One of the things that I try to do is to twist it back onto the students. I will share a basic framework of where I would like to see the course go, but more importantly, I want to see what has motivated students to sign for my course. In the end, I want them to be able to tell me what they hope to learn and get from the class. This helps me in two major ways, one to see where their heads are and what they are passionate about. This helps me structure the course so they not only understand the basic framework and scaffolding which is essential for understanding but to also allow the students to guide their own learning.

Oftentimes this means that I have to learn or be taught by the students to help them reach the goal that they want. This is exciting, as it keeps my course fresh and new, not rote and stale.

Students often struggle with this concept of setting their own course. They have been conditioned to being told what to do and when. They become conditioned in the game of school, determining how much work will be necessary to get the good grade.

I want to teach learners, not students.

The screeching of the alarm announced the “official” end of summer. My wife started to rouse herself out of bed, so she could get to school for the first day of her school’s in-service.

This fall, there are going to be a number of disruptions. First, having moved to a new house, the beginning of school means that we will not only have to establish new routines and habits, but to do so in a foreign place. It will be a rough week

At school, as evidenced by the picture to the right, we are undergoing a major renovation of the space which was occupied by both our high school and administrative offices. Everyone will have to learn new routes, habits and routines. I know that for myself, even what would seem simple, the mailing of a package has become an adventure, as I had to figure which office had the supplies and where I needed to place the package so it would be picked up. The old routines and patterns will be shifting daily.

For the start of school, this is a wonderful opportunity to rethink everything. Take nothing for granted. This will permit us to look at different views. This investigation will be exciting and invigorating.

I am excited about the new year. There are many plans underway that I am excited to share with you over the course of the next few months. I hope you will take the time to keep your eyes open to new possibilities and ways.

In my research, I found that most of the ways we teach math (and other subjects) are poorly designed for how are brains actually work. Dyslexic or not, most of us have trouble learning math (or other subjects) not because we’re stupid or lazy but because we’re simply being taught in the wrong ways.

As a a parent, I can attest to this statement. My daughter does not learn algebra the way I process it. I want to see the problem, sketch, and then manipulate the symbols to construct the solution. She on the other hand, wants to talk through the problem verbally, without writing or sketching. This year, she finally had a teacher who recognized this and showed her ways to process the information using her strength. When factoring, She talks and used a diagram that works for her, for me, it is writing factor trees and arrows and boxes. In the end, both processes work for each of us.

At previous NECC conferences, renamed ISTE this year, I have enjoyed the conversation, but I have felt that it has suffered as it occurs oftentimes in the echo chamber. This year, I am going to do my best to seek out others who are teaching and learning new ways, to seek out new voices, to gain their perspective. I want to find a diversity of ideas and folks. I look forward to the opportunity to share with old friends, but cherish meeting new ones.

The show has allowed me to connect with a number of great teachers and administrators. For me, this has been some of the best professional development, as my relationships with the various guests have continued after each of the shows. Although I have enjoyed each of the 51 shows that I have been involved with, my personal favorites have been:

1. With Kelly Hines, Meredith Stewart, and Bill Ferriter as the keynotes of the North Carolina Area Independent Schools (NCAIS) Innovate Conference
2. With both Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson, authors of Disrupting Class
3. With Pat Bassett, President of NAIS
4. Disruptive Innovation and the Future of K12 with Scott McLeod
5. Open Course Design with Alec Couros
6. With Wendy Drexler on the Networked Student
7. With Andrew Katz and Ken Hiat on Roxbury Latin’s Social Media Plan
8. With Liz Davis on 1-1 Professional Development
9. With Brad Rathgeber on the Online Girls Academy
10. With David Bill reflecting on TEDxNYED
11. With Jonathan Martin on Building the 21st Century School

There have been conversations with many other great people, Jason Ramsden, Fred Bartels, Demetri Orlando, Sarah Hanawald, Peter Gow, Chris Fitzgerald Walsh amongst others.

In the fall, check back and see what we have in store for you in the upcoming year. Today was the first week without webcasting and I already miss it.

This upcoming year, a large number of the teachers that we have hired are younger teachers, at least from my perspective. Some of these teachers are significantly closer in age to the millennials that they will be teaching than to my generation. Many of them arrive on campus with their iPhones or other smart phones, having used the various Google tools in their previous posts, and many having taken online courses using Moodle or Blackboard. These faculty Facebook and text as their primary ways of communicating. Using email is their badge of being responsible.

However, just because these teachers use technology to connect and communicate with each other, doesn’t mean that they have developed the skills to use the technologies for instruction. Just because they can use Google to search, doesn’t mean that they can teach or guide a student to use Google to do the most effective searches that they can. Just because they can get their gossip from Perez Hilton, doesn’t mean that they know when it would be best to use blogging to reflect, and then communicate with the world. It is the jobs of technology directors, technology integrators, and curriculum specialists to guide and teach the new faculty how to best use these tools for instruction, to meet the goals and objectives that they have for their classes. Similarly to the way that we need to convince students to build a public electronic portfolio, we too need to convince our newer, younger teachers, to create experiences which will showcase their abilities and passions, to develop a teaching portfolio which shows how they are implementing 21st Century teaching into their classrooms.

