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Nice article about the work being done by the Rowland Foundation and the Fellows.

"Sometimes you need to convince colleagues to think about using educational technology in their lessons, or to identify where in their scheme of work they could incorporate it. This list is a starting point: you may find one or two points that would "resonate" with your co-worker, and grab his or her attention."

"It seems paradoxical, but the most boring classrooms tend to be the ones that are full of technology..." "...the reason, in a nutshell, is that in the sorts of classrooms I've just described, the emphasis is on technology rather than learning."

For the 21st Century, are our graduates "ready now", "ready soon", "work ready", or "far from ready" ? A new way to look at student outcomes, job preparedness, skills, and creativity in the years to come...

The subject of kids and media - how much they consume, what's "good" for them, what parents' role should be - is a broad and complicated topic. This is a collection of articles wide range of advice and information.

Articles like this are interesting. But, they are powerful when we take a critical look at own practices and really evaluate if our classroom actions match the work we promote and speak so highly of in the teachers' lounge.

Becoming a master teacher takes continuous effort.1) Understand Your Reasons for Teaching2) Cultivate Ethical Behavior in Your Students and Yourself3) Pool Both Patience and Perseverance4) Design Curriculum That Works5) Perfect Instructional Practices and Assessment Skills6) Connect Positively to the Whole-School Culture

"Attention provides leverage. The more people we can attract and motivate to join us on a challenging quest or initiative, the more impact we are likely to achieve. So, what are effective ways to attract and retain the kind of attention that helps us to address the challenges we face? Here are five steps that build on each other."

1. Embrace mystery 2. Focus inquiry 3. Excite the imagination 4. Limit availability 5. Be authentic

I don't believe that every successful lesson learned in Corporate America translates well into education, but this article has some very applicable points. jf

Research by Richard Light, the author and Harvard University scholar, and others indicates that when students are asked to write for one another, they write more effectively. This is perhaps counterintuitive. Wouldn't students do their best work for those grading their work? But students aren't eager to be seen as poor writers by their peers, so they step up their game when writing for other students. Also, they know that their peers don't understand the course content as well as their instructors do, so they tend to provide better explanations when writing for peers.

OK...I have been trying to avoid the incessant Steve Jobs idolatry. But, it is hard to not admire his thought processes. So, here is a quick read of one of the many inspirational pieces that are out there.

Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter.

See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.

Article based on The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators Focus on concluding three chapters, People, Processes, and Philosophies, which draw on and offers 15 takeaways for Principals and School-Leaders.

What You Can Do to Become Stronger Innovation Leaders in Your School: 1. Own as Principal the role of Innovator-in-Chief: You can't delegate innovation. 2. Make your practice of "active innovation" visible. 3. Create complementary teams in school leadership. 4 . Observe closely what other principals and schools are doing. 5. Arrange for employee swaps. 6. Ask "Why?" 7. Seek people who had invented something, held deep expertise in a particular knowledge area, and demonstrated a passion to change the world. 8. Remember that innovators want to work with and for other innovators. 9. Embed innovation as an explicit, consistent element of performance reviews. 10. Develop formal and informal processes to facilitate knowledge exchanges. 11. Network externally. 12. Practice Beta testing and Prototyping. 13. Build many small, diverse teams. 14. Communicate and reinforce that Innovation is everyone's job. 15. Make innovation an explicit core value of your school. 16. Give more time for innovation. 17. Create "a safe space for others to innovate. 18. Model your risk taking and your learning from failure.

The book is framed around the Five Core Skills of Innovators, a framework highly valuable for ourselves and our students: What are we doing to do more of and become better at *Associating, *Questioning, *Observing, *Networking, *Experimenting.

"Peter Hyman's article on the importance of reinventing education and moving away from the prevalent exam-factory model"

"I believe that we are part of a growing movement of teachers out there who know our schools must change, who know the current system leaves so much untapped potential, who believe that it is possible to create a school experience that has a life and a depth and an emotional power that leaves our children wanting more, not less."

This is a great challenge to all of us to make better assessments of learning, not memorization.  

Thanks, I enjoyed this article-

Interview about winning a MacArthur Genius Award in 2013 and Other Articles

Facebook, Angry Birds, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and other pursuits which bring pleasure in the moment but are immediately regretted.

Author Susan Cain explains the fallacy of "groupwork," and points to research showing that it can reduce creativity and productivity

Wondering if focus on collaboration, group work stifles creativity and individuals ...Do some approaches to education reward those students who are simply more extroverted. Do we often, inadvertently, value Personalities over Substance in our classrooms?

The Rural Trust's Global Teacher Fellowship program will be awarding up to 25 fellowships in 2014 to support the professional and personal development of rural teachers. The awards (up to $5,000 for individual teachers and $10,000 for a team of two or more teachers) support teachers' participation in self-designed summer learning experiences and a two-day place-based learning institute in the fall following their summer experience. This fellowship is a stand-alone grant not meant to supplement other grant funds for larger projects. Teachers are encouraged to center their learning in an international travel and study experience, out of which they develop interdisciplinary, place-based learning curricula aligned with their specific state and local content standards.

There are a number of Rowland fellows that might be able to use this to supplement / expand their existing work.

They're Watching You at Work: What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of "people analytics" is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote.

"Academic environments are artificial environments," Laszlo Bock, Google's senior vice president of people operations, told The New York Times in June. "People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they're conditioned to succeed in that environment," which is often quite different from the workplace.

"...administered a battery of tests to a group of corporate presidents, he found that not one of them scored in the "acceptable" range for hiring. Such assessments, he concluded, measured not potential but simply conformity." I would build on this with the statement that current assessment and graduation requirements are great at measuring a student's ability to excel at conformity and irrelevant knowledge sets while doing little to encourage that student's individuality and personal skill sets. Current assessment and graduation requirements are great at measuring a student's ability to memorize what others think important, but not in assessing and fostering the important act of thinking for themselves. Current assessment and graduation requirements are great at measuring who a student is according to an antiquated framework defined within the walls of a school. But, scripted versions of success and knowledge don't allow for assessing and promoting student potential for a world where there are no boundaries or false constraints of whom he/she might become. JF