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From Vicki Davis and Edutopia
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Presentation OER from BC Open Ed
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Perspectives on textbooks in higher ed. Wondering if any secondary schools are thinking about this.
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Thanks @TeachThought @patrickmlarkin @bradmcurrie for being top engaged community members this week 🙂 (insight by https://t.co/2PujPhnEWp)
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Some great tips in here! District Support Strategies for a #PBL Launch | Edutopia https://t.co/a60PVOHVBM #edchat
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From Impact Design Hub
Author: Patrick Larkin
I have been in school leadership for over 25 years. I feel blessed to be an educator. I have had the good fortune of working as an English teacher, an Assistant Principal, a Principal, and an Assistant Superintendent in three districts in MA. I am also proud to be an IDEAS Instructor working with educators across the state and region who are part of schools and communities that promote anti-bias, anti-racist education.
Keeping Perspective During the College Application Process – Thanks to Frank Bruni!
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| Cover photo of Frank Bruni’s Book |
It is an exciting and anxious time in my family with my oldest child entering the homestretch of his high school career. My son Tim is going through all of the things that so many of the students have gone through in the schools where I have worked as an administrator, but it is still a very foreign experience for me as I go through this for the first time as a parent.
My son has worked hard and done well academically and socially during his four years of high school. However, I still have a lot of the questions that many parents have as their children start the college application process. I sometimes wonder about the importance of Tim getting into a “prestigious university.” Fortunately, I was tipped off by someone about Fran Bruni’s great book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. The book does a wonderful job of putting into perspective the fact that the success of our children in college depends much more on the skills and work ethic that a student has than the name of the college that they ultimately attend. Or as Bruni so eloquently puts it in the early pages of his book:
“Life is defined by little snags and big setbacks; success is determined by the ability to distinguish between the two and rebound from either. And there’s no single juncture, no one crossroads, on which everything hinges.”
Let me share a few more of my favorite selections from the book that helped me gain some perspective on the college search/application process for me.
“…if you’re a parent who’s pushing your kids relentlessly and narrowly toward one of the most prized schools in the country and you think that you’re doing them a favor, you’re not. You’re in all probability setting them up for heartbreak…”
“You’re going to get into a college that’s more than able to provide a superb education to anyone who insists on one and who takes firm charge of his or her time there.”
The book also explains the process used to develop the U.S. News and World Report’s annual college rankings issue and how limited its usefulness is for college applicants and their families. Just check out the following statement from Bob Morse, the person in charge of the U.S. News rankings.
“It’s not where you went to school. It’s how hard you work.”
Anyway, I could go on and post another dozen excerpts from Bruni’s work that I feel are spot on in regards to the college selection process and it’s long term implications for our students, but instead I encourage you to read the book and come up with your own insights. The book is full of examples of successful groups of people who did not attend “prestigious universities.” If you are a parent of someone who is in the middle of this process or about to go through it, then I am confident you will have trouble putting this book down.
In conclusion, I want to leave you with a letter that was shared in the book. The letter was written by two parents and given to their son on the eve of his finding out whether or not he was accepted to his top three colleges (all Ivy League schools).
Dear Matt,On the night before you receive your first college response, we wanted to let you know that we could not be any prouder of you than we are today. Whether or not you get accepted does not determine how proud we are of everything you have accomplished and the wonderful person you have become. That will not change based on what admissions officers decide about your future. We will celebrate with joy wherever you get accepted—and the happier you are with those responses, the happier we will be. But your worth as a person, a student and our son is not diminished or influenced in the least by what these colleges have decided.
If it does not go your way, you’ll take a different route to get where you want. There is not a single college in this country that would not be lucky to have you, and you are capable of succeeding at any of them.
We love you as deep as the ocean, as high as the sky, all the way around the world and back again—and to
wherever you are headed.Mom and Dad
I can truly say that I am proud of what my son has accomplished to date and I have enjoyed watching him mature during his high school years. I am confident that he will be successful in whatever he chooses to do and I know that college application/acceptance process will not change my feelings on this.
An Example of Integrating Technology the Right Way
I am frequently involved in conversations with educators surrounding the integration of technology resources in their schools. Many of these discussions center around one-to-one initiatives where schools are looking to put a web-enabled device in the hands of every student. While reviewing the details necessary to do this work well, I often hear stories of schools and districts who rush too quickly to the acquisition of the devices without having meaningful discourse within their school communities as to what they are looking to accomplish and how the devices will help them in attain these outcomes.
