Digital Eyes

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...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmcJZGGArRI] There are many examples in our lives in which overcoming failure is a key element to success: Riding a bike Potty Training Hitting a baseball Tying your shoes Reading So why do our schools seem to increasingly be designed to minimize opportunities to learn perseverance. Too often we cover a topic and test the kids and they either get it or they don't. Units must take a certain number of days and if you don't learn within that time frame, you fail. Were you given a timeframe in which to learn to ride a bike? Tie your shoes? What if you were given an F because it took you longer to learn than your parents thought it should. Sorry. You just weren't cut out to go potty! I guess you will never tie your shoes! The determination that this little kid shows is way more important than the skill of riding a bike. If we can develop that in all of our students, they will be far more successful in life than if we slap a grade on them t...

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...

Which side of the bed did you wake up on today? On any given day, we wake up ready for all the information thrust at us. We must as educators make good sound decisions. The truth is that somedays, we are so overwhelmed that we say no to everything. We find reasons for them not to work. Some of the reasons are even good ones: equity, management, student distractions, high stakes testing. But none of these issues are really reason enough not to move forward if we truly believe that providing new tools or instruction are the right thing to do. On the other hand, there are days that we wake up and it is just easier to go with the flow. Perhaps we start to believe that we are just a negative Nelly. Maybe we feel like the rest of the world is moving forward and we'd better jump on board. Whatever the reason, it is not any more useful to say yes to everything than it is to say no to everything. So what are the criteria for deciding which ideas are winners and which are losers? The more i ...

This morning, I sent my son off to school to take the MCA state tests for the first time. As a third grader, this is the first of many testing "opportunities" he will have. As we talked about it, I did my parental duty and made sure he understood the importance of them, ate a good breakfast, got plenty of sleep. He was really excited! To him, this was a chance to demonstrate his knowledge. Unfortunately, this is how he has learned to define what his knowledge is. My concern is that even in third grade, my son understands that what is tested is what is valued. So the message to him is that basic knowledge of math and reading is what is important. While I will not argue the fact that they are important, I do feel like they have an overblown value in our schools. Here is what I mean. Look at some of the other things my son does that have equal (in my opinion) value if not greater value. Last night, he keyboarded an amazing three paragraph story. He took on a very challenging pia...

*Image from http://www.mediaspin.com/images/superstock/head-CFL-bulb04-hgrebe-800.jpg I have been reading How - and Why- to Teach Innovation in our Schools by Alexander Hiam. I highly recommend you read this article if you have not already done so. It really helped frame this idea of how to teach innovation in our schools. Our technology integration curriculum includes a strand on Creativity and Innovation, and Creative Thinking. However, when teachers ask me what does that look like, I don't always feel as though I have a great answer. This article has really helped me frame my answer. I knew it was there, I just couldn't put my finger on it. First, Hiam breaks innovation down into the Five I's: Imagination, Inquiry, Invention, Implementation, and Initiative. The fuel for imagination is defined as the "bridging between apparently diverse or unrelated ideas, skill sets, or objects." He asserts that many innovations in our lives come from combining two different c...