Group items tagged

"... innovation ... goes beyond telling people in one place to replicate someone else's reported success. It means letting the people in the schools try things they believe will work for their students." Other Systems Are Innovating, Dramatically - Traditional School Suppresses Innovation - To Succeed We Will Have To Innovate with School - How Might Innovative Schools Be Different? - 'Innovation' Is a Strategy for Systemic Reform - We Cannot Afford the Risk of Failing to Innovate -

This excellent Horizon Report, generated by the New Media Consortium, sets a remarkable and aggressive timetable for significant changes in teaching and learning due to emerging technologies.

It's been a lot of fun to work on.

Thanks so much Jim for this post. It's a great piece with lots of very interesting links. The RF is investing directly in learning about the two technologies--cloud computing and mobile devices-- on the report's most immediate time horizon. These two, among the others, are poised to take education in new directions. They are transformative, in and of themselves, and it's exciting to think about how they can and will (and do) support the other many initiatives being worked on by RF Fellows.

Regardless of opinion on positions in this paper, it is an interesting and data filled read. Worth sitting down and looking at over a quick cup of coffee.

An expansive collection of articles on integrating curriculum from The Small Schools Project.  It is broken into 3 sections: Why Integrate Curriculum, How To Integrate Curriculum, and What Integration Looks Like.  This is a large document, so the Table of Contents is helpful.

Thank you for this post, Tom. We're having integration discussions as we try to work on the complexity of scheduling in a pre-K-12. The "whys" and the sample units are very clear.

Australian lit. review of mostly US & UK research on effects of high-stakes testing...sections on: Reliability, Student Health & Well-being, Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on Finland. Covers: * Commitment to education and to children * Cultural support for universal high achievement * Teacher and principal quality * Accountability * How money is spent * Instructional practice * School organization * Sequencing of reforms to economic development * Cultivating behaviors for the knowledge economy

In December 2010, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel created a national, independent commission to study the teaching profession and make recommendations on maximizing teacher and teaching effectiveness. Drawing on the wisdom and experience of accomplished teachers, expert researchers, policymakers, and academicians, the Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching (CETT) examined the policies and practices governing the teaching profession and crafted a teacher-centered vision of teaching and the teaching profession. On December 8, 2011, CETT presented the NEA with its final report, Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning, which outlines the Commission's vision and recommendations for the teaching profession.

"What capacity do we need as leaders to demonstrate authenticity and build credibility and trust? One of the most critical is our ability and willingness to engage in challenging, sensitive - in a word, courageous - conversations."

"If we are leading for improvement, we are inevitably leading for change and can expect some degree of discomfort, disagreement or resistance along the way - whether on the level of the individual, or the organization."

"Leadership often involves challenging people to live up to their words, to close the gap between their espoused values and their actual behaviour. It may mean pointing out the elephant sitting on the table at a meeting - the unspoken issue that everyone sees but no one wants to mention."

"Student voice" is talked about a lot in education, but what does it actually mean? Does it mean listening to students' opinions? Does it mean involving students in decisions about their learning? Does it mean students should have an equal say in decisions made about their entire educational experience, including decisions made at the level of school management and governance?

"This working paper describes a series of recent 'student voice' projects … varied in … specific contexts and processes. …Elicit(s) young people's perspectives about learning, education and/or other aspects of their lives…"

When presented with the statement there is too much emphasis on 'student voice' and similar ideas nowadays, teachers were almost divided in thirds: 26 percent agreed or strongly agreed, 34 percent were unsure, and 39 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed (See p. 89 of this report). Why did these teachers have such divergent opinions? More importantly, how exactly did each teacher interpret the term "student voice"?

Today ask yourself... 1. What am I teaching and to whom? 2. Why am I teaching it? 3. How am I teaching it? 4. Why am I teaching it that way? 5. What evidence will I collect to show my kids are getting it? 6. How will my students know they are getting it?

"On August 4-6, 2010 in Boston (MA), 150 invited education leaders convened at the SIIA-ASCD CCSSO Symposium on [Re]Design for Personalized Learning. They gathered under the common belief that today's education system is inadequate to meet the needs of tomorrow, and focused on identifying changes essential to transform learning for each student. Following are the Symposium participants' key findings about how to redesign our current education model to a student-centered, customized learning model that will better engage, motivate, and prepare our students to be career and college ready."

Succinct summary explaining the flipped classroom, advantages, challenges and future implications for education.

Sometimes I wonder if the flipped classroom model could be supplemented by a third piece...maybe a "backflip" of sorts to help them stick the landing? Online lecture then face-to-face instruction followed by one-on-one time.

Used the flipped model a bit back at OVUHS with students in Internships. Gave students readings in an online platform (Moodle) to be read and reflectively journaled using an assigned text-based protocol. Students were asked to connect readings to field experiences. Found that there was a Huge benefit to both students and myself with the time this model gave us to thoughtfully reflect and prepare for our face-to-face time. Instead of students coming to me for gaining knowledge, they came to me to share knowledge gained.

Here's a tool I've been using with my CSS Professional Development classes. It's taken from the International Center for Leadership in Education. You can find a more colorful version on their site (http://www.leadered.com/rrr.html).

Here is the link to a Pew Research survey about teachers and tech use. You can read the summary at this page, and/or download the pdf from there to read later. The document is pretty long, but has some interesting data, even given the fairly narrow survey sample.

"...summarizes the research on five categories of noncognitive factors that are related to academic performance: academic behaviors, academic perseverance, academic mindsets, learning strategies, and social skills..."

Publication Summary Page of CCSR Report http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/teaching-adolescents-become-learners-role-noncognitive-factors-shaping-school Great related blog post on Grit by Jonathan Martin "Developing Grit via Mindset and Learning Strategies: Learning from the CCSR report" http://21k12blog.net/2013/05/19/developing-grit-via-mindset-and-learning-strategies-learning-from-the-ccsr-report/

Look on pages 25-26 for a brief description of a Danish folk high school course "Take the Future." In it, Mette Hojland describes how her class looks at a 'spiritual, individual, and global perspective'; she also talks about a rubric that she has for developing the sense of self-and it's not reductive!

"...draws on interviews and site visits with innovators and the limited literature that has been developed on the topic of competency-based approaches. The first section introduces a working definition for competency-based pathways that hopefully will be the beginning of creating consensus on the characteristics of a high-quality approach to guide policy. The second section explores the driving forces behind competency-based innovations and implementation issues. The last section highlights a number of challenges facing states and districts as they explore competency-based approaches."

"What if students instead came to each course or classroom with a digital backpack of data about their learning levels, preferences, motivations, and personal accomplishments? How would this improve each teacher's ability to tailor learning to meet the needs of individual students? What if parents and students could easily access their child's records to share the information with afterschool providers? How would all of the personalization this affords add up to deeper learning and improved college and career readiness?"

The experience of using portfolios in the past may lead to some push back from veteran educators. Reframing ePortfolios as tools to help them might be a good way to begin a process of an indiscernible evolution rather than attempting to implement sudden change. ~jf

"What do teachers wish they knew about new students? In what environment do they learn best? Are they meeting the standards in key areas like math, reading and writing? What goals have they identified for themselves? What level of support do they have at home? Do they participate in any community programs or organizations? Do they do best when working alone or with peers? What are their outside interests that I can use to motivate learning? Is there anything in their learning history that I should flag for follow-up or special attention? What did other teachers note about their strengths and challenges?"