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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