I think we’ve all either been part of this IT solution-finding method or have witnessed it!

As a part of our Leading Innovation-Driving Change Conversation, MassCUE and METAA are co-hosting, with EdTechTeacher, a special webinar series prior to the spring conference annual event.

We are so excited to have Angela Maiers, co-author of The Passion-Driven Classroom joining us for a conversation in this FREE webinar, January 26, at 4 pm (ET).   REGISTER

Educators will be inspired by her story and her work. She describes educators as expert learners and passion practitioners. I love the concept that, as educators, one of our primary jobs is to share our passions and help students to discover their own passions and become more passionate about their learning.

Join us on Thursday and hear from Angela, herself.

The Passion-Driven Classroom on Amazon

Eye on Education
There is a handy (free) study guide to The Passion-Driven Classroom here.

Cult of mac, the all-Apple-news all the time web site, forecasts that the announcement about iBooks 2 and iBooks author will be followed by a sub-$299 iPad.

I’m not sure if that’s going to happen any time soon, but I suggest there are ways to get this technology into the hands of students. In Massachusetts, we have started talks with wireless providers and some of our local business partners to investigate the possibilities around providing 3G capable devices to students via parental purchase or lease. We are in the very early exploratory phase, but our vision feels sound.

Elements of our vision include:

• Choice of 3 G capable device – iPad or other (maybe a netbook?)
• Choice to lease or purchase
• Package that includes a choice of a set of apps (or applications) (Package A or B or C)
• A filtering solution
• Reduced monthly recurring service cost
• Schools ready to implement BYOT
• Service of devices facilitated through pick-up and drop-off at school

We want to bring together several partners to make this a reality. So far, we have a couple of statewide organizations in on the ground level, have begun doing some of the reaching out, and are energized around making this happen.

These are exciting times to be in our field!

In this video teachers talk about textbooks and then Apple shows what is now possible.

iBooks 2
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks/id364709193?mt=8
iBooks Author
Incredible new publishing tool – works on your computer to create books for the ipad and it is FREE.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks-author/id490152466?ls=1&mt=12

Apple in Education

Apple hits it out of the park with iBooks2 and iBooks author.

Apple just keeps on innovating. They are reinventing the textbook.

They released 2 new tools that will help schools move to electronic, educator-created, texts.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/apple-announcement-ibooks-2-ibooks-author-for-digital-textbooks/

excerpt:
“Schiller and his Apple colleagues showed off two new applications to take the information in textbooks and put it, in interactive form, on iPads and computers. One is called iBooks 2, a free download for iPads, available from Apple’s app store starting today. The other, iBooks Author, is a tool he said authors and publishers — as well as students and others with an interest in education — can use on a computer to create interactive iPad lessons.”

Remember those standardized test questions of the type – A is to B as C is to blank, and the test taker has to select the missing element? They tend to be written like this –

DUNCE : GENIUS :: ______ : CONSERVE, with choices like: ENVIRONMENT, PROTECT, WASTE

Well here’s one to think about:

COOK : KNIFE :: TEACHER : TECHNOLOGY

Here’s why I think this analogy is true.

I sometimes have the opportunity to observe an expert teacher in action, and then to talk to them about how they plan and carry out a lesson. From these interactions, I am impressed with all that expert teachers consider and balance in their work. The process includes as almost constant stream of micro-decisions as they juggle many balls.

I liken the differences between a novice teacher and an expert one to a beginning cook versus an expert one, with many years of experience.

The process of planning and cooking dinner for a beginning cook could be characterized as finding a recipe, buying the exact ingredients, and then following that recipe exactly. An expert cook’s process is not so linear. They look at ingredients – what’s ripe, what’s fresh, what’s in season, what’s on sale. They contemplate who will be dining and their preferences and tastes, and they keep in mind recipes and dishes they have created before. They balance such considerations as the time they have and the cooking process they feel they might want to use – do they feel like grilling or roasting or braising? They juggle all of these elements at the same time and make multiple decisions throughout the planning and cooking process. An expert cook seldom follows a recipe faithfully – they rely on past experience, personal preference, and knowledge of spices and herbs, and they adjust. The result is a unique and individualized product that reflects the cook, diners, ingredients, preferences, season, and more.

So it is with great teachers – their teaching reflects their style, knowledge, experience, the students, the curriculum, local and state assessments, short and long-term learning goals, and tools and resources  available. They teach while keeping in mind the abilities of students and with an eye toward future lessons and goals.

I contend that a cook cannot be considered an expert if they are missing some critical component or skill – if they can grill but not braise, for example, or they are comfortable with an oven but not a stove, or they can cook steak but not fish. With teachers, true expertise also includes mastery over many areas of knowledge, tools, and domains. In this century, a teacher who is not adept at using technology for teaching and learning is not a totally expert teacher. They may have many skills and talents and a font of knowledge, but if they cannot effectively weave technology into the process, then they are missing a key element. A teacher who is “missing” technology, is comparable to a cook who is “missing” knives – technology is a critical tool in effective teaching.

The 7th in my series of posting the quotes that I have used to decorate the walls of my office.

