Join Me Tonight for A Wild and Wacky Evening of Fun on Teachers Teaching Teachers!

I am among an exciting cast of innovators that will be joining tonight's Teachers Teaching Teachers. I hope you'll join me by listening in and participating in the chat room at http://edtechtalk.com/live-ttt at 9:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM Pacific - World Times: http://goo.gl/u3le0

In addition to me, Lisa Nielsen, we'll be hanging out with hosts Chris Sloan, Monika hardy, and Paul Allison. Other featured guests include: Alexander Pappas, Katherine von Jan, Phill Pappas.

During the show, you'll probably hear words like: innovative, alternative, academic deviance, uncollege, unschooling, courage, wacky ideas, grit, life, and getting through school with ADHD. 

I'm particularly psyched to hear from Katherine von Jan the lady behind RadMatter, the innovation design studio singularly focused on reinventing college for the 21st century.  

Steve Jobs Tells Us Why Dropping Out Was a Key to Finding His Passion

Death is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. -Steve Jobs

I often write about my frustration around data-not passion-driven learning, the narrowing of the curriculum and the new College for all mandate in American schools today as part of the Common Core Standards.  We are not widgets, we are people and we shouldn't all be pushed down the same one-size-fits all path.  


In this video, Steve Jobs reminds us, "The only way to do great work is to love what you do."  "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life... Don't be trapped by dogma which is living out the life of other people's thinking."  Ed reformers must listen to Job's message and stop forcing our children down a path and start letting them make their own choices for what might be best for them.  

Visionary Steve Jobs shares these ideas in the commencement speech below.  

Don't be sad because it's over. Smile because it happened. -- Dr. Seuss

Rethinking Learning with A Child-Centered Lesson Plan

Editor’s note:  After reading How Andgragogy Might Look in the Classroom on the Mystified Mom blog, I asked if she could pull out the parts regarding lesson plans so that people could get a better idea of what a learner-centered lesson plan would look like. 


Guest Post by Mystified Mom

People often claim that learner-centered methods are not practical for mass delivery systems due to the fact that standards have to be met. As a veteran educator, I have not found this to be true. To follow are the eight parts of a lesson plan and my comments about what could be added to gear them toward how students learn best. 


Header
The header typically include the teachers name, grade level, topic, and time allotment. This is all standard information. The one piece of information that can be rethought is the time allotment. Unless things have changed, the typical time allotment for a lesson is 30 minutes to an hour. Every now and then, I will see lessons that take longer or will span the course of a few days. Students and teachers should allot more time to do lessons. 

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Top Ten Ed Tech Issues This School Year

I was recently asked what I saw as the top ed tech issues this year.  Here are the first things that came to mind. 

1) Passion (Not Just Data) Driven Learning
2) Bring your own tech
3) Reducing use of filters and empowering students to do this work by engaging responsibly online
4) Reducing fear of teacher /student relationships i.e. Social media doesn't cause inappropriate behavior, it catches it.
5) Authentic ePortfolios for teachers and students
6) Developing a responsible and impressive digital footprint
7) Supporting students in developing a responsible and impressive digital footprint
8) Developing your personal learning network
9) Empowering students to develop their personal learning network
10) Authentic publishing for teachers and students

These also happen to be some of my most favorite things to write about here on The Innovative Educator blog. I look forward to sharing and growing ideas with all of you :) I also wonder what's missing?  Are there other things you'd like to see addressed?

Student Inspires Educators to Think Outside the Ban

I had the pleasure of meeting Travis Allen at this year’s International Society of Technology Educator’s conference.  Travis explained that as a high school student he felt rather bound and trapped by the prison of school that enforced outdated restrictions that did not allow him the freedom to learn. It began with his parents getting him an iPhone for Christmas. He immediately found he enjoyed the endless list of applications on it and shortly after, began looking into educational apps to help in school. It wasn’t long before he realized the amazing capabilities this device would have in education.  He was so inspired by the unlocked potential of these devices that he made the following video, called the iSchool Initiative.



