Every time I think I have abstracted up to the highest level, I find I have not; one would think I would learn. So here is my new highest-level understanding of the critical link between the future of education and how we get there: The model of proscriptive education is busted. The world is changing [...]
The new school year is not far away. Teachers are thinking about their first day. Innovative teachers are thinking "How can I start of this year differently? How can I truly start to shift the learning experience? How will my class this year be more focused on the critical skills we need our students to [...]
Let’s be clear: the flipped classroom is a great teaching tool that takes advantage of emerging technologies. Flipping education should be our real goal, and it has less to do with technology than with mindset. This new word “flipped” in our common education lexicon is both useful and appropriate, but what does it really mean? [...]
Through the miracles of technology and the great work of The Martin Institute, we were all able to share in both the content and video of some of their wildly successful Summer Conference over the last two days. As I watched the video of the panel of four outstanding educators, John Hunter, Sandy Dawes, Bo [...]
Yesterday, through the miracle of technology, I was able to share in some of the joy and wonder of 500 educators watching John Hunter and his World Peace Game from the Martin Institute summer conference in Memphis. Much of the rapid and full Twitter stream as John gave the keynote had to do with the [...]
I am honored and proud to announce that The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence in Memphis has agreed to act as partner and major sponsor for a unique research project that I have created for the fall of 2012. I will be writing about this in more detail in the weeks ahead, but the project [...]
Yesterday Melissa Smith, a Tech Coach for K-8 in Memphis, TN, asked if I would comment on the use of blended learning in the K-8 environment. Sure! I have the exact same feeling about blended learning as I do with unblended learning: good learning takes place when an inspired teacher helps a student to discover [...]
I have been tracking book and blog authors who write about organizational innovation with the goal of helping translate their knowledge into language that resonates with educators. I strongly recommend reading an interview with Rowan Gibson, author of Innovation to the Core, offered in a three part series by Braden Kelley on the Innovation Excellence [...]
Late last week I was able to join a Twitter conversation with three great educators, Bo Adams, Laura Deisley, and Jill Gough about the nature and role of failure in schools. We all expressed our discomfort with how schools define, describe, and deal with failure, what an aberration it is from how success and failure [...]
For most of us, the downside of not asking the right questions or not organizing information in the right way is that we do poorly on a test, lose money in a business deal, have to re-work a design drawing, or take another shot at drafting that proposal. For young men and women in uniform [...]