A short time ago, I was fortunate attend a local one-to-one summit at Nipmuc Regional High School in Upton, Mass. It’s a school that has done an exemplary job charting its course to becoming a one-to-one school. Principal John Clements and his team shared some very concrete steps that are useful for any school looking to add more technological resources to support teaching and learning. While I encourage you to spend some time looking at nipmuctechintegration.weebly.com, the website that Principal Clements and his team created, I would like to highlight three key steps:
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Start with collaboration – The members of a school community are likely to have a range of opinions and experiences related to technology integration. When developing a shared vision for one-to-one learning in your school, your team can benefit from the perspectives, creative solutions, and best practices of other districts.
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Let your beliefs drive teaching and learning – Research on technology integration shows that one-to-one implementation is most effective when “a vision has been developed in collaboration with all stakeholders.” (Check out the planning document used at Nipmuc to help staff and students develop the vision.)
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Market your vision – Marketing the vision for one-to-one learning is a critical component of establishing community support, funding, and student teacher buy-in. (Check out the concrete examples here of how Nipmuc markets its vision.)
Following the overview of the steps needed to get everyone invested in this one-to-one program, the Nipmuc team went on to review five concrete ways to help ensure integration success:
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Model technology integration best practices – Don’t wait until the devices are in your teachers and students hands before modeling technology integration best practices.
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Technology SMART goals – One of the most impactful ways to support your teachers is to help them assess best practices. (The administration created optional SMART goals that staff members could use in the teacher evaluation process. This was a great idea since Massachusetts educators have to develop these goals anyway. More than 70 percent of the staff members at the school adopted the SMART goals.)
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Develop a common model of technology integration – At Nipmuc they have adopted the SAMR model to allow teachers to have a shared definition of impactful technology integration.
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Professional Development – Professional development needs to be differentiated, ongoing, and modeled by school leaders.
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Teacher Collaboration – Promote teacher leadership and teacher-to-teacher collaboration to model and share best practices of technology integration.
Whether you are in the early phases of integrating technology throughout your school or well into the process, the steps outlined by the administrators at Nipmuc Regional High School are worthy of review.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (December 13, 2015)
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Why Google Is Winning the Race for American Schools https://t.co/NdYq3vh1jF #GoogleEDU https://t.co/ZMuD0rdrtk
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Good discussion of the past and future of MOOC’s
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We used this Twitter Quizlet to get ready for #NipmucChat. https://t.co/pmL89fV0J9 https://t.co/zuRe6lkiI3
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One of the interesting effects of going 1:1 was the huge drop in the number copies made during the year. #NipmucChat https://t.co/2nC1T7n2YA
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Teaching Bias: The IAT Test https://t.co/NWp9d9bgoY via @lpahomov
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We plan to release accountability data for schls & dists today: https://t.co/gk9tjU2jzf Here’s a primer: https://t.co/OWkH4Lttik #maedu
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Good post from Edutopia on dealing with holidays in a public school setting
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From Daniel Willingham – “A new working paper from Transforming Education (full disclosure: I’m on their advisory board) does a great job of highlighting the important findings regarding non-cognitive skills, a not-very-precise term originating in economics that refers mostly to self-control and social competence.”
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Research and case studies that measure “soft skills” like self-control, openness to learning and teamwork show that mastery over these abilities can result in significant impacts in students’ lives.
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From Ross Cooper on Edutopia about organizing resources for teachers in one easy-to-use hub.
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Good piece from Carl Hooker
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From Kevin Jarrett – Good resources for Maker Spaces/Maker Ed
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Technology trends 2015 from Audrey Watters
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Good overview of OER Resources from Edutopia
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Great ideas for moving away from textbooks and finding more relevant materials online.
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From the Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities
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Great ideas from Shaelynn Farnsowrth h/t to Beth Holland for bookmarking the site.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (December 6, 2015)
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The Key to Crushing ISIS https://t.co/w6BN6XNZNe
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These will be the most in-demand jobs in 2016: https://t.co/qMh5nelFEW https://t.co/3GGujyJ7Vi
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My new post @DiscoveryEd! Helping Students Understand ISIS and the Syrian Civil War : Resources & Activity #sschat https://t.co/DzX7MeDMUz
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From Elena Aguilar – “here are many things that we can do — as team leaders or members of teams — to turn our team towards healthy communication.”
