From a colleague’s e-mail autoreply: I am away for the summer semester and will return Aug 15, 2007. I will not be able to respond to your e-mail until then. […]
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I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed from visiting a lot of American schools: the more traditional the teacher, the grimmer the mood. These classrooms don’t always resemble Dickensian factories, mind […]
Five days … twenty posts on school change … did we learn anything? Miguel Guhlin says, “Just finished skimming your entries. . . . Now, what do I do on […]
Will Richardson’s post covered the article in the New York Times about the growing popularity of virtual worlds for tweens (and younger). Think Club Penguin, Webkinz, etc. Will’s post included […]
The Washington Post has a tremendously sad series this week on the horrible state of the Washington, DC public schools, which are generally last in the country on any given […]
Back in March I posted that I was a finalist for the cable industry’s Leaders in Learning Awards . Last Wednesday I was officially named a winner . I spent […]
Okay, it’s time to try out a new feature here at Dangerously Irrelevant: the Report of the Week (ROTW). Can I find and feature an interesting education-related report each and […]
NCTE hates the idea. Teachers and administrators have mixed feelings. But are scripted curricula racist? Classist? Join the discussion at The Elementary Educator…
Are you a great teacher? A great principal? Know someone who is? You and they have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference at the epicenter of urban school reform. […]
One of the highlights of my trip to Washington, DC for the Leaders in Learning Awards was my interview with KFAI Radio back home in Minneapolis (click on the red […]
Two more weeks … Three more days … You hear these kinds of statements often during the last few weeks of school. I remember feeling this way when I was […]
Are edubloggers mostly white and middle class? What proportion of edubloggers have advanced degrees in instructional technology? Brian Grenier wants to find out the answers to these and other questions. […]
As I look around at all of the technology gear I’ve accumulated over the past few years, I can only come to one conclusion: I’ve got too much stuff. I […]
n Most organizations are paralyzed, stuck in a rut, staring at the growth paradox. On one hand, they understand all the good things that will come with growth. On the […]
Buckingham & Coffman. (1999). First, break all the rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. A really, really great book for leaders and change agents.
Peter Block, author of The Empowered Manager , noted that the apparent power of those at the top is much less than absolute. What leaders can do from the top […]
n One step is easy. One step isn’t enough. n Two steps is tempting. Two steps means that everyone understandsnwhat you’re up to when you pitch an idea to them. […]
This is the way we ought to be approaching our change initiatives, whether directed at students, staff, parents… [from http://tinyurl.com/2a9rt5]
Gladwell. (2002). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Connectors, mavens, and salesmen. These are the folks you want as your allies. These people may or […]
Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter , who is perhaps our nation’s leading expert on organizational change, outlines ten reasons that drive resistance to educational change initiatives: Surprise, Surprise! Decisions or requests […]
Some quotes that I’ve used on this blog in the past… They say, “Sure, we need change.”I say we need revolution now. They say, “We can’t handle this much change.”I […]
[from http://tinyurl.com/bkbtk] No one jumps a 20 foot chasm in two 10 foot jumps. – Miguel Guhlin (comment at Remote Access)
Dede, Honan, & Peters (Eds.). (2005). Scaling up success: Lessons from technology-based educational improvement. How do we take successful programs and best practices serving a few classrooms or students and […]
Measure just about anything, and the distribution . . . almost always comes out as a perfect bell curve. . . . [The bell curve] even applies to the energy […]
[from http://tinyurl.com/aofe8] What would school organizations be like if every employee had the opportunity to pursue Option B? As Kathy Sierra notes, ‘What if the price for working on weakness […]
Collins. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. Local communities strongly believe that their schools are good. ‘Good is the enemy of great.’ [see […]
[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog] nn Why haven’t schools changed more? Maybe because they can’t. n In their 2005 Phi Delta Kappan article, Can Schools Improve?, Christensen, Aaron, & Clark […]
Pfeffer & Sutton. (2000). The knowing-doing gap: How smart companies turn knowledge into action. Countless leaders know what they should do. But yet desired change fails to happen. Here’s why.
Most educational administration graduate students can tell you about Bolman & Deal’s leadership frameworks . The frames help change agents conceptualize different approaches to an issue. Depending on the circumstances, […]