Teacher Librarian as Leader

"We need to move away from classroom design that is "Pinterest pretty" and use research/design thinking to guide the work." - Eric Sheninger and Tom Murray

"What Effective Principals Do" was written by Ian Lancaster and features 7 practices that make administrators the supporters, mentors, and leaders we need them to be. Let's have a brief look at each of them below.

Eric Sheninger outlines the importance of technology integration to focus on learning and the critical need for sound pedagogy to inform implementation.

" Instructional leadership and the school principa"

Students are the future, but what's the future for students? To arm them with the relevant, timeless skills for our rapidly changing world, we need to revolutionize what it means to learn. Education innovators like Dr. Sugata Mitra, visiting professor at MIT; Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy; and Dr. Catherine Lucey, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, are redefining how we engage young minds for a creatively and technologically-advanced future. Which of these educators holds the key for unlocking the learning potential inside every student?

I found this interesting in how many of the presenters shared Sir Ken Robinson's views on education. That as it began out of the Industrial Revolution, it's now time to adapt to the skills that our current students need. Dr Mitra's list of what students really need: Reading Comprehension skills and the ability to search and retrieve from the internet I found particularly relevant to my role as a teacher librarian.

Article on the significance of Middle Leaders to bring about change in schools. Has links to Dr Hilary Hollingsworth's work in this area. She is speaker at the upcoming ACER Research Conference 2017, 27 to 29 August at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

This is a great list of strategies! I've been learning about and using Visible Thinking Routines, and English through Drama strategies, and this list works really well with both those, lots of strategies to encourage ALL learners in a class to engage and to promote deep learning. Looking forward to transferring this learning from a Yr 5-6 classroom to my lessons in a library this coming term, and will definitely be referring to this list.

A heartfelt letter to a new principal that expresses a number of effective leadership strategies that can be employed when starting at a new school.

As well as pertinent regular blog posts there are a series of podcasts in signficant topics on technology adoption and leadership in the field. We live in a moment of unprecedented change, and our conceptions of schooling and education are being challenged in fundamental ways. Educational leaders around the globe are grappling with unfamiliar new contexts for learning which demand new ways of thinking and leading around an increasingly uncertain future. ML Publishers Will Richardson and Bruce Dixon unpack some of these new contexts, and articulate a mission that is focused on helping our readers become not just modern learners but modern leaders as well, leaders who are better informed and make better decisions for the modern students in their charge.

Surrounded by collaborative furniture, writable surfaces and interactive flat panels, five experts extolled the virtues of flexible and agile learning spaces at a panel discussion - summary of key points.

Summary article with first look at coming trends like deeper learning approaches and potentials challenges to their adoption.

This article shares a framework that integrates literacy, 21st century skills and ICT strategies, so that units of work can be prepared that take students from learning basic skills directly from teacher modelling, right through to collaborative application of these skills against real-world, authentic problems.

Creativity is quickly becoming one of the most highly valued traits of the 21st century, and according to a 2016 report from the World Economic Forum, it's one of the top three skills employers will be looking for by 2020. Given its increasing importance, you might be wondering whether there is anything you can do to foster creativity. One tool we all have at our disposal but perhaps don't always use as effectively as we could is technology.

Amid urgent calls for an enrichment of STEM education in Australia, Terrie Jones and her team from Ravenswood School for Girls in Sydney plotted a plan of action. Their mission? To integrate 'real world' STEM learning into all facets of their tech-focused curriculum.