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Learning v. teaching v. schooling

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Remember: learning, teaching, and schooling aren't interchangeable concepts. Which one is YOUR school system primarily about?   You might also like When it comes to learning and teaching, why do we ignore the voices of students? Recommended reading – Teaching and learning Teaching philosophy

Are Teacher Preparation Programs Dangerously Irrelevant? [guest post]

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Seann Dikkers [Guest Blogger] In my first year of teaching a veteran leaned over during a particularly dry workshop and said blandly, "If you spend a whole day in these things and walk away with even one idea, it was worth the day... Today is not our day." Cynical? Yes, but true. After 15 years [...]

We need to stop arguing over which factory-age solutions we should try

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Trace Pickering recently sent me a slide deck that's definitely worth viewing. Trace is a wonderful systems thinker. His slides do a nice job of describing historical shifts in American society and the concurrent changes that were necessary in American education. As he notes about our current era, We seem to be stuck … arguing [...]

Digital Learning Day: The aftermath

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Well, yesterday was Digital Learning Day. By all accounts, it was a busy day across the country. Lots of conversation and high-profile events and demonstrations of students doing cool stuff with technology... Should every school day be Digital Learning Day? Nope. We still need down time from these electronic and virtual spaces of ours, times [...]

Announcing our new School Technology Leadership courses: Get a graduate certificate, Master’s, or Ph.D.

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Short version We're relaunching our online School Technology Leadership courses and programs today! Woo hoo! (This is all pending final approval by Faculty Senate) Long version It's Digital Learning Day here in the U.S. As I said in my guest post for the event: We ... need school leaders who can begin envisioning the implications of [...]

Keeping Students Engaged in a 1:1 Project-Based Classroom [guest post]

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Image approved for copy by Creative Commons. Source: http://bit.ly/vYUkXB When laptops first arrived in my classroom, I worried about classroom management. How could I create an environment where students used their computers as tools rather than toys? I was worried for nothing. The following are suggestions for keeping students engaged in a project and accountable for [...]

Flawed, ideological, non-peer-reviewed studies should not rebut decades of anti-retention research

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Iowa Governor Terry Branstad's recent remarks about retaining 3rd graders confirm both the potential positives and the many negatives of in-grade retention in elementary school. First, the potential positives: in-grade retention sometimes leads to short-term (1 to 2 years out) - and maybe even mid-term (3 to 5 years out) - academic gains. The peer-reviewed [...]

New technologies v. new behaviors

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Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviors. - Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, p. 160 I visit many schools that have 'new technologies,' but not enough of them also have 'new behaviors.' It's time for us educators to raise our game (leaders, I'm pointing to you [...]

Reflecting on two years of 1:1 [guest post]

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Beginning in the 2010-2011 school year, our school went through a number of transformations and changes, all aimed at enhancing the quality of the learning and teaching within our building. We adapted a 5 x 3 trimester schedule providing longer class periods and a lower student-to-teacher ratio. We added a house system separating the student [...]

Education, the Internet, and the ignorance of policymakers

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Yesterday, along with thousands of other web sites, Dangerously Irrelevant shut down for the day to protest two bills, SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate). I don't think my little blackout had any major influence, of course, but I wanted to express my solidarity with the larger concerns. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the [...]