Some of my students are signing up to join the Quest2matter as part of their passion projects. Here's a link to the website and the signup. If your child wants to make a difference in the world, you may want to mention this as something they want to do. Very exciting.
"The Quest2Matter is a five-week, student-focused initiative that seeks to inspire students to tackle problems that break their heart. This is an unprecedented opportunity to unlock the potential of students to think entrepreneurially and innovatively and use modern tools to solve problems that break their heart.
To learn more about the Quest2Matter, read this post.
We are looking to recruit 225 students, and teachers to help facilitate them for our DREAM TEAM! They will be helping us launch the Quest2Matter and its parent movement, Choose2Matter. See the general information and qualifications below, followed by the specific duties of each team. At the very bottom of this post, you'll find a link to the sign-up form."
Just about all of the women in that room planned to combine careers and family in some way. But almost all assumed and accepted that they would have to make compromises that the men in their lives were far less likely to have to make.
when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating “you can have it all” is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.
I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged—and quickly changed.
I had the ability to set my own schedule most of the time. I could be with my kids when I needed to be, and still get the work done.
the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be
having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had.
having it all was not possible in many types of jobs, including high government office—at least not for very long.
“Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.”
Yet the decision to step down from a position of power—to value family over professional advancement, even for a time—is directly at odds with the prevailing social pressures on career professionals in the United States.
“leaving to spend time with your family” is a euphemism for being fired.
Think about what this “standard Washington excuse” implies: it is so unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that this must be a cover for something else.
it cannot change unless top women speak out.
Both were very clear that they did not want that life, but could not figure out how to combine professional success and satisfaction with a real commitment to family.
many of us are also reinforcing a falsehood: that “having it all” is, more than anything, a function of personal determination.
there has been very little honest discussion among women of our age about the real barriers and flaws that still exist in the system despite the opportunities we inherited.
But we have choices about the type and tempo of the work we do. We are the women who could be leading, and who should be equally represented in the leadership ranks.
women are less happy today than their predecessors were in 1972, both in absolute terms and relative to men.
The best hope for improving the lot of all women, and for closing what Wolfers and Stevenson call a “new gender gap”—measured by well-being rather than wages—is to close the leadership gap:
Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone.
We must clear them out of the way to make room for a more honest and productive discussion about real solutions to the problems faced by professional women.
These women cannot possibly be the standard against which even very talented professional women should measure themselves. Such a standard sets up most women for a sense of failure
A simple measure is how many women in top positions have children compared with their male colleagues.
Every male Supreme Court justice has a family. Two of the three female justices are single with no children.
women hold fewer than 30 percent of the senior foreign-policy positions in each of these institutions.
“You know what would help the vast majority of women with work/family balance? MAKE SCHOOL SCHEDULES MATCH WORK SCHEDULES.” The present system, she noted, is based on a society that no longer exists—one in which farming was a major occupation and stay-at-home moms were the norm. Yet the system hasn’t changed.
“Inflexible schedules, unrelenting travel, and constant pressure to be in the office are common features of these jobs.”
I would hope to see commencement speeches that finger America’s social and business policies, rather than women’s level of ambition, in explaining the dearth of women at the top. But changing these policies requires much more than speeches. It means fighting the mundane battles—every day, every year—in individual workplaces, in legislatures, and in the media.
assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them. In my experience, that is simply not the case.
I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.
To many men, however, the choice to spend more time with their children, instead of working long hours on issues that affect many lives, seems selfish.
It is not clear to me that this ethical framework makes sense for society. Why should we want leaders who fall short on personal responsibilities?
Regardless, it is clear which set of choices society values more today. Workers who put their careers first are typically rewarded; workers who choose their families are overlooked, disbelieved, or accused of unprofessionalism.
having a supportive mate may well be a necessary condition if women are to have it all, but it is not sufficient
Ultimately, it is society that must change, coming to value choices to put family ahead of work just as much as those to put work ahead of family. If we really valued those choices, we would value the people who make them; if we valued the people who make them, we would do everything possible to hire and retain them; if we did everything possible to allow them to combine work and family equally over time, then the choices would get a lot easier.
Given the way our work culture is oriented today, I recommend establishing yourself in your career first but still trying to have kids before you are 35—or else freeze your eggs, whether you are married or not.
But the truth is, neither sequence is optimal, and both involve trade-offs that men do not have to make.
exactly this -- men do not have to make this choice. Thus, it will always be unequal.
You should be able to have a family if you want one—however and whenever your life circumstances allow—and still have the career you desire.
If more women could strike this balance, more women would reach leadership positions. And if more women were in leadership positions, they could make it easier for more women to stay in the workforce. The rest of this essay details how.
I have to admit that my assumption that I would stay late made me much less efficient over the course of the day than I might have been, and certainly less so than some of my colleagues, who managed to get the same amount of work done and go home at a decent hour.
Still, armed with e-mail, instant messaging, phones, and videoconferencing technology, we should be able to move to a culture where the office is a base of operations more than the required locus of work.