I am trying to be thoughtful and develop the experiences and awareness of the tools that will enable these new teachers the ability to construct dynamic, fresh experiences for our students.  As Lucas Ames wrote,

Getting (teachers) to think about social media and technology from an academic or “life skills” perspective is something we must consciously teach and not assume they bring to class as digital natives.  (Teachers)  are neither totally apathetic nor uniformly excited about technology.  They are diverse in their outlook and capabilities.  This is no different from any other skill we try to teach in class.

(I have substituted teachers for students, but the thoughts are still the same.)

I found the book very informative. Less so for myself, who has transformed my professional practice by building  my own Personal Learning Network, but for those administrators and teacher/learners who have not yet  undertaken this shift. It give concrete steps on how to begin to build the network via RSS and other social networking tools.

There were two items which piqued my interest in the book. The first was returning to the conversation Jeff wrote about in August 2009 on the differences between Digital Literacy and Networked Literacy. I still struggle with my definition and then how to provide opportunities and then measure progress for networked literacy. Secondly, Jeff’s definition of the six stages of personal learning network adoption was a great definition of the journey that many feel while on the path building a personal learning network. I believe that I have successfully reach stage six, balance. I am not on Twitter 24/7, I make my visits to the networks less frequently and I am trying to focus on energy and attention not on developing my brand within the echo chamber, but rather to make a significant difference in the lives of student teachers who are local.

This volume is worth more than its price. While not currently paying for it, I will be buying one or two copies to lend to teachers and administrators who are not as digitally savvy and prefer to read printed material rather than print a PDF of of the screen or via a small mobile device. I also hope to run into Jeff at ISTE and make a personal contribution and perhaps buy him a beverage.

Don’t wait. Download this volume today!

While not to diminish my daughter’s accomplishments, I was equally touched by the story of one of her classmates, Sonia LaForest. Sonia is a 52 year old immigrant from Haiti. One of a large number of siblings, left her home at at the age of 12. She worked, got married, and then became a parent of six children, all who are either in college or on track to go. Three years, ago, she mustered the courage to begin attending high school herself. On Friday night, she received her diploma as well. As reported in the June 16th issue of the Chicago  Tribune,

LaForest registered and reported for her first day of class in September 2007. With the evening school based at Glenbrook South, LaForest walked the same hallways and took classes with many of the same educators who taught her children.

Teacher Scott Matthews watched LaForest’s enthusiasm set the tone for his math class. If students talked during a lesson, she asked them to quiet down. And if kids fooled around, she urged them to cut it out.

To end the evening, Sonia told everyone in the audience

“Everything you can have a chance to do for one time, you do it. You go for it.”

Sonia was a reminder that it is never too late to take a chance and learn something new. She will be my inspiration whenever I feel that I am too tired, busy, or stressed to think that I can fit one more thing into my brain. It will inspire me to push those I teach, both students and teachers, who feel that they are not able to learn one more new skill.

This was an inspiring evening and one which I was glad that I had a chance to experience.

Although I have a non-3G iPad, I have found it extremely useful when performing the function of Dad Taxi. Waiting for them to get to the car or while they are at an appointment, I am able to access the material that I have already downloaded, saved, or purchased. I almost wish my children were younger and I would have to cart both of them around so that I could take better advantage of this feature of the iPad, the same way that I began to incorporate my iPod into my professional learning practice when carting the kids to swimming, dance, grocery shopping, or to friend’s houses.

There are many iPads beginning to show up on my campus and people ask me which are my must have apps. While they may differ based upon personal choice, here is how I have my home page of apps loaded:

On my dock
On my home dock, I have placed the apps which I want easy access to all of the time. For me, going from right to left, this means first the Mail app, to access all of my email accounts. Next is the MLB At Bat app. I am a huge baseball fan and now love to access my baseball news and to listen to a game from the west coast, especially when the Giants (Jon Miller) or Dodgers (Vin Scully and Charlie Steiner) are playing. I will do this while I read a book using the Kindle App as I wind down for bed. The Safari App is there whenever I want to surf or fact check while watching a show or sporting event. I also have the Photo App and iPod app at the ready for those functions.

The first app on my home page is a link to my Google Calendar. While I have limited editing functions, I often want to review what I am doing on a particular day. The next apps are some of the built in Apple apps, Video, YouTube, Maps, Settings, the App Store, and iTunes. I use these Apple apps frequently enough that I want quick access to them. The next apps on my page are the newest, but very indispensable. The first is HelTweetica, which is my current favorite Twitter app. I do have Twitterific and TweetDeck on my second page, but I love the speed and feel of HelTweetica for the moment. The next app is Reeder, which connects me to my Google Reader RSS feeds. I love the way I can zip through my feeds and it will cache items so I can read them while not connected to a network.

