5 Areas of Study

1. Scaling Up Success: State leaders focused on identifying and expanding "innovative" programs that seemed to have a positive impact on education.

2. Enhancing Teacher Effectiveness: Professional development has become a major focus for making effective use of federal technology funding, with 62 percent of state education agencies saying they awarded EETT grants to local education agencies "based on criteria that included the quality of the LEA's proposed professional development plan."

3. Using Data to Inform Learning, Teaching, and Leadership: There was an increased emphasis on the use of data in grant awards in 2008, according to the report, with funds used to support "both formative and summative uses of data in the classroom."

4. Increasing Academic Achievement: According to the report, EETT funds are being used to drive increases in student achievement and to develop 21st century skills in students through "differentiation, personalization, and real-world applications for learning."

5. Driving Innovation and New Educational Models: Finally, the report said that in order to achieve EETT goals, states are developing "comprehensive models to launch schools successfully into technology-rich learning environments" and are producing "increased numbers of schools that offer technology-rich, Internet-ready learning environments staffed by teachers who are ready to translate those opportunities into deeper, more authentic academic learning."

The Future of Education

About a month ago, I came across this youtube video. This is a young man explaining that he dropped out of school because traditional, institutionalized education was getting in the way of his learning.

eTech

Today, we are not just about LITERACY...but, "Learning Literacy,"
Not just about LITERACY SKILLS...but, "Literacy Habits,"
Not just about LIFELONG LEARNING...but it is a "Learning Lifestyle."
~David Warlick

Reading - Think About This

Much of what students read in school should be interesting, global, provocative, critical, relevant, diverse, creative, emotional, and imaginative. Those are hardly the adjectives students use to describe most of what they read for school. Ask a kid to list the “bold” and “fascinating” readings they have done in school. That is, texts that have encouraged them to question their assumptions and opened their minds to stimulating ideas. That will be a very
short list indeed.

What Should Students Read?
Steven Wolk
April 2010 issue of Kappan

Authentic Blogging

1. Authenticy of blog posts-focus on authentic topics
2. Teach audience and the power of writing for audience
3. Use blogging and commenting features for peer review of writing
4. Create a reading response-students read and write an interpretive blog post
5. Focus on metacognitive activities and have students reflect on learning
6. Involve the entire school community in blogging
7. Use blogging to establish connections and networks for learning
8. Focus on cross-curricular applications
9. Link to others to support content and create a culture of mashup
10. A goal/focus should be on student empowerment through self-expression, promoting a voice and an identity
11. Take advantage of the digital nature of the medium to include other types of information, repesented in podcasts, movies, graphics and hyperlinks.
12. Provide additional time to complete blog posts when computer access for certain student groups is limited or not available.
13. The teacher should model blogging by being a blogger.
14. Provide time to read and comment on other student blogs
15. Apply writing skills/traits to blog posts, no IM language
16. Consider using blog posts as an ongoing portfolio of student writing.

This video speaks for itself....

As I understand it, a 15 year old wrote this poem as part of a school assignment. Amazing!

Getting Out of the Box

Just finished LEADERSHIP and SELF-DECEPTION...

This book explains how leaders can discover their own self-deceptions and learn how to escape destructive patterns. The 'learning' is woven into a story about a guy that joins a company and, in writing it this way, it is easy to relate to.

Self-deception touches every aspect of life - in fact, it determines our experience of life. It blinds us to:
- the effect we have on others
- a perception of others as they really are
- other corrective feedback from life.

When we only have distorted information about reality, we don’t have accurate information to make decisions. We don’t have accurate information with which to solve problems because we are in effect blind to the true causes of our problems. To the extent we are self-deceived, we are making mistakes.

The book defines self-deception as a kind of "insistent blindness." This blindness puts us "in the box." And when we are in the box not only do we not solve problems effectively, but also we actually create problems for ourselves and others. When we are in the box, we provoke people to resist us.

When we are in the box we have made "The Deep Choice" - THE CHOICE THAT OTHER PEOPLE’S NEEDS AND DESIRES ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS OUR OWN.
How do we know when we are in the box? Generally, it is when we are feeling some kind of negative emotion. When we are in the box we are insincere, or we feel angry or punishing, or we try to manipulate or "put up with" people. We are scornful, or suspicious, or judgmental. Guess what? People can tell, at least after awhile, how we really feel about them.

So when we are in the box when we are relating to someone, we are creating a "people problem." And because of self-deception, we don’t know that WE are the problem - we blame everyone and everything else.