Rowland Foundation

Google's move to a new privacy policy includes information about staying safe on line and how Google will use your data.  Probably good to share with staff and students.

"Beyond the young people the organizations directly involve, community-based service-learning benefits the people served, their communities, and, ultimately, society..."

"...suggests that good teaching must 'de-emphasise lecture and emphasise active problem-solving'..."

Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT for short) is a teaching and learning strategy based on the interaction between web-based study assignments and an active learner classroom. WarmUps and Puzzles are the heart of the JiTT web component. These are short, web-based assignments, prompting the student to think about the upcoming lesson and answer a few simple questions prior to class.

"...technology that allows him to easily record his lectures at home, slice them into easily digestible morsels, and make them available for students to watch online prior to class meetings..."

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.

"...research demonstrates service-learning's success as a youth engagement tool. It enhances students' sense of self-efficacy, improves self-esteem, and decreases their likelihood to engage in at-risk behavior. Service-learning has the potential to improve attendance. -percent of students at low-performing schools said their feelings would be more positive if they were engaged in service-learning at school."

"When you issue an open invitation and gather together a large group of self-nominated passionate stakeholders from a broad cross-section across a system or organization and ask them to vision your shared ideal future, anything can happen."

"...the absence of grades is a necessary ...(condition for)... promoting deep thinking and a desire to engage in it. It's worth lingering variety of efforts to sell us formulas to improve our grading techniques, none of which address the problems of grading, per se." - "If you have one eye on how close you are to achieving your goal, that leaves only one eye for your task."

I'm looking forward to seeing Sir Ken at the Rowland Foundation Conference this week! In this interview, I like how he debunks some commonly held myths about creativity. Huge implications for teachers and 21st Cent. Skills...

"The perceived 'soft' service component actually raises the learning challenge in a course. Service-learning students must not only master academic material as in traditional courses, but also learn how to learn from unstructured and ill-structured community experiences..."

"...the day is growing nearer when quality higher education confronts the technological disruptions that have already upended the music and book industries, humbled enterprises from Kodak to the Postal Service (not to mention the newspaper business), and helped destabilize despots across the Middle East." Ten years ago who would have thought that these institutions would be "threatened" by computers? Are schools evolving rapidly enough to meet the challenge?

"If your school, and your school day, is not about students collaborating, connecting, and building knowledge and understandings together, why would anyone come?"

Debatable, but interesting reforms.  While I may not agree with all of the pieces I do like that they are taking a multipronged approach...and that they are not just talking about transformation, but taking real and decisive actions.

"Here are five of the key leadership lessons that you can take away from Captain Kirk as you pilot your own organization into unknown futures."

Kobayashi Maru? I was never very good with languages in school. Does that translate to No Child Left Behind?

In our educational leadership analogy, yes! However, while being the ultimate no-win scenario, I think NCLB has still encouraged leaders to innovate and improve learning in their schools by holding them accountable and providing funding for improvement.

ISTE - International Society for Technology in Education ... ISTE 2012, "Expanding Horizons," will be held June 24 through 27, 2012, at the San Diego Convention.

Mentioned by Lauren Parren & Karen Budde in Ning. Check in with them through Ning if you are interested!

http://www.classroom20.com/events/socialedcon-2012 SocialEdCon is the fifth all-day unconference held the Saturday before ISTE, and it's a great event for beginners and regular attenders alike! Come join us for an amazing community experience filled with interesting conversations in a highly social environment. SocialEdCon is free (thanks to the amazing generosity of ISTE). There is no formal signup, but for planning purposes and connecting with others, it's helpful to have you indicate your attendance here. SocialEdCon is part of a series of community events at ISTE.

EdCamp Flyer "EdCamp Vermont (http://edcampvt.posterous.com), an education conference like no other, will be held at Essex Middle School on Saturday, April 14th. The structure of the conference is very informal, with attendees signing up to run sessions first thing in the morning. The conference will be free from corporate vendors and booths, with the focus being solely on conversations about education. Attendees will come from all over Vermont and will range from classroom teachers to administrators to coaches and school board members. There will be time for attendees to gather informally to share ideas as well as a variety of sessions for them to attend, run by their colleagues and fellow educators."

What a great way for a group of Fellows to share either individual initiatives...or to talk about the process of change...how change happens...how to maintain an initiative...how admin can be generative leaders...or any of a number of pieces that Fellows and their schools have learned from our experiences.

I am going to be there with our school's art teacher. We couldn't miss this.

Awesome animation of KR talk on changing education paradigms.

"In today's global economy, countries need high-quality education systems that will teach their citizens the skills necessary to meet the challenges of tomorrow. This series of videos, produced jointly by the OECD and the Pearson Foundation, highlights initiatives being taken by education authorities around the world to help school students do better."

Isn't just a Finnish Phenomenon. Pieces are happening Globally. What can Vermont suss out and glean from these?

Nice rationale for the advantages of ePortfolios for today's students. I think tit's interesting that the author's arguments for using them with 6-year olds are the same as mine for using them with 16-year olds...