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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

If you need "proof" of the merit of journalism programs, look no further than the "enemy" that has been the excuse for killing many journalism programs -- test scores. Read this NCTE position paper about journalism in the curriculum which states: "It is important to note that a body of research provides data showing that students who participate in journalism programs do better on testing and college language arts courses. In Journalism Kids Do Better (Dvorak, Lain, Dickson), research shows students who take journalistic writing courses score higher on the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition exam than students who take only AP or honors English courses. They also score higher on college entrance exams such as the ACT. "We've done a number of research studies that show that high school journalism is equal to or exceeds standard English [courses], Dvorak said. "Journalism students' writing skills, their sensitivity to audience, their use of grammar, punctuation, spelling, their concern with accuracy, their use of sources -- all of these things tended to be significantly higher in their performances."" I would also argue that many students who are not reached by AP or honors courses can be highly engaged in journalistic pursuits. If you want a strong writing program, make sure you have a school newspaper. Share this with your newspaper and annual staff advisors to help reinforce the merit of journalism programs with your board of education and administrators.

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

Two-year programs offered by junior and community colleges are quicker and less expensive than four-year programs. Contrary to popular belief, the path to advancement does not always travel through a bachelor or master's degree program. Two-year associate degrees are more convenient because most offer part-time, evening, weekend, and online classes. This convenience provides advantages for those who have full-time jobs, especially adults with families.

Free online technologies are changing adult education by offering the ability to use free online tools to support collaboration and completing class work. The list is long in regards to the number of online programs which support adult students in their quest for learning in adult education. The sheer number of these online software programs continues to grow almost daily. A review of several of these programs has narrowed the list down to a few which are beneficial to adult students, because they ease their work load and collaboration efforts with fellow classmates.

Some major computer science programs at top universities are seeing a slight uptick in the number of women going into the programs. Citing statistics from Harvard (up from 13% to 25%) and MIT (a 28% jump in 3 years), and Carnegie Mellon (from 1/5 in 2007 to 1/4 last year.) Most think it is the economy although some attribute programs to get more women interested in the programs.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

 Special education programs online - how they prepare teachers of students who are learning disabled, developmentally challenged, or gifted and talented. This page provides more detail about the programs and where you can take them.

There was a time when Republicans campaigned on their ideas, programs and values. This year-lacking ideas, programs or values-John McCain and Sarah Palin are running for the White House on an elaborate fictional narrative of victimhood. Their supposed persecutors are Democrats and the news media, and the aim of this whole charade is to keep Americans from talking about ideas, programs and values.

Starting your own online program. Advice annd resources from iNACOL

Small Basic is a lighter version of Visual basic. Interesting site to start kids out programming from a problem solving perspective. Demo'ed at #140ed conference to show how programming is not boring for kids.

This is a powerhouse connection to Jobs in Wisconsin's Technical College system. Provided buy the University of Wisconsin-Stout Ed.S Degree program. The E-Learning and Online Teaching Graduate Certificate at UW-Stout is accepted as a concentration for the Ed.S program

This is a powerhouse connection to Jobs in Wisconsin's Technical College system. Provided by the University of Wisconsin-Stout Ed.S Degree program. On the open web and available to any one. The E-Learning and Online Teaching Graduate Certificate at UW-Stout is accepted as a concentration for the Ed.S program

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.

This might be good for introducing programming without needing to touch a computer. I've students who aren't initially engaged by jumping into programming with a computer even with something like Scratch. Maybe this is a way to get them in the correct mindset first. When I first found this, I hoped there might be program cards that required using loops or variables but from looking at the game rule book that does not appear to be the case.  It appears that movement is the only command types, which can result in automatic laser firing or bumping another robot. Still seems like a good game though.

Ceri is from the UK and is going to live demo a program he's written for Kinect (that he plans to give away for free) that emulates the program Soundbeam. This program lets you move parts of your body and plays music and is going to be an incredible thing to use for special ed students with the Kinect. This is his twitter handle. Follow him to Keep up with what he's doing.

Contest to encourage student to create a vision of the future of technology. This site shows the inventions and the awards. This is a neat competition and you might want to plug in your math and science program, particularly the gifted program. Competitions help your top students reach higher and are a very important part of gifted programs (and others too!)

K-12 student competition for creating the future of technology.

This database, sponsored by Polycom, Inc., contains programs from content providers such as zoos and museums that offer ISDN or IP based videoconferencing. The Berrien County ISD has researched this information to the best of our knowledge

Excellent blog resource concerning the need for Modular style programming versus Procedural style regardless of the language being used. Good reference for educators teaching programming languages to students.