Previous:

One
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Five
Six

Thanks to Miguel Guhlin for his post about discretionary effort. He says he learned about this concept from Crucial Conversations (coincidentally, I also listened to this – it was recent listening-while-driving book).

I have a poster in my office (my own creation) that looks like this:

It is my reminder to work in all areas of my target goals. By necessity, much of my time is in the center of the bull’s eye, but I don’t feel like I’m making my “20 mile march” (concept from Great by Choice – my current listening-while-driving book) if I get mired in the essential, because so much of it is urgent, but not always important.

Urgent – Important Concept

This graphic shows a matrix with 4 quadrants, with urgency and importance on the axes (thanks to Stephen Covey).

Quadrant 1 denotes tasks BOTH urgent and important – putting out fires, dealing with crises.

Quadrant 4 is for tasks that are NEITHER urgent nor important – some regularly scheduled meetings, or surfing the web, may fall into this quadrant.

Quadrant 3 is what I think of as crises that others want to hand to you – interruptions, the “need for speed” in the form of instant answers, pointless busy-ness.

Quadrant 2 is where meaningful “20 mile march” work gets done.

Stephen Covey says that highly effective people make time for the Q2 activities, and they reduce the time spent in other quadrants.

I have a few strategies for making time for quadrant 2, but I have to admit that on some days I am in constant fire-fighter mode.

The graphic that Miguel wrote about is this:

Miguel says:

My introduction to the term “discretionary effort” came through Crucial Conversations which I’m listening to:

Discretionary effort is a silver bullet and often an underutilized asset. Those who learn how to tap discretionary effort achieve a strategic competitive advantage.

Like Miguel, much of my personal “discretionary effort” time is spent on work-related projects and learning. The rate of change in my profession (technology, technology in education) is so rapid, that I have found investing lots of time outside of the parameters of the “work day” to be absolutely necessary. In the last several years, with social networking, blogging, volunteering in organizations, I have increased the return on my discretionary effort time. Being part of an online community of learners, working with my colleagues around the state and the country, getting to conferences and presenting – these activities enable me to learn quicker – I am fully convinced that we get better together faster than we do learning alone.

Miguel’s post shifts to his efforts of late to commit to regular exercise. He sounds like he has mastered the time management of this commitment – I still struggle. When I have days off (weekends, vacations), I have no problem making time for the elliptical, but on many work days, I end up getting home so late that it’s hard to fit it in. Maybe I would benefit from a community of exercisers the way I do from my community of learners?

I used this activity as an activator at a retreat for district administrators, and I think it would be just as successful to launch a professional development day for teachers. The activity requires people to work in teams. I set up teams of 4 to 5 people because I decided to focus the debrief and discussion on leadership and collaboration and communication. I think the activity would work with pairs, with a slightly varied debrief.

Overview:

Teams will build a tower, working under a strict a time limit. The winning team is the one who builds the tallest tower that can hold an apple.

Materials – each team gets:

1. A pad of lined paper
2. A roll of scotch tape

The organizer needs to have:

1. A yardstick
2. An apple

Instructions:

1. Each team is given the pad of paper and scotch tape and told to build the tallest tower that will hold an apple.
2. The tower must be able to stand on its own without any helping hands or object (freestanding). It may not lean on another object.
3. Teams have 5 minutes to complete building.
4. When the teams have completed building, the judge measures each structure and tests the strength by placing the apple on top. The apple has to be supported by the structure.
5. A winning team is named.

Debrief:

My goal for the activity was to talk about 21^st century skills of communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. I started asking questions about the task and how the teams worked together. The questions I used really built off of the responses I got, so this is not a rigid list of questions – I suggest you use them as a springboard.

1. First, I’d like people to think about the task and how they would describe it. Take 3 minutes to discuss with your team – just what was the task? Teams reported out and I jotted themes on a flip pad.
   This generated some simple descriptors, as well as discussion about humor, fun, stress, performance, and leadership.
2.  How did you feel about the fact that it was a competition, that there was a single winner? What did you think about the fact that there was only one criteria – the tallest tower that holds an apple?
   This generated good observations about the fact that some teams were very creative and some (losing) towers were aesthetically pleasing. Most would have liked categories of winners, or would have preferred voting on the winning structure.
3. How did your team work together? Did a leader emerge? How did you reach consensus about your approach or strategy? Was it challenging to describe your vision of what you thought the team should try to do? Did everyone participate?
   These questions led to a very rich discussion about the roles in the group, how some people took over, and how teams varied from very collaborative to more hierarchical. For some participants the task was stressful, and many brought up how important it was to inject humor into the process.

The discussion lasted for about 10-15 minutes. To wrap up I recapped some of the main points that participants shared, especially as they related to leadership, communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. I said that as we embark on our work with students and teachers, I encourage everyone to remember to look for and celebrate the skills and talents that don’t necessarily show up on a test, and to look for opportunities to highlight these skills.

To close, I showed this movie from You Tube, Tom Chapin singing, It’s Not on the Test.

The sixth in my series of posting the quotes that I have used to decorate the walls of my office.

Previous:

One
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Five