I have a simple rule of three for third millennium learning spaces: • No more than three walls so that there is never full enclosure and the space is multifaceted rather than just open. • No fewer than three points of focus so that the "stand-and-deliver" model gives way to increasingly varied groups learning and presenting together (which by the way requires a radical rethinking of furniture). • Ability to accommodate three teachers/adults with their children. The old standard size of about 30 students in a box robbed children of so many effective practices; these larger spaces allow for better alternatives.

Schools are full of things that our descendants will look back on and laugh out loud at: ringing a bell and expecting 1,000 teenagers to be simultaneously hungry; putting 25 children together in a box because they were born between two Septembers; assessing children based on how well they work alone; and so on.

We’ve created Pine Tree Poetry to interlace students, their peers, parents, teachers and school librarians in a quest for poetry writing excellence. Rarely do students earn kudos or trophies for their writing, but at Pine Tree Poetry, we are dedicated to rewarding the fine writing achievements of students who are 5 – 18. Pine Tree Poetry contributes four important elements to the realm of student poetry. We: 1. Receive, read, evaluate, pick (a few) and publish the best poems written by poets ages 5 – 18. 2. Support schools by awarding thousands of dollars each year for much-needed library materials. Some awards are based upon the number of poems submitted while others are selected at random from among all particiipants. 3. Give a free copy of The Pine Tree Poetry Collection to the library of every school that has one or more students published. 4. Highlight the life lesson that many will write and the best will be chosen. We are not a vanity publishing company! We’re out to change the world one poem at a time and we invite students, parents, librarians, teachers and those who love the written word to join us.

You’ve written that too many teachers are “un-Googleable.” What do you mean by that and why does it matter? What I mean is that too few teachers have a visible presence on the Web. The primary reason this matters is that the kids in our classrooms are going to be Googled—they're going to be searched for on the Web—over and over again. That's just the reality of their lives, right? So they need models. They need to have adults who know what it means to have a strong and appropriate search portfolio—I call it the “G-portfolio.” But right now—and this is my ongoing refrain—there’s no one teaching them how to learn and share with these technologies. There's no one teaching them about the nuances involved in creating a positive online footprint. It's all about what not to do instead of what they should be doing. The second thing is that, if you want to be part of an extended learning network or community, you have to be findable. And you have to participate in some way. The people I learn from on a day-to-day basis are Googleable. They’re findable, they have a presence, they’re participating, they’re transparent. That’s what makes them a part of my learning network. If you’re not out there—if you’re not transparent or findable in that way—I can’t learn with you.

Why do you think many teachers are not out there on the Web? I think it’s a huge culture shift. Education by and large has been a very closed type of profession. “Just let me close my doors and teach”—you hear that refrain all the time. I’ve had people come up to me after presentations and say, “Well, I’m not putting my stuff up on the Web because I don’t want anyone to take it and use it.” And I say, “But that’s the whole point.” I love what David Wiley, an instructional technology professor at Brigham Young University, says: “Without sharing, there is no education.” And it’s true.

What could a school administrator do to help teachers make that shift? Say you were a principal? What would you do? Well, first of all, I would be absolutely the best model that I could be. I would definitely share my own thoughts, my own experiences, and my own reflections on how the environment of learning is changing. I would be very transparent in my online learning activity and try to show people in the school that it’s OK, that it has value. I think it’s very hard to be a leader around these types of changes without modeling them.

One of the mandates for high school principals in the School District of Philadelphia is to give more frequent written feedback to teachers based on the teaching and learning we see on a daily basis on our walk-throughs. It is one of those mandates that is pretty much indefensible in theory, but the devil, as always, is in the details. For me, the trick is to create a way to give teachers feedback that is useful, as observational and non-judgemental as possible, easy to manage, both for teachers and me, and something that can be more than just sheets of paper that are put into a binder and then forgotten about. So I am going to be using my iPad and a GoogleForm (and Spreadsheet) to get feedback to teachers quickly and (hopefully) wisely and well.