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Back to School Dos and Don’ts

In his blog, SpeEdChange, Ira Socol provides smart advice about back to school dos and don’ts and I provide my thoughts on each below.


Dos

1. Offer multiple media versions of information to students so they can read it, hear it, understand it in their native language, etc.  


• You may want to consider partnering with students and parents to do this.


2. Offer a wide range of places and ways for students to be comfortable because there is no reason to make kids feel trapped or uncomfortable


• Craigslist and social media are great places to secure donations.  When I had my library we had a comfy couch, bean bags, pillows, animal chairs and more that were all donated.


3. Let them eat and drink because people should be able to do that if they’re hungry or thirsty.  


• When I was a librarian I jumped through hoops and fought unnecessary policies to allow food/drink in the library.  We learned to clean up after ourselves.

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The State of Digital Education

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

See Me Live Discussing How to Connect School Life to Real Life

I had the pleasure of speaking to thousands of educators from around the world about the importance of connecting school life to real life at the 140 Character Education Conference.  You can see my talk below followed by the presentation I used during my talk.  I hope you will consider sharing my talk and presentation with others.  Both are available for download for free.



My presentation.

Connecting School Life to Real Life on Prezi

Here are the other talks from the conference.
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Improve Student Success by Setting Them Free From Outdated Time and Space Constructs

We're well past the time of the industrial model yet everyone is still set in the same old way of doing things at work and school even though it clearly makes no sense at all. Let's start with school. While many openly admit that they know school is not what is best for their children, parents often need to send their children anyhow because of the free babysitting services it provides.  Therefore, for primary students the early start and after school become a necessary evil.  However, once children become more independent in their teen years their is no reason to stick to this outdated construct. In fact, there is plenty of evidence indicating that due to their circadian rhythms teens perform poorly at the very hours most school occurs.  Why not implement some simple options like having independent study each day that the child can engage in first thing or at the end of the day, and even have the option to do it inside or outside of school?  Why not give teachers the same flexible scheduling option as well? Many know that the school bus schedule has a lot to do with it, but 1) not all kids take the school bus 2) resourceful parents, teens, and educators can help figure transportation options out.

As long as we're talking about schedules, we should also reconsider whether responsible teens need to be physically tied to a building all day.  Let's face it.  Lessons can be delivered easily via YouTube or Podcasts and support for students can be provided through personal learning networks or Google Hangouts if when/necessary.  Everyone going at the same pace through the same content in the same place is an unnecessary throwback to the industrial age.  If you're thinking not all kids have equity and access, stop.  Schools need to help figure this out.  I was doing this more than a decade ago in a low income school in Central Harlem. We need to ensure every kid who needs it has a place to go to access the internet.  Connect with business, community centers, mentors, parks.  If you are completely unresourceful, there's always school if the students and adults can't figure it out...but I bet given the choice, they would.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post.  Why Working 9 - 5 Ain't the Way to Make a Livin.  

The Pencil Integration Blog - A Historical Perspective

If only ever child had access

Innovative educators who've struggled with integrating technology into a school system stuck in the past will get some comic relief and inspiration from John T. Spencer's blog, "Adventures in Pencil Integration." Written as an allegory for contemporary educational technology issues, Adventures in Pencil Integration tells the fictional story of Tom Johnson, who is fighting to integrate technology into his classroom. He fights small battles regarding whether students should be able to bring their own pencils from home, whether pen pal letters will "ruin relationships," whether pencils are the cause of "pencil bullying" and why short-hand text will not ruin the language. The larger, external conflict initially feels like it's about getting pencils into the hands of students. But it's more than that. It's fighting against a new, emerging factory system of education while still encouraging the use of these new tools in a more human way.

The idea here is that technology does not exist in a cultural or social vacuum. There are layers of political and social events, personality conflicts and institutional procedures that make meaningful "pencil integration" a difficult endeavor.
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