Be of Use

The following video was Tweeted by Jessica Johnson ( @ PrincipalJ , http://principalj.blogspot.com/ )   the other night. It had quite an impact on me. It's two minutes...take a look. "...and remember, we'll be watching" Only a vendor could get away with making a video like this. Not ASCD, ISTE, AWSA...because this video has the potential to scare the living daylights out of some teachers. I agree with everything said in it. It's what I want for every kid, especially our two boys. But maybe this is a sign I'm not as tough as I think I am. If I were considering this for an all-staff meeting or a training session I'd sit down at night, have a beer and think REALLY hard about whether or not to show this. My first reaction was that this would have been perfect to kick-off iPad training in my former district. But it might have completely shut some folks down. A friend of mine told me her principal said to the staff that "you can't leave your ...

As I wrote last night, I'm all wound up about releasing of first Flipped PD  release on Tuesday. Tonight I was reading the Chief Learning Officer magazine and many of the articles focus on informal learning. The latest article I read - Unlock the Next Wave of Productivity - really drives home the importance of new shifts in what training should look like. Only by enabling informal learning will organizations meet demands for greater flexibility and more learner-driven content. While that article said what I wanted to hear (yes, you're on the right track), it also reminded me of meeting the needs of all learners. Our professionals come from different generations, have different learning styles and come with different levels of technology skills. How do we move forward and still respect the more traditional thinking folks? Hiring substitutes for teachers to go to training is an expensive non-scaleable solution, but you take advantage of it when you have it as an option....

Back in spring, I wondered via blog post how professional development might look different someday soon. After reading much about Social Learning, Personal Learning Networks and Informal learning, I knew there were ideas out there I was doing a bad job of connecting with. Plus I had come to a tipping point with professional development offerings. I was done with trying to make the 60 to 90 minutes between the end of school and picking your kids up from daycare, work. I threw it out to my fellow teaches to see what they thought. They said, what I thought they would based on seven years of experience with training teachers - after school isn't a very popular option for learning. Personally I believe your average teacher isn't going to be able to effectively jump right into Twitter and being building a strong Personal Learning Network after having only friend-to-friend interactions on social networking sites. I feel a bridge is needed to get to that place of independent, sel...

When decision times come around I like to say - If you ask people their opinion, then do what you want to do they'll be mad. If you do what you want and don't ask people their opinion they'll be mad too. Such is life when you're trying to get a read on where people in your organization are at in terms of prospective initiatives. In my last district, leadership decided on 1:1, then had a teacher committee to help steer the direction of the project. I joked with my now former colleagues "they could pick any device they want, so long as it was an iPad." That group met a couple of times and helped make decisions...kind of. I'm not sure the people who were a part of that group felt like they were empowered to make decisions. Personally I don't think they ever in the position to make their own major decisions. I don't think that's a bad thing - leadership had a good vision. I'm trying to figure out in reality what's the best way to get people...