Series
What Guides Your Work? And, Why Do You Teach What You Teach?
In my last post, Why do you teach? And, why do you stay?, I hoped to start a conversation about teaching -- why in the world are we here, and what keeps us here? I now want to look at what guides our work, and why we teach what we teach. For most of my teaching career, I did not know why I taught what I taught, or I thought I knew, but didn’t.
Why We Need a Moratorium on Meaningless Note-Taking
Over the years, as I have encountered a goodly number of teachers who have complained vociferously about their students’ lack of proper note-taking skills, I have found myself more and more befuddled. Dare I tell them what I really think, that they are wasting their students’ time and setting them up for failure by having them outline their lecture notes, word for word, from the over-crowded PowerPoint slides they’ve projected at the front of the classroom?
Padlet: Today’s Digital Sheet of Paper
Even if you had only attended one class in your entire life, more than likely you have been asked, “Can I borrow a sheet of paper?” Some laid-back, often-tardy-to-school classmate probably gave you some excuse just as the rest of the students began diligently scribbling down resemblances of the teacher’s key lecture points. If you are anything like me, you half-reluctantly handed over a sheet of paper and chalked the very minor loss up as no big deal.
Smart Cities: San Diego
Running the San Diego County Office of Education seems pretty tame after tours of duty as state administrator in Oakland and Compton, but Randy Ward argues that county offices are more relevant than ever. With half a million kids and 42 districts there’s plenty to worry about.
EdTech 10: Disrupt, Incubate, Re-engineer
There were big verbs in the news this week, with lots of activity across the K-12 and Higher Ed space. This week’s EdTech 10 is all about disrupting, incubating, persevering, re-engineering, and shifting. Now, get to reading...
Smart Cities: Twin Cities is no Wobegon but on the Rise
A Literacy Specialist in the Eden Prairie School District said, “I am thinking about the thousands of iPads being handed out to kids right now in districts around the Twin Cities and I’m curious to see what we will be able to do with them and to what degree we will be able to differentiate for our students.”
EdTech 10
Love was in the air this week. President Obama showed love for Early Education and STEM in this week’s SOTU. Research revealed that aspiring teachers are showing more love for technology more than practicing teachers. And, as always, there’s a whole week’s worth of news to love right here in this our EdTech 10. (Think of it as our version of heart-shaped chocolates.)
EdTech 10
The shift to blended learning is getting a bit easier. Digital Learning Now! has provided a roadmap. New tools and schools show the way forward.
Student CEOs Groom Change-Agents for the Classroom
Last fall, I implemented Student Learning Teams in an effort to empower my fifth- and sixth-grade students as learners in my classroom. Fired up by Alan November’s notion of Digital Learning Farms and John Hunter’s World Peace Game, I offered my students the opportunity to do the real work of making class reading selections, collecting data about homework to make it more meaningful, and finding resources to enhance their understanding of Language Arts. Could Student Learning Teams, I posited, be the change-agents we needed to transform learning in my classroom?
EdTech 10: BETT Special
The Getting Smart team enjoyed hopping across the pond to London this week to tour schools, attend Microsoft events and join in the activities at BETT 2013. Walking into ExCel London, we were in awe of the space and the draw toward an education discussion. The event was rumored to receive more than 20,000 foot traffic over the course of the four days. The exhibits appeared gigantic, unlike anything at some of the biggest education conferences in the U.S. With our overseas insight, we thought we'd give you a roundup of view abroad.