CASTLE Round-Up – Week of May 11

This is a quick round-up of what happened on the CASTLE blogs last week…

LeaderTalk

At LeaderTalk, Barbara Barreda proposed that we “join our teachers in the ritual of closing down the school year by taking stock of our office and jettisoning the bottom 20%… the things that are good ideas but not great or critical.”

When we’re drowning in social media, Angela Maiers reminds us to just BREATHE.

Chris Hitch asked how we can find ways to motivate our staff in non-monetary ways during these difficult budgetary times and offered a few suggestions of his own.

EdJurist

Over at EdJurist, CASTLE’s education law blog, Justin Bathon said that we can learn a few things from NASCAR about randomized drug testing of teachers.

Justin also noted that

We absolutely need clarity from the courts on whether school resource officers are more like school employees or more like police. This having it both ways stuff (to the detriment of the students in all cases) has got to stop.

Finally, Justin posted Episode 4 of EdJurist TV, which focused on interesting student discipline cases from last year.

Dangerously Irrelevant

Here at Dangerously Irrelevant, my post, It’s not ‘the tests.’ It’s us., generated quite a bit of interesting commentary.

I posted a new video from Stephen Heppell and another of Seth Godin at TED. I also pointed to an interesting graphic from Tech&Learning regarding what students want in e-textbooks, highlighted AASA’s upcoming Seattle Summit, and showed the name badge ribbons that I’m bringing to NECC. I gave updates on my quest to identify model 21st century schools, the number of recipes on BlogTweetCook.org, and the lack of effective communication in my local school district.

Oh, yeah, Episode 5 of 4 Guys Talking (with Lane Mills) is now available.

Happy reading!