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 [...]
If you think social media is a gimmick for kids to waste time, here is my (heavily biased) argument otherwise. My daughter wrote the following blog for USA Volleyball yesterday. This is Twitter at its best. And the match starts in 15 minutes...GO USA/Team Toy! Aug. 10: Cassidy Lichtman (@CassidyLichtman), U.S. Women's National Volleyball Team [...]
Katrina Schwartz (@kschwart) on Mindshift reports on the annual Software and Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 2013 Vision K-20 survey of use of technology in education. I always look for the dissonance as the place to start solving problems, so this bit shouted out to me: Almost half of all secondary schools allow students to bring their own devices now and [...]
The annual NMC Horizon Report for K12 schools, a comprehensive forecast of what technologies will most impact K12 education in the next 1-5 years. What I enjoyed seeing this year is that we are recognizing that technology will become less a driver of education than a facilitator of learning. I also think that the Horizon [...]
As I am writing chapters to my book and an article for Independent School Magazine, I find threads from both inside and outside of education weaving together into a tapestry of future vision that is both exciting and inevitable. I came across two more such threads today, or more accurately confirmation of threads from two [...]
The last two days I have been re-writing chapters for my book on organizational innovation in schools. We KNOW that connectivity is an absolute key to innovation; it has been since the Renaissance, in coffee shops, billard halls, or online. We also know that generally younger information age knowledge workers are more comfortable, in fact seek [...]
According to one large vendor in the room, "Poway is in the leading 1% of districts nationwide who are looking at this." According to several others, "90% of the bits and pieces are there; no one has put it all together." According to almost all the vendors, "We can't make this kind of investment with [...]
I came up with a set of professional goals before I graduated college, and they have never left me: work with smart people to tackle difficult problems, create elegant solutions, for something of value. This week has been another link in that chain! All this week I have been able to sit in with a dynamic team [...]
This is the future. No platform exists. Blank slate. Smart people. Tough task. Big, worthwhile goals. “Let’s build it”. I love it! Yesterday I got to spend three hours with a tremendous team at Poway (Ca) Unified School District imagining the future of differentiated and adaptive learning systems. Poway is a 35,000-student district, and visionary [...]
As many of you know, I formally resigned my position at Francis Parker School this spring after almost a decade and a half in a variety of leadership positions. I hope to continue my association with Parker, which my great aunt and uncle founded 100 years ago, in informal ways. For now, and following on [...]