom's Understanding: What was

The importance of experimental design in science is that helps students infer about causes or relationships, as opposed to simply describe what happened in a canned experiment. As students learn to develop their own experimental design they must be able to answer the most important question of all regarding the design process.

Equally important is conveying the idea that being safe and responsible online does not mean hiding your identity but rather defining it and owning it. Below are articles I have written for educators and parents to help their students do the same.

[George Siemens] June 12th, 2007 "...It's the change underlying these tools that I'm trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated. But to create real change, we need to move our conversation beyond simply the tools and our jargon. Parents understand the importance of preparing their children for tomorrow's world. They might not understand RSS, mashups, and blogs. Society understands the importance of a skilled workforce, of critical and creative thinkers. They may not understand wikis, podcasts, or user-created video or collaboratively written software. Unfortunately, where our aim should be about change, our sights are set on tools. And we wonder why we're not hitting the mark we desire. Perhaps our vision for change is still unsettled. What would success look like if we achieved it? What would classrooms look like? How would learning occur? We require a vision for change. It's reflected occasionally in classroom 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 projects. But the tool, not change centric, theme still arises. We may think we are talking about change, but our audience hears hype and complex jargon. What is your vision for change?"

And the price is this: facts learned in this way, and especially by rote, and especially at a younger age, take a direct route into the mind, and bypass a person's critical and reflective capacities, and indeed, become a part of those capacities in the future.

while it is necessary (and possible) to teach facts to people, it comes with a price. And the price is this: facts learned in this way, and especially by rote, and especially at a younger age, take a direct root into the mind, and bypass a person's critical and reflective capacities, and indeed, become a part of those capacities in the future.\n\nWhen you teach children facts as facts, and when you do it through a process of study and drill, it doesn't occur to children to question whether or not those facts are true, or appropriate, or moral, or legal, or anything else. Rote learning is a short circuit into the brain. It's direct programming. People who study, and learn, that 2+2=4, know that 2+2=4, not because they understand the theory of mathematics, not because they have read Hilbert and understand formalism, or can refute Brouwer and reject intuitionism, but because they know (full stop) 2+2=4.\n\nI used the phrase "it's direct programming" deliberately. This is an analogy we can wrap our minds around. We can think of direct instruction as being similar to direct programming. It is, effectively, a mechanism of putting content into a learner's mind as effectively and efficiently as possible, so that when the time comes later (as it will) that the learner needs to use that fact, it is instantly and easily accessible.

thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside of the human body. And that, of course, is the Internet and it's the cloud. Very soon we will have the brain in the cloud. And the raises the question about the importance of thoughts. For centuries, what was important for me was decided in my brain. But now, apparently, it will be decided somewhere else.

It's a Multiphysics World The real world is multiphysics in nature. Consider your mobile phone. The antenna receives electromagnetic waves, the touch screen or buttons are mechanical and electrical components, the battery involves chemical reactions and electrical current, and so on. A single device, but multiphysics. Since it's a multiphysics world, your simulation tool must be multiphysics capable in order to correctly capture the important aspects of your design. The COMSOL Multiphysics approach starts with first principles like transport phenomena, electromagnetic field theory, and solid mechanics as the basic fibers of the software. Then, in an elegant and flexible user interface, you can weave these fibers together in a self-consistent way to solve your particular simulation needs. "COMSOL allows us to couple mechanisms in a very nice and simple way, allowing us to understand their combined effect. This is the true power of simulation." -- Dr Roberto Suarez-Rivera of Schlumberger. COMSOL Multiphysics delivers the ideal tool to build simulations that accurately replicate the important characteristics of your designs. Its unparalleled ability to include all relevant physical effects that exist in the real world is known as multiphysics.

This is an amazing illustration of Sir Kenneth Robinson's presentation on schooling in the 21st century.  It's fascinating to watch an illustrator create a visual map of Robinson's ideas as they are spoken.  The content of the presentation is enormously important to any educator struggling to change the system.  It's even more important to those who've been subdued and mislead by old ideas into thinking they can't learn or create.

This important excerpt of a larger book hits on the quality of teachers and the success of children in low-income schools. If you want a better school, spend money on staff development and helping your teachers become more proficient. This article is full of research and important topics of conversation among teachers and policy makers. via: http://www.stanford.edu/~ldh/publications/LDH-Post-Inequality.pdf

"Participation in team sports is associated with fewer depressive symptoms in children, whereas non-sport activities have no association with symptoms, according to a study in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier. The association was found only for boys. The findings suggest that exercise could have anti-depressant effects in adolescents. "These interesting results provide important clues as to how exercise benefits mood in children and reveals the important role that gender plays in these effects," said Cameron Carter, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging."

"Deliberate practice is essential for improving a wide range of skills important for everyday life, from tying shoelaces to reading and writing. Yet despite its importance for developing basic skills, academic success, and expertise, we know little about the development of deliberate practice. A new study from Australia found that children spontaneously practice skills to prepare for the future starting at the age of 6. The study, from researchers at the University of Queensland, is published in the journal Child Development."

"Usually, being able to visualise mathematical concepts to students is an important step in helping them understand techniques to illustrate connections with previous learning, helping them master maths notions to progress their skills. The importance of visualising concepts is clearly integral for Peter Mattock who has collected together a valued resource of mathematical activities that can be used with manipulative across the age and ability range."

"While every school knows the importance of safeguarding in our digital world, it's also important that they know and understand the most effective strategies to help safeguard their pupils online, both in and out of the classroom. The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), have recently launched a framework which aims to highlight, across all key stages, the skills and knowledge children should have in order to feel safe, and act responsibly, online so that they are able to enjoy the online world."