Reflection

As we conclude our training session, we would like to revisit two brief exercises from Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind coming from his chapter on the sense of Meaning.

Have you ever had a training or meeting where someone used the "parking lot" idea? You probably have. You know, the parking lot is the place where the real meeting happens, outside the actual venue and the earshot of the rest of the participants. That is where the gloves come off and the real questions are asked. "That's all great, but it won't work in my classroom." "I would love to try those ideas, but I don't have X,Y and Z." Whenever a trainer or meeting leader uses the "parking lot" idea, they might provide some method of documenting concerns that cannot be solved by the participants in the time provided. The intention to 1 part increase focus and 1 part decrease complaints. But there's a good deal of merit to the method and to subscribing to that attitude in general.

Pink's exercise is called "But Out." Do you know what would make your teaching more meaningful? Compile a list of some important changes you would like to make in your teaching. What is holding you back? List both and carefully reflect on the legitimatcy of the "But's" (tehe, that's funny) and ways to move past them. You can see Tina Barseghian's post on Mindshift about Will Richardson and Rob Mancabelli's ISTE session, "How to Address Yeah But Objections from Resisters"

Secondly and more importantly, we all need to remember one thing on difficulty days. Why do we teach? What are our goals? Each of us has trying days that leave us angry, saddened and perhaps acting out of character. Pink suggests writing a "One Sentence Vision." Create a one sentence vision statement for next school year. Please prepared to share it to the group. Since it will be composed of only one sentence, you might choose to tweet it as well.



Angela Maiers wrote this post from the students' point of view enummerating what they want from teachers.

We're all Failures!

Since today's topic included various ways to assess students, we also wanted to bring to light the idea of failure. Nothing creates failure more quickly than expecting little more. If you have taken care of the environment in your classroom and focused on student learning and nothing else, you have no reason to expect less than the world of the,. Failure only exists because we expect students to hit a random mark during a set period of time on a specific day without knowing specifically how to prepare for it, being able to ask for help, talking and taking randomly scheduled 3 minute silent stretch breaks. We should expect nothing but the best out of every kid, colleague and certainly of ourselves. Aiming any lower is just patronizing and wasting away an opportunity to be special. Why not aim for special? I you "fail,' then the worst you have done is attempt to do something you haven't before.

I have a 6 year old when I go home that frequently expects us to Google whatever his heart desires as he wonders about the makeup of this invisible thing called "air" and who first knew the word "follower" as an idea on Twitter. The argument(s) over whether or not that it suits us- the adults- that the information age is changing the way our kids learn and behave is moot to those of us in the teaching profession. Instead of concerning ourselves with the place in which we find our students, we need to move on preparing them for the world that exists which requires us to prepare for it as well. They have some pretty high expectations of us.

Below, you will find two more Twitter finds. What do you think you will be able to do to increase the opportunity for failure in your classroom and how can you help your students with the idea?

Anne Collier posted her commentary on failure on a post on Mindshift called, "Fun Failure: How to Make Learning Irresistible."

Liz Dwyer of Good.is posted similar insight titled, "Want Student to Succeed? Let them Fail."

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

In our Pinnacle experience today, we dealt with LoTi and Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. We really value the addition of the "create" as the top of the heirarchy. As we saw in our study of 21st century skills, providing students the opportunity to problem solve and create a product collaboratively is important to elicit those skills.

Shelley Wright, posting on the PLP Network, writes about a completely different approach to Bloom's in light of that very fact. She suggests that inverting the entire taxonomy would provide a much better experience for students. Read her post "Flipping Bloom's Taxonomy."

After reading her post, please leave a comment here. What is your reaction to her suggestion? She suggests a fairly specific project in which inverting Bloom's applies, can you think of any you might implement in your classroom? or perhaps situations in which in often would not work?

Also, please check out another interesting Twitter find for Edutechalogy. This flash app makes suggestions based on the level of Bloom's in the Cognitive and Knowledge domains.