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Thanks for summarizing this presentation put on by #mursd! Great plan that many of us can model. https://t.co/HZywlTEeHA
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What Is Our Culture? (new post): https://t.co/F155ymIBP2 What is your culture? Cc: @mcleod @patrickmlarkin @shareski @courosa #edchat
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Google Doc of Papert resources started by Will Riachardson
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From Audrey Watters
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From Keys to Literacy – “Research shows that taking notes by hand is more effective for remembering conceptual information over the long term than taking notes on a computer or laptop.”
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A MUST READ/WATCH! My Experience Green Screening via @TimmyS54 #bpschat #edtech #stuvoice https://t.co/aF3H3oUzfv https://t.co/Kq9duff4xO
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Reflections from the Open Ed. Conference
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RTIi effectiveness differs due to implementation practices. Let’s talk implementation supports!! https://t.co/1C3wm5uPcW
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via Edushyster – Reader: Hillary Clinton recently said something that made a lot of adult interests who put kids first really mad. In brief (because what she said was actually very brief), HRC said that most charter schools *don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or if they do they don’t keep them.* Which resulted in a flurry of sternly-worded rejoinders, like this one, this one and this one, none of which responded to HRC’s actual very brief words. Which gave me a wacky idea. What if we looked at some actual data?
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From Terry Heick – 30 Innovative Ways To Use Google In Education To build search literacy in 21st century learners, consider having students:
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But, as Hanna Rosin’s recent Atlantic cover story on the high rate of suicide among high-school students in Palo Alto, California, captures, that’s not how things work. To the contrary, kids living in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country are stressed and miserable.
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From BBC News
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I remain hopeful that RTI’s strategies can improve student outcomes. However, the approaches to this concept that are likely to work are ones that are specific about all key aspects of the design and help teachers implement approaches that are markedly better than whatever they were using before.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (November 29, 2015)
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From Larry Ferlazzo – Thanksgiving Resources – In my massive The Best Sites To Learn & Teach About Thanksgiving, you’ll find quite a few resources included that offer different perspectives from the dominant cultural view of the holiday.
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From Richard Byrne – “Trying to get all of your students to the same set of websites at the same time can be a frustrating experience for you and for them. Just a mis-typed character or two can create a frustrating experience for everyone in the room. One way to avoid this situation is to post all of your links on one course webpage or in a blog post. Another solution is to use a link bundling service that will group all of your links together into one package. Then instead of sending out a bunch of individual links you can just send one link that will open all of the bundled links for your students. Here are three services that you can use for just that purpose.”
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I guess education isn’t the only industry struggling to improve PD.
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From eLearn Magazine: The following considerations should help avoid some of the pitfalls of introducing social media into a course.
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Important mindset for all of us.
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From Larry Ferlazzo
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If I stop for a moment, I always find a gift from God, something to treasure… even on a train. “The Purest Smile” https://t.co/u3oS5jJHrp
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“7 Surprising Strategies that Elevate Leaders” Worth reading. https://t.co/GCOUBUdnoQ
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From Penn State – BBookX is a new technology that uses a human-assisted computing approach to enable creation of open source textbooks.
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#BostonGlobe sez I’ve reached 5 max monthly 0 charge articles. I’ll read @BostonHeraldHS @BosHeraldSports for free. https://t.co/bxTy9o7QNH
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Not sure how to set parental controls on iPhone? Learn how: https://t.co/2zSGzZb2jW https://t.co/sQDjBBw4Ty
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Good slide from Tim Holt showing the reality of the digital world and businesses
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From Tom Vander Ark – ” New tools and new schools are being developed at a dizzying pace. Here’s a few things we’ve seen in the last 60 days. And, to borrow a phrase from my friends at 4.0 Schools, I’ve tried to capture their “Future of School Hypothesis.”
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Please check out our own Board Member and Cambridge City Councilor Nadeem Mazen’s powerful words on Islam and the… https://t.co/dd91sgoOvy
BHS Devil’s Advocate Fall 2015 – BPS Blog Update (Volume 4)
The first edition of the BHS Devil’s Advocate for this year just came out and I wanted to share a site that allows you to embed something in PDF form on your blog or website with ease. The site is Scribd and it is free to join. The thing I like about it is that the formatting is better than what you would get from embed code Google Drive.
Anyway, here are the latest posts from the Burlington Blog:
Day 44 – Day 44 – Rachad Uses Book Creator to Show us How to Use the New Comic Feature – MSMS Help Desk
Day 47 – Day 47 – #GoOpen with Open Educational Resources – Dennis Villano Director of Technology Integration
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (November 22, 2015)
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From Tom Vander Ark – Sophisticated organizations have long used blended learning strategies to accelerate professional growth and provide real-time learning. The postsecondary landscape is being transformed by blended, personalized and competency-based learning opportunities. The requirement for lifelong learning in most careers is being translated into stackable credentials and professional portfolios.
