Yesterday's Twitter #satchatwc (which got moved to #satchat due to spamming) was full of innovative ways to amplify the unique time we may each year for Back to School Night. Rather than seven minute silos for each teacher to hand out the syllabus and review expectations, or "get to know you" (which is absurd with [...]
I rarely re-post, but it almost exactly a year ago since I wrote this post, and the lessons of Merchant, Zuboff, Gorbis, Rinne, and others are increasingly vital to educators: Taking advantage of sitting at the Toyota dealership in beautiful Hays, Kansas as they replace something called in inverter cooling pump. $600. Catching up on blog [...]
Like many of you I follow Tom Friedman, one of the clearest, most honest voices of our generation. The great thing about Friedman is that he always seems to articulate a future that is founded in our present and past. I remember that after The World is Flat came out in 2005, I thought "I [...]
Yesterday I posed a question: who is the customer of our schools? Many of us believe the future of schools, both public and private, will depend on increasing the value proposition of a school; lacking this, “school” as we know it may be an endangered species. Here is the logic; if the logic is not [...]
Based on a Twitter discussion yesterday, here is a question that needs some pondering...I don't believe the answer is either easy or evident. Who is the school's customer? I ask this within the critical context of value, which by definition is viewed through the eyes of the customer. Several people responded that the customer is [...]
This morning I was asked by Mari Brown to contribute thoughts (along with Peter Gow and Michael Ebeling) to an upcoming article in NBOA Net Assets Magazine on the growing role of social media in educational professional development. Here are a few excerpts of my responses: We have seen an explosion of authentic network participation [...]
Last September I reported on my visit to the second-year Design Lab school in inner city Cleveland. (I urge you to review that post.) Principal Eric Juli and Design Lab are front and center in the introduction to the book I am writing about my trip last fall because of the long odds and [...]
Old school: "Don't ever ask a question of the audience unless you are sure of the answer." New school: "Learn to be flexible; deal with ambiguity and the unknown." I took these yesterday at a meeting for prospective parents of the new Design 39 Campus K-8 in Poway Unified, opening in 2014. (I [...]
You may already know this story; I did not and am always on the lookout for creative solutions to problems in education. Thanks to John Thorsen, Asst. Head at Asheville School for posting a query to some of his PLN about major issues facing education, I cyber-met Bill Bugg, head of Thetford Academy in Vermont. [...]
Is your organizational chart bound by the geometry of the piece of paper it is drawn on? Does your school have an org chart? Does it promote connectivity or preserve isolation? Do your employees have allegiance first to their own tribe or to the value-driven goals of the whole school? Are resources distributed within hard [...]