Group items tagged

"From personal experience blogging is one of the most beneficial professional development activities I have ever engaged with. I learn more from blogging than I do from almost any other activity I participate in."

"Basically, just honest to goodness, really decent human beings… Perhaps an old fashioned idea. No business degree needed for this part. Just the hard work of self reflection, personal growth and continuous striving to be accepting, caring, compassionate and trustworthy."

Girls and Games: What's the Attraction? Games are increasingly recognized by educators as a way to get kids excited about learning. While the stereotype of a "gamer" may evoke the image of a high school boy holed up in a dark room playing on a console, in reality 62 percent of gamers play with other people either in person or online, and 47 percent of all gamers are girls. Game developers and academics who have been studying the elements that go into making games more attractive to girls found that those very same qualities are also important components of learning. For instance, girls are more drawn to games that require problem solving in context, that are collaborative (played through social media) and that produce what's perceived to be a social good. They also like games that simulate the real word and are particularly drawn to "transmedia" content that draws on characters from books, movies, or toys.

"The authors of this paper use characters from the 1998 film The Big Lebowski to illustrate the intricate, self-defined nature of information seeking behavior and the ways in which personal characteristics contribute to the success or failure of an information search."

"The Computer History Museum offers many online exhibits on a variety of topics related to the history of computing. Some online exhibits like Visible Storage and Mastering the Game complement physical exhibits you can also experience when you visit the Museum in person. Other online exhibits are available only through the Internet and extend the reach of the Museum to virtual visitors around the world."

Great digital stories: Are personal Begin with the story/script Are concise Use readily-available source materials Include universal story elements Involve collaboration at a variety of levels

Thanks Louise!

Great video to show staff on creating PLN's: http://t.co/4ZaGIIYH

This would be great to show to kids - the second half - where they explain the different colours and what they represent from a personality/emotions perspective, a marketing perspective, politics and chakras. 

Coaching is a highly sophisticated form of reflective practice. When done well, it can transform a person's professional, and often personal, life, and provides many benefits to the employer in sustaining high performance and morale. The question is, however, whether it's the coaching itself that produces the results, or if it's down to an enlightened management team, which believes in people's development and so encourages coaching, which in turn produces results. When coaching is done badly, though, it has the power to decimate a person's sense of professional worth for years into the future and to incur substantial cost while returning no benefits, or worse, significant professional damage. Leadership can become cynical about the coaching process.  Money is wasted.  Time and attention are frittered away.  Ineffective coaching is counterproductive and should be stopped as soon as it is recognized.

If we value coaching, and we do, the question then becomes: "what are the elements of effective coaching that we can train, support, measure, and improve" - especially those that have the highest leverage for shifting those being coached perspectives and practices. The more I come to understand the power of coaching the more I appreciate that the best leaders see their primary role within an organisation as an influencer and coaching as the structure behind the myriad of interactions. I think an enlightened management team would not only be encouraging coaches but utilizing coaching strategies themselves on a regular basis.

" The shift from hierarchical power, lodged in the hands of the teacher, to lateral power, established across a learning community, is tantamount to a revolution in pedagogy.""

"Legacy Libraries are the libraries of historical people (as well as a few institutions), entered into LibraryThing by dedicated members working from a variety of sources, including published bibliographies, auction catalogs, library holdings, manuscript lists, wills and probate inventories, and personal inspection of extant copies.

Twitter/PLN resources 

"Themeefy is a free service that lets you discover and curate knowledge from the Web and archive them in Themes to publish as personalized magazines later!"

"The short answer to that question is that no, a person should never publish a poem on one's own blog/site that's not in the public domain unless permission has been secured (and is included in the post). The true answer is the one you've discovered for yourself -- people do it all the time. The grey space between the short answer and the true answer is the digital citizenship that many Poetry Friday bloggers try to teach by example. If we can't get permission for the poem, we post part of it and link to the site where we found it. Or we link to the book it is from, so that our reproduction of the poem is a form of advertising for the author."

To help our teachers build their Personal Learning Network... a good idea to bundle up a bunch of great blogs at various grade levels for them to get ideas and inspiration. Jennifer LaGarde (aka Librarygirl) made a similar tool you can find here... more specific to different grades.

How to organize personal selections of Wikipedia pages into a collection, which can be output and shared

"A survey of teachers who instruct American middle and high school students finds that digital technologies are impacting student writing in myriad ways and there are significant advantages from tech-based learning. Some 78% of the 2,462 advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project say digital tools such as the internet, social media, and cell phones "encourage student creativity and personal expression." In addition: 96% agree digital technologies "allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience" 79% agree that these tools "encourage greater collaboration among students" According to teachers, students' exposure to a broader audience for their work and more feedback from peers encourages greater student investment in what they write and in the writing process as a whole. At the same time, these teachers give their students modest marks when it comes to writing and highlight some areas needing attention. Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts.""

Why more professions should use coaches.