Technology Integration

We've spent the majority of the day focusing on technology integration in a couple of different ways. Through completing center activities, hopefully you saw how the ISTE NETS and the North Carolina ITES can be easily integrated into instruction. In looking at the Technology Integration Planning Model, hopefully you began thinking about what should go into the planning process as you begin creating technology integrated lessons and activities. A huge part of ensuring success of technology integrated lessons is making sure that ISTE's Essential Conditions are met. These are the 14 conditions that ISTE says must be present in order to effectively leverage technology for learning.

Take some time to read each of the essential conditions. If your school or classroom were to be assessed on these conditions, how do you think they would rate? As you think of your response and reasons for your rating, you can use the resources linked below for inspiration:

http://electronicportfolios.com/reflect/EssenCondRubric.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/doug0077/essential-conditions
http://uniqueedtechie.blogspot.com/2008/07/essential-conditions-for-iste-nets.html
http://papertrailsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=53

You can leave your responses in a comment below, or write it as a post on your professional blog. If you write a post on your blog, please link it here in a comment.

How strong is your PLN?

During Pinnacle training today, we focused on the concept of the PLN and the various forms that it might take for individuals from social networks to social bookmarking. We would like to continue to put that into practice with today's homework and reflection.

Below, you will find 8 articles concerning PLN's and often specifically Twitter. All of these posts were found surfing Twitter and bookmarking them for reading later. Pick at least three of the blog posts and tweet a very brief summary or comment. Make sure to add the #gcsk12 hashtag so it is easy for the rest of us to find for ourselves. Over the next few days, keep the conversation going and please use this hashtag whenever you would like to call the attention of GCS teachers (and your peers) to a tweet.

The 3 C's of Social Networking: Consumption, Creation, Creation - Brian Solis, posting to Social Media Today, shares how and why social networking is developing and the various roles people play within them.

The Power of Twitter - Matt Britland, posting to the Guardian's Teacher Blog, concerning his early skepticism of Twitter and how it won him over in the end.

Why Twitter is a Teacher's Best Tool- Liz Dwyer at Good.is writes about her own fascination with Twitter for education and its benefits compared to collaborating only with teammates.

What does your PLN Look Like? - A brief post of Thoughtful Learning with the basics of PLN.

Why PLN? Building Knowledge Networks and Learning Communities- Miss Cheska on her own blog discusses the basics of PLN.

100 Ways to Use Twitter in Education, By Degree of Difficulty - Jeff Dunn of Edudemic posts a great, comprehensive lists of tip and tricks for folks joining Twitter.

Twitter and Educational Chats - Kyle Pace discusses his own tips for new Twitter users specifically getting involved with hastag conversations and communities.

What I Wish I Knew Before I Started Twitter- Stephen Anderson on his blog, Web 2.0 Classroom, details as part of his Twitter series, all the suggestions he would make to a new twitterer.

21st Century Education

On our first day of Pinnacle, we have done a lot in an effort to lay the foundation for the rest. We happen to feel that education relies the mastery of 21st Century Skills as they exist beyond the catchphrase of the last decade. So the questions begs itself, if we know that children today are different we were while in school (nearly regardless of your age), why hasn't the educational machine changed to meet them?

 Through twitter, we collect blog posts, websites and resources as we read them. Eric Sheninger, a prominent principal in NJ wrote this blog post about his own observations after attending a session held by Gary Stager. He shares what he feels has slowed education's transition to the new century along with Father Time.

The blog CTEduonline ennumerates the characteristics they feel are needed of the 21st century teacher to meet the needs of students. What do you think? What skills do we need to develop and foster in our peers that are fundamental to reaching students "nowadays?" What has prevented us from automatically transitioning our practice as we find our audience differs from the past? Please leave a comment with your opinion.

 It isn't all doom and gloom either. There are pockets of teaching occuring all over the country be it in isolated classrooms or progressive districts. Lisa Dabbs shared this post on her blog encouraging teachers to decide to "be remarkable" starting now rather than examining the increments to reach mastery of the new world.

5 Things You Hate

In order to establish the norms that will carry with us through the Pinnacle experience, we will use Blogger to weed out suggestions. First, leave a comment to this post listing 5 things you hate to see occur in a PLC setting. Afterwards, we will get into a group to combine those into categories we will use to make norms.