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It is finally here. Here are the details on our Flat Classroom global book club. (click the link for more) Every week for 10 weeks we will meet at an alternating time - 12 hours apart. (For the East Coast USA it is Sundays at 6 pm Eastern or Monday mornings at 6 am eastern)  Visit our Book club calendar to convert these times to your Time Zone. Subscribe to this calendar via Google calendar to keep up with events.This is Sunday evenings at 22:00GMT alternating with Monday mornings at 10:00GMT in our Blackboard Collaborate room https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0 .   The book club is free and everyone is welcome. #flatclass Book Club Meeting Times Week and Date Time Topic of Conversation Week 1: Sunday March 11 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 1 - Flattening Classrooms through Global Collaboration (p 1-17) Chapter 2 - Impact on Learning: Research in the Global Collaborative Classroom (p18-30) Week 2: Monday, March 19 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 3 - Step 1: Connection (p 31-61) Week 3: Sunday, March 25 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 4 - Step 2: Communication (p 62-96) Week 4: Monday, April 2 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 5 - Step 3: Citizenship (p 97-125) Take a break. Week 5: Sunday, April 15 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 6 - Step 4: Contribution and Collaboration (p 126-157) Week 6: Monday, April 23 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 7 - Step 5: Choice (p 158-196) Week 7: Sunday, April 29 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 8 - Step 6: Creation (p197-214) Week 8: Monday, May 7 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 9 - Step 7: Celebration (p 215-234) Week 9: Sunday, May 13 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 10 - Designing and Managing a Global Collaborative Project (p 235-267) Week 10: Monday, May 21 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 11 - Challenge-Based Professional Development (p 268-293) Chapter 12: Rock the World (p 293 - 304)  We're also inviting the educators featured in each chapter to be with us for the conversations about "th

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

"Education is about unleashing one's confidence. Education is learning from failure. Education is growing from experience. Education is discovering your passions then pursuing them. Education is not rote memorization. Education is not analyzing books that have no meaning to you. Education is not wasting your time on subjects you hate. Education is not being paralyzed because your afraid to fail."

Rebellion from teachers in Mexico who have bought and sold teaching jobs for generations without any national certification. Teachers are striking and bearing crowbars. These are reforms that most agree need to happen, but putting them in place is tough and sadly, it often hurts those we should protect the most... the children. Despite what some say, reforms need to happen in the US as well and this means upheaval here too. It can be challenging to separate the truth from the fabrications but I  hope that wherever the flag of edreform is raised that people will think of children and what is best for them. What is best for teachers is not always the best for children. It might be good in my own eyes to have a job, but if I'm not a good teacher, perhaps it is something that doesn't need to happen. Interesting reading. "The conflict is fueled by the importance of teaching jobs for the poor mountain and coastal villages where the dissident union is strongest. Teaching jobs in Guerrero with lifelong job security, benefits and pension pay about $495 and $1,650 a month, depending on qualifications and tenure, well above average in rural areas, according to teachers and outside experts. They said the price to get such as job can cost as much as $20,000, usually going to the departing teacher, with cuts for union and state officials."

NOTE: The linked article is NSFW - it has a word of profanity where the author quotes Good Will Hunting. But the points are right. Some teachers worry they will be outdated or not needed with the online education movement. This article has some great points that I agree with. I do think online learning is part of our future but perhaps not the savior some make it out to be. "The online education utopians ignore the fact that free learning has existed for decades in the form of the public library and despite that availability, every kid within bicycling distance to his local branch didn't turn into a self taught entrepreneur. Suggesting that online courses are the cure-all for our educational needs is like saying all you have to do to teach kids in the ghetto is give away textbooks on the corner. Recent studies have shown there is a significant gap between the completion rates of online students compared to classroom based students. When you consider that online learning is often promoted as a cost effective solution for at-risk learners who don't have the financial resources for face-to-face instruction, it becomes clear that the online movement is offering a product that makes it easier to drop out to students who are already more prone to quitting in the first place."

