Creating a Culture of Wonder

Photo by Samet Kurtkus on Unsplash “SCHOOLS SHOULD BE BUILT AROUND STREAMS OF WONDER. THESE STREAMS OF WONDER SHOULD CONSTANTLY BE IN MOTION ALLOWING YOU TO DIP INTO THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN. ” – Chris Fancher, Educator and Author January 26, 2014. That’s the date on the draft post I was thinking about writing. It is one of […]

How Much Time For Personal Growth Do You Have?

http://www.flickr.com/commons/ It’s Saturday. Do you: Play 18? Visit some garage sales? Go to that winery you’ve read about? Do yard work? Grade papers? Other? Everybody has the same amount of hours in the week and days in the year. And, each month has 8 weekend days. Many (most) of the teachers I have worked with […]

Professional Development Planners Need Our Help

http://goo.gl/KPWQpo On Wednesday I was able to sit through (survive) the first day of a three day professional development about literacy. Thursday morning, prior to walking to the PD,  I put up a post about not being negative and helping teachers instead of being angry with them. How are these two events connected? Well, I […]

We Need To Avoid the Calculus Syndrome, Thoughts After ISTE 13

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smbmsp/ The post-ISTE13 comments and blog posts I’ve been seeing have me worried.  There are many educators who are now questioning how basic some of the sessions were and how we need to ensure there are discussions and not just presentations in the sessions.  I think it’s time for a quick reminder of where we […]

Edcamps Don’t Have to be Techy

http://edcampcolumbus.wordpress.com/ This weekend there was Edcamp Houston but I had to miss it even though it was right down the road (about a 4 hour drive but in Texas that’s almost neighbors!). As I was looking through the Twitter stream coming out of there I was envious of those in attendance but I was also hit by […]

It’s All About the Conversations

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rominasantos/ Anyone who has ever attended an Educon event knows that conversations are the key to having successful learning experiences at conferences. In the standard conference we attend sessions where people talk to us, in a lecture format, and there may, or may not be time for questions. To truly have time to discuss what […]

That Left Out Feeling

http://www.flickr.com/photos/letsbook/      Ah, summer.  That time when teachers pack up their classrooms and move to the pool or the beach.  They are out there hiking, fly fishing, and sailing.  Isn’t it great only working about 40 weeks of the year!  That’s 12 weeks of kicking back and doing nothing.      If only that […]

NST12 Wrap UP

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkmere/      Whenever you can attend a conference or training and feel exhausted ( not from drinking too much but ) from thinking too much then you have gotten your monies worth.  An obvious conference for me is Educon where you spend the day discussing educational topics.  The problem is that these conversations can […]

Life Threw Me a Curveball

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ableman/      In October of last year I submitted a job application and resume to the New Tech Network/Knowledge Works to become an instructional coach for some of the schools in the network.  I had been working on my PBL skills and knowledge for 3 years, I had spoken on PBL at conferences, and […]

Questioning Normalcy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/njtechteacher/ Educon 2.4 came to a close but is far from finished.  The conversations started there will continue in the hallways and faculty lounges around the world and in online discussions via blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.   The overarching word du jour was Innovation. We heard what it was and what it wasn’t. We dissected it […]