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Redesigning Learning, Teaching, & Schooling
If your school is planning to implement a one-to-one computer or tablet initiative, chances are a committee has been formed to plan, refine and ultimately kick off the initiative. Sometimes teacher-led committees get stuck. Here are two techniques members of a committee can use: one to help focus ...
International schools are often on the cutting edge of technology use in their schools. In fact, when I think of innovative schools, I often think of international schools. When I read Will Richardson's Bold Schools post, I thought international schools would definitely epitomize these bold school ...
A teacher friend of mine wrote me recently. She said that her school was working on bringing in iPads for grades six and seven next year and asked if I find that schools prefer laptops to iPads when moving to a 1:1 device environment. That’s a question our center gets quite a bit. In the end ...
How do you transform factory era school systems so that they better serve the needs of an information age society? You don't do it by being timid. Unlike most school reformers floating 'tweak-the-status-quo' proposals these days (let's test kids more! let's get rid of a few teachers! let's make ...
There is a prevailing conception that students must learn facts and procedural knowledge BEFORE they can then engage in so-called 'higher-order' thinking skills. Educators, parents, policymakers, online commentators, and others point to Bloom's taxonomy (which typically has been portrayed as a ...
There is no shortage of effort in the United States today to infuse school leadership teams with the knowledge, skills and abilities to create improvements in schools. But one example is the work being taken on in several states to have schools embrace six design principles, known as “critical ...
Question: What do VCRs, Betamax players, condom use in Thailand, and hybrid corn seeds in Iowa have in common? Answer: The adoption of these innovations each followed a logical, predictable framework that can be applied to (most) any innovation. The Diffusion of Innovations theory has been ...
There's a refrain amongst the din of school reform talk today that goes something like this: We could learn a great deal from the educational systems of other countries. Finland comes to mind as a country whose model we're asked, as a country, to examine and perhaps emulate. However, did you ...
In line with my post a fortnight ago, I recently took a second look at another inspiring book. This time I reread Hugh MacLeod's Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity . Here are some lessons I took away that apply to leaders of K-12 schools... "Great ideas alter the power balance in ...
Why do we not give P.E. credit for participating in football? Or any of the other various sports requiring physical activity? The kids are far more active in football than they are in the P.E. class. We are paying someone, sometimes a certified teacher, to oversee the activity. And, by the end of ...
It's simply not possible. Or is it? Let's say you're a middle school principal. How can you engage a large group of consultants, each having anywhere between six to eight years of classroom experience, and have them conduct 90 days of observation between the beginning of the school year and ...
As soon as you say 'failure is not an option,' you've just said 'innovation is not an option.' - Seth Godin, The Flip Side Download this file: png pptx See also my other slides and the Great Quotes About Learning and Change Flickr pool.
I recently revisited What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis and was struck by how it spoke to me about the needs of today's schools. Here are a few points that really resonated with me. New Relationships are Forming "Give the people control and we will use it. Don't and you will lose it" (p. 11 ...
As was so aptly said just a few days ago: It is hard to make an argument that there are many desirable post-secondary educational or career scenarios for current high school students that will not require the use of computer technology on a daily basis. The kids have known this for quite some ...
CASTLE has been around for a few years now. In fact, it started at the University of Minnesota, moved south to Iowa State University, was shared between Iowa State University and the University of Kentucky, and now is housed only at the University of Kentucky. In short, we have been around. Justin ...