Great article about the importance of Computer Science. This is one of those that superintendents and principals should email their curriculum directors, school board members and PTO's to support and encourage this kind of education. "This is not about helping the tech industry. It's about the tech industry helping the rest of America. Today, 67 percent of software jobs are outside the tech industry. If hiring computer programmers is challenging for Silicon Valley, it's an even greater challenge for every other industry in America. Tech jobs aside, teaching kids basic computer science is valuable no matter what career path they might choose. Every child can benefit from a strong foundation in problem-solving. As software is taking over the world, a rudimentary grasp of how it works is critical for every future lawyer, doctor, journalist, politician and more. American schools are struggling to teach basic math and English, and skeptics may worry that we can't afford to teach anything else. We'd argue that computer science is part of the solution: it motivates kids to learn other subjects. If a school can afford to teach biology, history, chemistry and foreign languages, it should teach computer science too."

Visual recognition and intelligent identification of objects is making progress. Soon, just a picture of a child could tell everyone that child's name if simple facial recognition is used. This is more than just facial recognition but is rather, trying to teach a computer to learn. This is an interesting article. "The aim is to see if computers can learn, in the same way a human would, what links images, to help them better understand the visual world. The Never Ending Image Learner (NEIL) program is being run at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. The work is being funded by the US Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research and Google. Since July, the NEIL program has looked at three million images. As a result it has managed to identify 1,500 objects in half a million images and 1,200 scenes in hundreds of thousands of images as well as making 2,500 associations."

this blog is going to try to chronicle how I use technology in an effort to teach and write more effectively. A couple of initial caveats: 1. This blog is decidedly biased towards the humanities. Both because that is where I work, and because it seems to me that is where the greatest resistance to technology has been. 2. This blog is also markedly Mac biased. While many of the hints and tricks I have developed work across a range of platforms or are web based, most of my work is done on a Mac. While there are certainly reasons to choose to run a PC over a Mac I find that for my needs, and I would argue for many in the humanities (the sciences can be a different matter) a Mac is a better choice. 3. I am by no means an expert. This is meant as a place to begin a discussion, I hope that others can contribute their experiences, hints and tips as well.

A new blogger doing great things... drop by and leave her a comment.

...writing is moving into the public sphere. Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress. We post, we receive feedback (solicited or not) and we often rewrite or reconceptualize. In this way, teaching collaborative writing explicitely is crucial. For me, the value of collaborative writing does not lie in the product but in the process; students are challenged to think critically, negotiate tactfully and engage meaningfully in a real life skill. The learning is layered and seamless.

There is no reason to deny that WordPress is world's favourite blogging software and there are many sites out there who publish great wordpress tutorials, following these tutorials one can easily learn wordpress in no time. Here is my list which is divided into different categories, each list is arranged in way that it goes from basics to advanced level. Hope you have a great time learning them.

Fred Haas' reflections are so very real when it comes to ambitious global collaborations. I had to laugh as he said about NetGenEd (last spring's project): "Without question it was a mildly harrowing but ultimately rewarding experience." The learning curve is TREMENDOUS but once you have it under your belt it is similar to your first year of teaching or boot camp for someone in the military. If you're wondering if this sort of thing is for you, take a read of Fred's very real reflections. Julie nor I NOR ANY global collaborator will ever say it is easy - if it is perhaps you're not having to be as engaged as perhaps you need to be. However, it is most rewarding!

This is a call out specifically to my friends out there in the Atlanta area or anywhere in Georgia to put in for a poster session at Georgia Tech's conference about the Foundations for the future. I wish I could get away but am a bit tied up at school right now. Here's the information and link: "Foundations for the Future (F3), a K-12 outreach and research program at Georgia Tech Research Institute, knows that Georgia teachers are using technology in amazing ways to inspire and engage students. One of the most frequent comments we hear is that it is difficult for educators to know what's working for other educators because there is so much going on, not everyone can afford to attend conferences, and access to technology is inconsistent across the state. We want to honor and highlight teachers and their projects. What better way to get inspired than through a fellow colleague! What better way to meet other passionate educators and share your experiences! F3 is hosting the 2013 F3 Educator Showcase during our May Explorers Guild meeting. The showcase will include a panel discussion along with a poster session. If you are interested in applying for the poster session, all you need to do is follow the guidelines below. Posters will be chosen by a selection committee of F3 partners and Georgia Tech colleagues. Chosen posters will be printed for participants so that after the event they can take the posters back to their school to continue highlighting the good work taking place there! This event helps support F3's mission to help acquire and leverage instructional technology resources for Georgia's classrooms, schools, and districts, share best practices, and establish a community of learners. We look forward to your submissions and can't wait to see you all at the event in May!   Guidelines for Poster Abstract Submission: Title: Accurately and concisely present your idea in 15 words or less Abstract: In 350 words or less, tell us about how using technology

Jamie Kelly does a nice job of dissecting much of what is wrong with technology journalism - going for the trending topic instead of saying "this topic is trending because of misinformation" (i.e. Instagram terms of service changes). I think these points are excellent and can also apply to much of what happens in the education circles as well -- if everybody is talking about ___, then everyone is searching about ____, then everyone is writing about ____ so they will be found. Sometimes it is good not to be everybody but to be somebody who is different and more importantly, who goes through the hype to be as accurate as possible.