Being able to work from home—in the evening after children are put to bed, or during their sick days or snow days, and at least some of the time on weekends—can be the key, for mothers, to carrying your full load versus letting a team down at crucial moments.
Changes in default office rules should not advantage parents over other workers; indeed, done right, they can improve relations among co-workers by raising their awareness of each other’s circumstances and instilling a sense of fairness.
The policy was shaped by the belief that giving women “special treatment” can “backfire if the broader norms shaping the behavior of all employees do not change.”
Our assumptions are just that: things we believe that are not necessarily so. Yet what we assume has an enormous impact on our perceptions and responses. Fortunately, changing our assumptions is up to us.
One of the best ways to move social norms in this direction is to choose and celebrate different role models.
If we didn’t start to learn how to integrate our personal, social, and professional lives, we were about five years away from morphing into the angry woman on the other side of a mahogany desk who questions her staff’s work ethic after standard 12-hour workdays, before heading home to eat moo shoo pork in her lonely apartment.
Women have contributed to the fetish of the one-dimensional life, albeit by necessity. The pioneer generation of feminists walled off their personal lives from their professional personas to ensure that they could never be discriminated against for a lack of commitment to their work.
It seems odd to me to list degrees, awards, positions, and interests and not include the dimension of my life that is most important to me—and takes an enormous amount of my time.
when my entire purpose is to make family references routine and normal in professional life.
This does not mean that you should insist that your colleagues spend time cooing over pictures of your baby or listening to the prodigious accomplishments of your kindergartner. It does mean that if you are late coming in one week, because it is your turn to drive the kids to school, that you be honest about what you are doing.
Seeking out a more balanced life is not a women’s issue; balance would be better for us all.
Indeed, the most frequent reaction I get in putting forth these ideas is that when the choice is whether to hire a man who will work whenever and wherever needed, or a woman who needs more flexibility, choosing the man will add more value to the company.
In 2011, a study on flexibility in the workplace by Ellen Galinsky, Kelly Sakai, and Tyler Wigton of the Families and Work Institute showed that increased flexibility correlates positively with job engagement, job satisfaction, employee retention, and employee health.
Other scholars have concluded that good family policies attract better talent, which in turn raises productivity, but that the policies themselves have no impact on productivity.
What is evident, however, is that many firms that recruit and train well-educated professional women are aware that when a woman leaves because of bad work-family balance, they are losing the money and time they invested in her.
The answer—already being deployed in different corners of the industry—is a combination of alternative fee structures, virtual firms, women-owned firms, and the outsourcing of discrete legal jobs to other jurisdictions.
Women, and Generation X and Y lawyers more generally, are pushing for these changes on the supply side; clients determined to reduce legal fees and increase flexible service are pulling on the demand side. Slowly, change is happening.
In trying to address these issues, some firms are finding out that women’s ways of working may just be better ways of working, for employees and clients alike.
“We believe that connecting play and imagination may be the single most important step in unleashing the new culture of learning.”
“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” Google apparently has taken note.
the more often people with different perspectives come together, the more likely creative ideas are to emerge. Giving workers the ability to integrate their non-work lives with their work—whether they spend that time mothering or marathoning—will open the door to a much wider range of influences and ideas.
Men have, of course, become much more involved parents over the past couple of decades, and that, too, suggests broad support for big changes in the way we balance work and family.
women would do well to frame work-family balance in terms of the broader social and economic issues that affect both women and men.
These women are extraordinary role models.
Yet I also want a world in which, in Lisa Jackson’s words, “to be a strong woman, you don’t have to give up on the things that define you as a woman.”
“Empowering yourself,” Jackson said in her speech at Princeton, “doesn’t have to mean rejecting motherhood, or eliminating the nurturing or feminine aspects of who you are.”
But now is the time to revisit the assumption that women must rush to adapt to the “man’s world” that our mothers and mentors warned us about.
If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal.
We must insist on changing social policies and bending career tracks to accommodate our choices, too. We have the power to do it if we decide to, and we have many men standing beside us.
But when we do, we will stop talking about whether women can have it all.
Make a photo collage quickly and easily from your social sites, Bing Image search and more. Just choose your images and choose a layout. You can even enter text as a layout.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Photos+%26+Images
From my friend AJ Juliani - if you want to do 20% time - perhaps you should join in this MOOC right now - it isn't too late.
"In the past year we have seen a boom in 20% projects and Genius Hour projects happening in the K-12 classroom. Amazing educators have pushed this movement forward, and Angela Maiers Choose2Matter campaign is another way for students to find their passions and learn with purpose. This July we are running a "20% Time MOOC".
The course offers two outcomes. Teachers will learn about the research behind Google's 20% policy and how it can be applied in K-12 education; and, learners will also participate in their own 20% project throughout the course and present as a final product. I want to encourage you to join this MOOC and connect with so many teachers who are giving their students the power to Choose (Access Code for the course is ZXQ2B-8CWMV).
