Her principal told librarian/technologist Laura Fleming "I don't care how you do it, but build a system for training Web 2.0 skills to the faculty". The rest is history. Laura created a library of instruction and practice tools, and has now shared them with the world. She purposefully holds the actual instruction videos to under [...]
Last year I told educators around the country that Design 39 Campus would be a destination not to be missed, and I was right. While small private schools can more easily claim the mantle of 21st century progressivism, a large public school, in the state with some of the lowest per-student funding in the country [...]
I love working with students! Yes, most of my work these days is with adult educators, but I am in my personal teaching wheelhouse with high school students. So I was truly honored to be included on the list of visiting scholars in the inaugural year of the Tad Bird Honors College at All Saints' [...]
"Perfect is the enemy of good and good is the enemy of great." I think this is what I would post in my classroom if I had one. Maybe I would add to it: "Great is the enemy of that one step beyond into a void for which we don't yet have a name." For how [...]
Are "no excuses" the new "grit"? Last year in this space we shared a deep dive into the evolving meanings and educational efficacy of "grit" as popularized in the studies and writings of Angela Duckworth and others. Yesterday I bumped into similarly disorienting experiences with the term "no excuses". I visited ground zero of the growing [...]
How might teachers and students learn and engage in the revolution supporting global gender equality? How about this first step: what if classes around the country watched this short video of Emma (Hermione Granger) Watson addressing the UN; followed with a discussion; and gave the boys in the class (with enthusiastic support from the girls) an [...]
Honored that Jossey-Bass Education featured #EdJourney as their K-12 book of the week! I have been moderating some Twitter ed-chats, and have a few more lined up for the fall. It is a great way to get our thinking focused on the keys to school innovation; if you know a Twitter chat moderator who might [...]
A major pitfall I find amongst schools that want to shift their learning practices is a mis-alignment of resources to a new organizational vision. Where schools get this right, innovative change is systemic and sustainable; where they fail, change is isolated, episodic, and often ephemeral. Sonoma Country Day School is a 35-year old K-8 independent school [...]
If your school is not accessing the FREE products and services of CK-12 Foundation, you are throwing away precious dollars and leaving leading-edge learning tools on the shelf. I gave a brief overview of CK-12 in #EdJourney after an interview with founder Neeru Khosla. Here is a quick video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbN-fPQnBeQ In addition to fully [...]
What is the difference between a "great" school and a "leading" school? Which would you like to be? Where would you choose to send your own child? How might a school be both? I spent several hours with Kim Diorio, second year principal at Palo Alto High School yesterday. Paly High is as close to being a private school [...]