Digital Eyes

In the world of software development, there is a movement towards using a "Sprint" as a way to improve productivity. The basic idea is that a development team meets and agrees on a work outcome. They are given a short period of time to build their product. They then meet to show the group their outcome. They get feedback and set up another sprint to adapt their work based on the feedback. I have been chatting with groups of teachers about the power of sprints in the classroom. Here is an example of what we have discussed: Instead of giving students a long period of time to work on a project, try giving them a very short period of time (5-10 minutes) to sketch out their product. Then share it with a partner and get feedback. Now give them time to reflect on the feedback and adapt their sketch to the feedback. Continue this cycle of work/feedback/reflect multiple times.  Here are a few reasons why this process works better than just giving them the longer period of wo...

*Image thanks to Robert Lawton (Robert Lawton) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons I have so many conversations with teachers and parents about their fear that students will spend so much time in front of a screen that they will lose the ability to relate to people face to face. As a parent of two kids, I understand this fear. We have rules in our house to limit screen time and talk often about the importance of balancing screen time with being active and spending time with family. However, I am finding that many teachers and parents want to view schools as the last bastion of offline activity. They believe we need to teach kids how to act offline and they will learn how to act online somewhere else. Here is my problem with that premise: It doesn't work! First, most of the online activity of kids outside of school is unsupervised. So who exactly is teaching them what to do? Kids need guides in the online world. They need ...

(This post was a collaborative effort with Jennifer Krzystowczyk from Bellevue Public Schools in Bellevue, NE and is cross-posted at http://technologytools4teaching.blogspot.com/.) We've all heard of six degrees of separation.  That is, we are all connected in some way through connections of six people.  Our students are not separated by six degrees, but rather by a six year generation gap. In school there appears to be two generations that are about six years apart.  Think about it.  Consider the technology skills of a 12 year old and the technology skills of an 18 year old getting ready to graduate from high school.  Their skill sets are very different.   This younger generation know how to leverage technology in a way that is transformational.  We could call them digital synthesizers.  These kids learn new skills on YouTube, publish content on YouTube, post their thoughts on blogs, Reddit, and other digital platforms.  They connect with others, but not on Facebook.  They view Fa...

As we fly closer to the sun, we sometimes feel closer to the light, but we sometimes feel closer to the heat. It seems to me that this year more than ever, I am becoming more and more aware of the fact that there are two sides to every situation: a positive and a negative. Here are a few examples: Providing more tools to teachers is increasing their ability to use technology effectively. It is also causing them more stress and making our access issues for students more apparent. Using student response devices across our district is increasing our ability to deliver formative assessments quickly and easily. It is also leading to some headaches when students break them or lose them or teachers find the one thing they can't do. Using Google Apps for Educators is increasing our ability to be mobile, to collaborate, to provide students with email accounts, and to create sites. It is also glitchy and causing problems when something doesn't work the way we want it to. There are so man...

I recently read Meris Stansbury's blog post on the Five Characteristics of an Effective 21st Century Educator. It got me thinking about where we are in Wayzata with regards to 21st Century-ness. After all, we are more than a decade into the 21st century. We ought to have arrived by now! Here are the five characteristics that Stansbury discusses: 1. Anticipates the Future. I am disappointed that this one came first. I would have preferred to build up to it. I believe this is the area in which we are lacking the most. Don't get me wrong. We are changing. We are looking at best practices and brain research. Using data effectively. We are even embracing some new technologies. But are we looking forward at what the world will be like that our students will enter? Not really. And I understand why. It is hard. Really hard. I don't know what the innovative breakthroughs of next year will look like, let alone 10 years from now. But there are trends that have been followed over the...

I have been spending some time this week preparing a new teacher training for new staff. They will have a full week of orientation and one whole day of that will be technology training. For one day, new staff will be immersed in learning about the many tools they have at their disposal to help their students learn. From Smartboards to student response devices, MOODLE to Google Apps, Discovery education to their Schoolwires webpage, these teachers will need to hit the ground running. They will leave swimming with excitement and anxiety about all the possibilities. Some will jump right in and start using the tools, while others will have good intentions of trying them later on after they get their feet wet. There is no question that the expectations for new teachers are very different. Yet, they still come with the same preparation. I can't believe how many teachers come to us that haven't had any real experience with these tools. I was recently asked to be a guest lecturer about...

Welcome to the new location of Digital Eyes! Like all everything in life, things change. As our blog server goes away, it was time to migrate my blog to a new place. I hope you like it and continue to come and read. I am always open to suggestions. If you have an idea about how I can improve the site, please let me know. To kick off my new location, I thought it was appropriate to post about change. Just as we are changing our blog locations, we are also changing our district website, moving to Office 2010 and 2011, and putting student response devices in the hands of every student. This makes for a very busy summer and an even busier fall. I hear often from frustrated teachers about the rapid rate of change. It's not just technology either. Initiatives on formative assessments, data- driven decision making, cultural proficiency, professional learning teams, new curriculum also are underway. Teachers are frustrated because it is increasingly difficult to keep up with all this chang...