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Great twitter chats to help your self-directed professional development

written with partner in mind but good to remember when we are helping a student through a conflict situation -- get them to focus on the "I" -- challenge statements that aren't true, where they are imposing judgement or blame "What is not as helpful is to try and impose personal feelings and interpretations on someone else. Stay on your side of the net; express "I" statements about how the situation or dialogue is feeling to you, what you think is important about it, why you want to talk about it-your main intention for having the dialogue. Refrain from "you" statements where you tell your partner what his or her thoughts, feelings, and truths are or blaming him/her for your differences. Then ask open-ended questions: "Who does this happen with?" "What are you feeling when it happens?" "Where in our relationship did this start to be an issue?" "How do you respond when this is going on?" Questions that can be answered with "yes" or "no" are often leading and laced with our personal agenda about what is true."

Good tutorial on how to use Handbrake to reduce video size and download time without sacrificing quality. Almost 11 minutes long - includes an explanation of when to use different settings.

Found this archived CEM event - supposed to be a month of blogging but there are only a few entries - interesting ones though - glad to have background knowledge from Jane McGonagal's TED talks on how gaming can change the world and save a life. Did make me think again about how I wanted to incorporate gaming in my classroom.

Introduction to TIM - and how to assess how tech is being used in the classroom.

Intriguing. I wish he would have shown one of two examples on the inner boxes. Guess you need to visit the site for that.

"to increase the probability of long term success and to reduce teacher/instructor frustration, organizations need to ensure that the broader fundamentals are in place before asking teachers to change. This is true whether the organization is a large university or school district, an eLearning business, or a small school of a few hundred students. (Note that I am not talking about the success of the "lone experimenters;" the innovators and early adopters who will implement change no matter what the environment is like. I am talking about organization wide long term success.)"

Grades are just a math game. This is what I told students many years ago. "If you know how to work the numbers, you can get a good grade."

I have been following Mark Barnes and Starr Sackstein this year, they are doing really amazing things in their classrooms and moving away from grades. They co-moderate a group on Facebook called "Teachers Throwing out Grades" and have a Twitter Chat Monday nights at 7 #TTOG - it is worth checking out!

Larry Ferlazzo is a veteran teacher of English and Social Studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California. He has written seven books on education - including a few on student motivation, and writes extensively on education issues, including authoring a teacher advice blog for Education Week Teacher, and maintaining a popular resource-sharing blog.

What's the best way to take control of your own life and push yourself against boundaries? According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, it's all about your mindset. Successful people tend to focus on growth, solving problems and self-improvement, while unsuccessful people think of their abilities as fixed assets and avoid challenges.

Tech Leader Hints

Teacher William J. Tolley says that education-innovation advocates need to disrupt schools' definitions of success if they are to achieve Sir Ken Robinson's vision for creativity in learning.

It's though provoking look at personalized learning. I think that studies can definitely be pushed because if you're assessing students in a standardized way - then that's an issue in and of itself.

Now that we're back to school, what are some ways you can shake things up in the new year? Here are 10 ideas to try out in your classroom, no matter how big or small your learners may be. Have some ideas of your own?

Unlike the sequels to movies, I hope that part two of last year's Energy and Calm post will continue to strengthen your understanding of how our brains naturally learn, think, and behave. So let's return to the calming yet energizing zone of focused attention practices and brain breaks, a place that would greatly benefit students -- and their teachers -- when revisited frequently.

Unlike the sequels to movies, I hope that part two of last year's Energy and Calm post will continue to strengthen your understanding of how our brains naturally learn, think, and behave. So let's return to the calming yet energizing zone of focused attention practices and brain breaks, a place that would greatly benefit students -- and their teachers -- when revisited frequently.

What a great visual and interactive 'poster' on how to use SAMR in your classroom. Play with it!