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A growing body of evidence points to the importance of teaching children how to manage their emotions and behaviors. Known as social and emotional learning (SEL), the development of these noncognitive skills, like self-motivation and grit, is linked to better academic performance, higher college retention rates and increased employment and wages. These abilities lead to improved health and well-being as well, including a lower risk of substance abuse, obesity and criminal activity.
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A look inside the life of teenagers in today’s digital world.
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A firsthand account of this humanitarian crisis.
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Opening presentation at #bv1to1 via @JohnKClements https://t.co/3zhsWZ9ZlM #mursd
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EdTech Is Maturing https://t.co/DEJSYGH7vc #edtechchat #ettipad #edtech https://t.co/i0P5tZxQAb
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Hey #ettipad check out this playlist of Did You Know videos – it contains some of the stuff I demoed yesterday! https://t.co/aGsTQVCHmD
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Dramatically Improve your Blog Quality – https://t.co/KMYivARSU5
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The Bartle Test: a great way to get to know how your Ss think and what motivates them via @dkiang #ettipad https://t.co/Bmz6hBaFCY
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Looking forward to iLeadership session w/ @patrickmlarkin at #ETTiPad Summit! https://t.co/adaP9O649F #TLPortfolio https://t.co/Jdn9aBTsMh
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From Peter Greene on the NCTQ Report on Teacher Evaluation – “Let me say that again– this group that has declared itself the arbiter of teacher quality for the country has no career teachers in positions of authority. None.”
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The debate about what constitutes good math instruction continues in this article in The Atlantic – “The underlying assumption here is that if a student understands something, he or she can explain it—and that deficient explanation signals deficient understanding. But this raises yet another question: What constitutes a satisfactory explanation?”
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Great example of a school that embraces PBL
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Interesting look at how Maker Ed can connect to History education
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From Alexandra Samuel – My recent piece for The Atlantic, Parents: Reject Technology Shame, tackles the question of how to raise kids in a digital world. Data from more than 10,000 North American parents shows that they are deeply divided on this question, and that there are three distinct approaches to navigating technology and managing screen time.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (November 15, 2015)
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Interesting perspective on Workplace Learning.
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Great overview of setting up WordPress Blogs in a school community
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From Edutopia – “Project-based learning (PBL) provides a powerful opportunity for students to reflect on who they want to be and what decisions they want to make. One student says, “[PBL] helps me try to ask questions and find out what everything means. The self-advocacy is a really important part, getting information for yourself.” Teachers who have implemented project-based approaches report that students are empowered when they make personal conclusions about the value of their learning and reflect on the complexity of decision-making.”
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From Larry Ferlazzo – “ISIS has claimed responsibility for the terrible attacks in Paris. Here are some resources teachers might find helpful in discussing it with students. I will be adding to it as new materials become available.”
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From Darcy Moore – This is the first in a planned series of posts that each focus on a tool that will be useful to both students and teachers in a BYOD context. The plan is that each posts explores an application or accessory that will really be useful and easy to use. This first one looks at an Optical Character Reader (OCR). ABBY Textgrabber is a useful app when you need to extract text from printed sources easily by using the device’s camera to digitise and share quickly. I have it on my iPhone 6 and iPad. It is not free but certainly is worth …
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From TED-Ed
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Great idea to promote literacy
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Classroom and Teacher Evaluation https://t.co/puqFcPI4jQ via @elaclassroom
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#today Sunrise from Newcastle, NH. @todayshow @ Great Island Common https://t.co/miZoLE0wtu
Terrorism Has No Religion
Local events in last few weeks brought some negative attention to our community as OUR community’s mosque was vandalized. As I read commentaries on local news sites I was sickened by the overwhelming number of negative comments towards Muslims and the Muslim religion. I can only imagine that this weekend’s attacks in Paris, which ISIS has claimed responsibility for, will lead to more ignorant comments and insensitivity towards Muslims.
One of the resources that I was made aware of this week, was the TED Talk below by Chimamanda Adichie. The following comments at the end of the talk capture the context of her message.
“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.“
The ignorance that some will show based on the attacks on Paris will seek to malign all Muslims. I continue to have faith that the majority of people will ignore this “single story” depiction of Muslims that those who look to promote hate and fear will preach.
As was stated by a Tweet from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, “Terrorism has no religion.”
My Un-Learning Journey 