I agree. Students who got to read the passages ahead of time had an advantage - of course, is anyone looking to see if there was a "hit" on other textbook passages - is this luck or is it corruption. Either way - it smells like corruption. There is a conflict of interest if you're testing and selling textbooks to help kids do better on testing.  "students who read the Pearson test before seeing it on the state test had the opportunity to fill the gaps in their own knowledge-whether through class discussion or simply by reading and answering the questions provided in the curriculum-before they took the test. And that means that the validity of a test that aims to differentiate between "good" and "poor" readers is necessarily called into question. Unfortunately, it seems that New York education officials don't realize how significant this problem is. Or even that it is a problem. (Meryl Tisch, New York Board of Regents chancellor, actually defended the quality of the assessments, boasting that, thanks to a rigorous new quality-control review, the Department of Education had avoided the kinds of problems that lead to last year's now-famous pineapple scandal. And that failure to recognize what may be a far more serious and consequential challenge may be the biggest red flag that Common Core assessment decisions are in trouble in the Empire State."

Interesting article in Journal of Higher Ed with Many Great Points "The real obstacle in education remains student motivation. Especially in an age of informational abundance, getting access to knowledge isn't the bottleneck, mustering the will to master it is. And there, for good or ill, the main carrot of a college education is the certified degree and transcript, and the main stick is social pressure. Most students are seeking credentials that graduate schools and employers will take seriously and an environment in which they're prodded to do the work. But neither of these things is cheaply available online. Arizona State University's recent partnership with edX to offer MOOCs is an attempt to do this, but if its student assessments fall short (or aren't tied to verified identities), other universities and employers won't accept them. And if the program doesn't establish genuine rapport with students, then it won't have the standing to issue credible nudges. (Automated text-message reminders to study will quickly become so much spam.) For technological amplification to lower the costs of higher education, it has to build on student motivation, and that motivation is tied not to content availability but to credentialing and social encouragement. The Law of Amplification's least appreciated consequence, however, is that technology on its own amplifies underlying socioeconomic inequalities.

It is unfortunate that controversy is surrounding autism and yet it is something misunderstood by many. Here is an article on Liz Ditz's blog going back to an issue that arose in December when she quoted a person's Facebook who then denied the posting and accused Liz of hacking the account and writing the comments herself. I am not on the inside of this but am watching as the outcome has implications for my own thoughts of digital citizenship. I am just saddened any time a person is taken of a mission to help others because of flame wars and it doesn't look like this one is going to stop soon. All I know is I have been reading Liz's blog for quite some time and although I don't know her personally, I find the charges leveled against her doubtful from what I do know.

Civil War Augmented Reality project -- just in my inbox. You civil war buffs and history teachers may really get a "kick" out of this. Speaking of "kick" they are trying to get a grant that requires people to vote for them. Take a look: "This message is from a group of educators in Pennsylvania who have developed a Social Studies project that is in the process of raising a modest amount of money to build prototypes for gathering additional partners. Our project, the Civil War Augmented Reality Project, is intended to enhance the experiences of students visiting Civil War sites. It is also intended to increase attendance and revenue for historic sites by offering both "high" and "low" tech experiences to best reach the majority of the population. We feel that our project is fulfilling a need that educators, park workers, technology enthusiasts, and Civil War enthusiasts have discussed in the past: How can historic sites both raise educational value and public interest in their institutions though technology, while not alienating the non-technical history fans? We have worked hard on the answer, and are interested in promoting our creative solutions. We would like to make clear that the project is not intended solely for Pennsylvania. It is our hope that the project will expand to other venues, as we feel that we have the ability to use our ideas to enhance the experiences of all students at historic sites."

Article by Wil Richardson on Collaboration