We'll be using the #20timeacademy hashtag throughout the course to share with each other!"
SweetSearch Biographies offers profiles and outstanding search results for thousands of famous-or infamous-people from many walks of life, professions and countries, spanning many centuries.
Our nifty filters help you choose the intriguing people you want to learn more about. Looking for female African American authors, for example? choose Women from the categories on the left, then select African American and Author as your filters.
The names in bold link to profiles on our sister site, findingDulcinea. The rest link to the search results for that person on SweetSearch, a Search Engine for Students, which searches only 35,000 Web sites that have been evaluated and approved by our research experts.
"An online maths resource where you choose a topic than choose the old one out from the three options. Topic include angles, odds and evens, fractions, primes, shapes and more."
Help your kids submit their idea and work to Quest to matter. This is a great way to showcase what your students are doing. It will also open up opportunities for mentoring. If you know a kid who is doing something cool to change the world - SUBMIT IT. The end date is June 7th. Why not have your class create a quest to matter. If you haven't had a chance to do a genius project or some creative teacherpreneurship with passion projects - USE THIS opportunity. My friend Angela Maiers had this idea and many have joined in (like me) to help create a website showcasing and promoting all the great work that students are doing as social entrepreneurs to change the world. There will be a winning project that is showcased and mentored.
This is a wonderfully simple maths quiz site with a good collection of activities for the 4 operations. Choose your category and get 10 randomly generated questions to answer.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths
This is a wonderful history site. Watch the history of the world evolve on a world map by choosing an era and clicking on the civilisation you want to view to find out more.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/History
This site makes it easy to create images merged with QR codes. It's great for creating stylish interactive logos or add QR links or info to photos. Just choose an image, enter the QR code details, drag into place and download the result.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
Keep your class motivated with this is behaviour management tool where teachers can award virtual badges for anything. Choose from a large collection of badge designs. The children can see their progress with their own personal login.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Classroom+Management+%26+Rewards
Very interesting flipping classroom assignment app called Knowmania. They have a homework assignment tool coming soon. I think this is a fascinating tool and there are many lessons to choose from. Right now I don't see any pricing, but am looking into what model they are using to sustain themselves. Looks like a powerful flipping tool, particularly for homework.
This is a presentation creating app for iPads. Enter a few titles and pieces of text and the app finds stunning images for you to choose from to add to your slides. The finished creations use html and can be viewed on most web enabled computers, tablets and mobiles.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
Grading handwritten answers by students as a feature of a copier? Producing data analytics as a result. IF this works, it will not only sell more copiers, but also make handwritten work more of a commodity. Maybe if a computer can quickly grade the easy stuff, teachers can spend more time assessing project based learning and other work that computers cannot do. This won't help me much - except when I teach binary numbers and memory conversion which do require me to check work (I never do multiple choice.) I could see how math teachers would be thrilled.
"Xerox later this year plans to roll out Ignite, a software and web-based service that turns the numerous copiers/scanners/printers it has in schools across the United States into paper-grading machines. Unlike such staples of the educational system as Scantron, which uses special forms where students choose an answer and fill in the corresponding bubble, Ignite will grade work where the answers are written in by the students, such as the numeric answer to a math problem.
Ignite takes right and wrong answers and turns them into web-accessible data for teachers with reports that say whether a student or groups of students are consistently having more trouble with certain kinds of math problems. Those reports can be used by teachers to tailor what they're teaching - such as by identifying what group of students needs more help with a certain topic - or given to students so they know where they should focus their studying. It also opens the door to specific tests or homework assignments for specific students becoming more the norm, each tailored to academic strengths and weaknesses."
This is a wonderful maths puzzle site where players must use + - x or ÷ with a set of four numbers to equal 24. There are many modes to choose from, including an easier 'kids' version of the game, timed games and even a battle mode where you can challenge other people.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths
This is a superb maths number line resource. Choose the scale and then run calculations of counting on and counting back.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths
I'm not partisan. There are some things that Aaron Maurer says in this post that make a lot of sense.
"What bothers me is this "punish the whole system method" employed in the education world. I agree that teachers need to be held accountable. However, I know that state test scores do not show what I teach. What happens in schools is that we never address the specific issues at hand. If a teacher is not doing their job, then call them out. Tell them, show them how they are messing up, and then give them a plan to improve. Help them with necessary skills. If they choose not to improve or they simply don't improve, then you let them go. No more of this keeping teachers for 30 years and for 30 years they have been bad. That affects too many children that need good quality teachers. Hold us accountable like we should be holding our students accountable."
A truly amazing Apple App for learning maths. Download the host or client app to your Apple device and set maths quizzes to complete in real time together in class. The apps communicate through a wireless network or Bluetooth and the host device tracks and keeps all the data for each quiz so you can see where your class need to improve. To set questions you just turn the sections on or off and the app chooses questions from these at random.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths