Here is a great post that references an infographic about Twitter. Check it out!

http://howeoriginal.com/2012/04/tweet-this-not-that/

So just when I thought Shakespeare’s classics had been portrayed in all the ways possible, here comes Cliff’s Notes animated videos.

There is a place for this… I just don’t know where yet. I cannot decide if I am loving or hating these. What do you think? http://www.5min.com/CliffsNotes

Shakespeare animated

I have to share this one because it was Read Across America Week and I saw the Lorax last week.

I have found lots of great resources lately and wanted to share some of them. These are not my typical techie sites, but these are a few articles about leading and learning that I found through my PLN on Twitter. I am hoping to refresh myself as an educator and a leader by getting back into the groove of growing a group of colleagues/peers that I can bounce ideas off of and share with. I am often reminded that the definition of INSANITY is doing things the same and expecting different results. My guess is that most of you are the folks in your school who lead the change just to stay sane!

So anyway, if you have a few minutes (because we all have free time running out of our ears) here are a few items that lit my fire recently. Give them a scan.

http://letterpop.com/newsletters/?id=205057-c0399d

Cover via Amazon

Found this great list on Edutopia featured from Nick at http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/. Which of these is your favorite? I have seen all but two, so those will have to be my next Netflix choices.

TheNerdyTeacher.com.

In honor of Edutopia’s 20th anniversary, we’re producing a series of Top 20 lists, from the practical to the sublime.

Image by tonynetone via Flickr

I had to repost part of one of my favorite blogs The PrincipalsPage.com. He always puts things in a way that makes me dink myself in the head in the old “I wish I’d had a V8″ fashion. Here goes:

Kids today no longer want to play by our rules.

They don’t understand why schools are locked up at 3:30 and on weekends.

They don’t understand why computer labs contain equipment that is inadequate compared to what they use at home (and in the car).

They don’t understand why they’re constantly told to read more, yet school libraries are inaccessible for 3 months during the summer.

They don’t understand why teachers and administrators are given the option of improving their own technology skills.

They don’t understand why so many adults in charge of their education still seem to think PowerPoint is cutting edge (and while I’ve got your attention… if you still feel the need to use PowerPoint… stop using 18,000 words per slide!).

They don’t understand tenure or salary schedules.

But they do understand learning doesn’t begin and end for them at school.

Their education isn’t tied to a bell schedule or holiday breaks.

They know their education isn’t better because of worksheets, memorization, or mandated testing.

They get it.

They know what we still seem to be confused by.

They don’t need us.

The don’t need brick buildings that are only open 7 hours a day.

They have the internet.

And curiosity.

They’re going to learn with or without our help.

And the learning process is not going to stop for them after 8th grade.  Or high school.  Or even college.

They’re smarter than us right now.

And they’re going to be a lot smarter than us in 50  years.

The future isn’t coming, it’s already arrived.

“The best entrepreneurs don’t go around with something to tell. They go around eager for something to listen for.”  from Why University site by Simon Sinek author of the book Start with Why

This site was recommended in a webinar I attended by Angela Maiers who I follow on Twitter @angelamaiers. She always has interesting and innovative ideas.  The premise of the book and the resources is that it is not as important “what” you do, it is most important “why” you do it.  Sinek also has a great Ted Talk that talks about this concept. 

I want to apply this to the Teaching 2030  book authored by my friends at the Center for Teaching Quality and specifically by one of my friends and “soul sister” Jennifer Barnett- star over in Talledega County.

One of the big ideas of the book is that of the teacherpreneur. The book defines this concept as- 

A leadership force of 600,000 “teacherpreneurs” – classroom experts who continue to teach students regularly while also serving as teacher educators, policy researchers, community organizers, and trustees of their profession – will blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them.

I want to further define this term by applying the quote from Sinek: “The best entrepreneurs don’t go around with something to tell. They go around eager for something to listen for.”  Some see the term teacherpreneur as controversial because it seems to garner the idea that these folks just wanna teach for the big bucks.  I see this as a term that breaks that sterotype of someone being “just a teacher”. A drone working for other people who make decisions and dictate policy.  A teacherpreneur is recognized and treated as a professional.  As the quote above states he/she is not just someone going around spouting off ideas and telling everyone how things should be, that person listens to fellow teachers and to students and to education research to help find a solution for the problems surrounding our schools. When you think about great entrepreneurs- Henry Ford, Steve Jobs- certainly you can list what they did, but what made them great was that they listened to the consumer and made products that resonated with their audience.

Isn’t that what is missing in education? Listening? Lots of folks are talking but who is really listening? Listen to the students, to the communities, to the parents… those are your customers. The teacherpreneur knows that. He/she is already in the classroom making it student-centered and helping the kids own their knowledge. The teacherpreneur is blogging, reading, posting, listening, researching, listening, and working constantly to stay in tune with their audience and what is best for students. Now we as teachers must OWN our profession.

Listen… you might be surprised what you hear!

Have you ever felt like you had so many ideas swimming around in your head and you were unable to verbalize them?  Well, Bill Ferriter just blew me away in his blog The Tempered Radical with his insight.  I know all of this… how come I could not say it!  Thanks Bill for putting this out there for me to affirm and totally steal from (with credit to Bill, of course) to share with our folks in St. Clair County and beyond.  Preach the gospel of “technovangelism” with less emphasis on the tools being the deity and more emphasis on the skills taking the lead.  Bravo!  Here it is… I wish I could just summarize, but I am sticking it all here:

Making Good Technology Choices

Once you understand just what those skills are—and why they’re important to the kids in your classroom—you can start to find digital tools that make the work around those skills more efficient.

The good news is that choosing skills is a heck of a lot easier than choosing tools.

After all, some of the brightest minds in education reform—Bob Marzano, Rick and Becky DuFour, Rick Stiggins, Larry Ainsworth—have been writing about “essential outcomes,” “I Can Statements,” and “power standards” for years.

Their keys to identifying skills that matter involve asking questions about endurance, leverage and readiness:

Endurance: Are students expected to retain the skills or knowledge you are considering long after the test is completed?

Leverage: Is this skill or knowledge you are considering applicable to many academic disciplines?

Readiness for the next level of learning: Is this skill or knowledge you are considering going to prepare the student for success in the next grade/course?

When I think about the kinds of knowledge and skills that meet the endurance-leverage-readiness test by crossing disciplines, preparing students for success in the next grade and remaining important long after the test, I think of information management, collaborative dialogue, and persuasion.

And now that I’ve narrowed my focus down to three important skills, making instructional technology choices is easy.

Here are some examples:

Information Management

It would be pretty darn near impossible to argue that learning to manage information—to identify sources worth trusting, to organize collections of shared resources on topics of interest, to create customized streams of content—is an essential skill for everyone in today’s digitally driven world.

Not only will managing information become more important in the future (endurance), it is essential regardless of academic discipline (leverage) and it can help students to learn efficiently throughout their school careers (readiness).

As a result, I try to introduce my students to search tools like the Google Wonder Wheel.  We also discuss the anatomy of hoax websites and we begin to explore the value in social bookmarking and shared annotation of content.

Collaborative Dialogue

Anyone who has spent any time reading the Radical knows that I’m completely frustrated by the kill-em-all nature of important conversations in our country.  Competitive dialogue—the kind of “I’m smarter than you” rhetoric we hear from politicians and pundits all the time—leaves us divided.

That’s why I’m a big believer in collaborative dialogue—“Let’s think together”—as an essential skill.  Collaborative thinking is a characteristic of the best innovators (endurance) regardless of discipline (leverage).  It is also a characteristic of the most efficient learners in our schools (readiness).

As a result, I work hard to give my students opportunities to practice collaborative dialogue.  Usually that work happens with an approachable tool called VoiceThread.

Persuasion

Persuasion is perhaps the most interesting skill on my essentials list simply because it often runs contrary to my passion for collaborative dialogue.  When you’re persuading, you’re not always working from a collaborative mindset.

But understanding persuasion is incredibly important to being a literate citizen in the 21st Century (endurance) simply because EVERYONE with an opinion is using the Web to shape public thinking around the issues that they care about.

If our students don’t understand the tricks of the persuasion trade, they’re going to spend their entire adult lives being bamboozled.

And perhaps more importantly, if they don’t understand the tricks of the persuasion trade, they’ll never be able to organize significant action around the ideas that THEY care about.

That makes persuasion an important skill in many domains (leverage and readiness), doesn’t it?

As social studies classes explore the global implications of poverty, science classes study the potential solutions to our world-wide energy crisis and health classes study the role that governments should play in regulating healthy living habits, students will form content-specific positions that they’ll want to advocate for.

As a result, I try to engage my kids in projects that require them to be persuasive.  Specifically, we use the Kiva microlending website as a starting point for persuasive conversations and experiences.

We also use Animoto to create persuasive videos and talk about the role that images play in today’s persuasion landscape.

What’s interesting is that just about every time that I finish explaining the thinking about  my technology choices, someone gets flustered.

“You’re not using wikis?” they’ll argue.  “How can that be?  And for any teacher to ignore Skype as a tool in the classroom is simply ridiculous!  It’s fantastic.”

My reply—delivered as gently as possible—is always the same:
“Wikis and Skype aren’t skills.  Instead, they’re tools that can be used to make working with individual skills easier.”

And I have used wikis with students—as a part of a persuasive effort to shape thinking in North Carolina around alternative energy sources.  Skype becomes a tool for exploring positions and ideas that are outside of our own, supporting the collaborative dialogue and persuasive efforts that I believe in.

Does any of this make sense?

I guess what I’m trying to argue is that we need to start looking at the characteristics of good teaching before we ever start to think about good tools.

Technology cannot help children learn when it is divorced from the knowledge, skills and expert choices of their teachers.

Watch this amazing Ted Talk from Diana Laufenberg about how we should “do school differently”.  I am with you on this!  The students want to let their voices be heard.

Well, I love reading things that make me think or make me want to stand up and cheer (or jeer!).  I found that today as I was following up with some emails.  I read the Flipped Class Blog (emphasis is mine) responding to all of the publicity and criticism their Flipped Classroom Model  is getting. (What is the Flipped Classroom?)

Our conclusion is that the Flipped Model is NOT a magic bullet that will fix today’s schools.  We believe education’s only magic bullet is the recruiting, training and supporting of quality teachers.   Our biggest fear is that the Flipped Model will result in teachers thinking that the model will solve their classroom issues and they will become apathetic.  We fear that some will choose to use other teachers’ videos (which is fine, and we encourage this in our upcoming book), but they will not adequately engage with the students and will bore their students to death with video.  We have seen this happen over the years with many technologies in the classroom: death by filmstrip, death by PowerPoint, death by VHS, death by DVD, death by online video, death by inquiry, death by any other instructional practice!  Good instructional models are never an excuse for bad teaching, and by teaching we do not mean direct instruction.  Bad teaching while using a good instructional model comes in thinking that the model will do the work for you.  Good teaching always has been, and always will be the gathering of constant feedback of students and modifying instruction to meet their individual needs.  Technology simply makes that possible.

The same is true with the Flipped Model.  If the Flipped Model is not carried out effectively, it will not work.  We know the most important ingredient in student success is not the teaching methodology, but rather the teacher. That said, we believe the Flipped Model makes GOOD teachers BETTER and makes GREAT teachers SHINE.  But under no circumstances will it “fix” a burned-out or disinterested teacher.

I could not agree more.  I see this model of delivering content (direct instruction/facts/Googleable material) as a way to efficiently provide information in a 24/7 format.  I do not see it as a viable whole-class instruction solution.  I go into classrooms so many times where a projector is being used to show a Power Point slide filled with text (Death by Power Point), to show a WHOLE (90 minute block schedule) movie (Death by DVD), or to utilize the document camera and display the text in a book (Death by Elmo— not the red furry one).

As with any technology, strategy, methodology, or practice; teachers must start with the questions:

1. “What is it that I want my students to know and be able to do?”
   
2. “How can I make that concept relevant to their world in order to engage them in the conversations?”
   
3. “What obstacles, misconceptions, distractions, disabilities, etc. will prevent them from doing that?”

That should drive how that material is presented, not the tool or method.

We live in an exciting world of possibilities for our students.  I have a fifth grader that craves connectedness (iPod, Xbox360, online games, Club Penguin, video creation, texting…)  I hope his teachers will use that to their advantage rather than fight it to main tain classroom management and a status quo that makes th e teacher comfortable and the students miserable.