The next group of apps are my news apps, the Weather Channel, New York Times Editors Choice, BBC News, and The NPR app. This is now I get my news in the morning. Five minutes with these apps and a quick scan of HelTweetica, and I feel like I am as current in terms of global news as anyone. At least I can reference it and go back if I need to.

My next app is one of my favorites, GoodReader. This PDF reader is simply outstanding. I have it configured to access my Google Mail apps and attachments for both my personal and domain accounts, plus accessing the web based set of PDF newsletters and other reports. Simply outstanding. By far, the most value for it’s cost of any apps I have purchased, with the possible exception of the MLB At Bat app. On the bottom row, when horizontal, are the Zinio magazine reader app and the Wired App. It is through Zinio that I can access my Sporting News Today, a which shows the power of magazine publishing. As a life-long baseball fan, it broke my heart when TSN began to lose my interest in the early 1980s. But this daily dose of coverage surpasses what used to be a week late. I also like he fact that they provide sample articles from a number of their different magazines for free. And if you want to see the future of publishing, one needs only to take a look at the Wired app. The inclusion of video and audio into the print version, with promises of more, recalls the first time that I picked up version 1.01 of the magazine oh so long ago. I hope that they are able to deliver on the promise of this initial attempt and make it a reasonably priced experience. Next are my offline web page readers, Instapaper and Offline Pages. Before moving to Reeder, I would have suggested that one save the money and stay with Offline Pages. But the integration of Instapaper is changing my mind. I have installed both of the bookmark tools on my laptop browser, so when I know I may be without access, I can download and reward clippings from the web while on the train or waiting for my kids. This is a great way of catching up all of the great thinking.

My last app on my home page is the Enjoy Daily (Free) Sudoku app. Hey, everyone likes to play a game. Although the iMahjong, Frenzy, and Skeeball apps are great time wasters, I love a logic puzzle to sharpen my mind.

Now if you are counting, there is one slot left on my homepage. I have no idea what app while makes its place there. Could yours be next?

So that’s $30 worth of apps, plus the cost of some music and books. Not a bad little learning machine which allows me to access my reading when I am ready. What’s on your homepage?

(sent from my iPad – how cool is this)

Posted via email from Vinnie’s posterous

This past weekend, we spent the time removing all of the hardware, printers, switches, and ceiling mounted projectors which were in the current high school. Today, movers are hauling the contents of the classrooms and the administrative offices into modular classrooms which have been added to the campus since Spring Break. Tomorrow, I will be assisting the reconnection of the systems in the administrative offices so that they can begin to move into their new spaces.

One of my summer projects will be to collaborate with our new Assistant Head of School and Dean of Faculty to begin to prepare our teachers so that their curriculum and pedagogy will be ready to take advantage of the new space and configuration. Pictured to the left is an artists rendition of the collaborative workspaces and learning studios which will exist in the new building. I am really excited in that we have included 2-d art room spaces off of this intersection, which will allow for interesting intellectual collisions and the incorporation of creativity into the heart of the learning of the new spaces. We now have 18 months to prepare teachers to teach in a digitally rich space, which can easily be adapted into different configurations to all for different types of learning spaces.

This presents an interesting challenge. However, as the school nears its 100th anniversary in nine years, this also allow us a chance to rethink and retool what school means in this century. It is an exciting opportunity.

I am especially blessed to have the opportunity to meet our lead designer, Trung Le. He is a fascinating thinker. You can learn more about his thoughts on his blog at Fast Company

World IBD Day, led by patient organizations representing 27 countries on four continents, will officially be celebrated today, May 19, 2010. Patient groups from the United States, Canada, Australia, 23 European nations, and Brazil are working to draw awareness to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. As part of World IBD Day here in the United States, we’re also celebrating our eighth annual "IBD Day on the Hill," where patient advocates visit Congress to discuss support of important IBD legislation. Here are some fast, easy steps you can take to support World IBD Day:

• Make your voice heard in Congress. If you haven’t already, write your local legislator and urge them to support the "IBD Research and Awareness Act." Research funded by this Act will help not only people with IBD in the U.S., but also worldwide.

• Tweet your support! Follow @worldibdday on Twitter, and Tweet about it, too — don't forget to include #worldibdday in your message!

• Change your Facebook profile picture — find out how at CCFA's Facebook application!

• Think globally, act locally: Get involved with your local CCFA chapter. A great way to start would be to participate in your town’s Take Steps walk!

Thank you for your support — today and every day — of the five million people across the globe who struggle with IBD.

Posted via email from Vinnie’s posterous