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Monthly Archives: February 2013
A Must See for all in Education
Posted in Change, Collaboration, Education Technology
Tagged 21st Century Learning, Collaboration, Edtech, technology
What We Have Done as an Educational Community is Priceless
Change. In education,we are accustomed to seeing changes in philosophy, funding, materials, focus, ideology, scheduling, and leadership. Right now, we are in the middle of the biggest change in our careers, and what we have been doing as educators is priceless.
The difference between this change and the zillions of changes before it, is that now we have a connected community. There should be no district, school, or teacher working in isolation trying to figure it out alone. Since the last major change, we as educators have pulled together. We have organized ourselves on every level, from superintendents to classroom teachers and everyone in between . We have posted our opinions, knowledge, and resources on blogs and websites and twitter. We have shared like no other industry. We have stepped up for our districts, our schools and our students to make education better for each and every learner. We have demonstrated professional generosity on a level never seen before. So it is there that we will learn and grow…and change…together. This change will not be like ones before. We will make it work for our students and for our districts, and we will make it more cohesive… because we are working together.
Posted in Change, Collaboration, Common Core, Education, Leadership, Professional Generosity
Tagged change, Collaboration, Common Core, education, Leadership
Directing Change While Riding an Elephant
Switch, How to change things when change is hard, takes a fresh and powerful look at something everyone in the education field, on any level, is facing. The authors start with this premise: We all have two forces inside us at play: the elephant and the rider. The rider is our rational side: the planner, the willpower, the analyzer. The elephant is our emotional side: the doer, the motivator, the energy. We must appeal to both in ourselves, and in our organizations, to effectively create change.
The rider provides the planning and direction, and the elephant provides the energy to do. The riders use the analytical side to inspire understanding through spreadsheets and presentations. The elephants use the emotional side to inspire motivation to act and to continue on.
If you reach the riders in your organization but not the elephants, you will have understanding of the situation, but without motivation to do anything. Often the item gets tabled to discuss yet again. If you reach the elephants in your organization but not the riders, you will have passion but without direction. If the rider isn’t exactly sure of the direction to go, he tends to lead the elephant in circles.
Faced with directing change in your organization, these things can guide you:
- Direct the Rider. What feels like resistance is often lack of clarity. Provide crystal clear direction.
- Motivate the Elephant. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. You can only go on willpower for so long until you are exhausted. It’s critical to engage people’s emotional side.
- Shape the Path. What looks like a people problem is often a situational problem. When you shape the path, you make change more likely to happen no matter what the rider and the elephant are doing.
There is so much information in this book that this simple review cannot do it justice, but if you are faced with creating change in your organization, you may want to check it out. It goes on to give clear examples of these principles in play, and specific scenarios modeling how to use these guidelines. It also appeals to both the rider and the elephant, so it’s an excellent ‘group read’ for any organization going through change.
Posted in Leadership
Text Complexity 101
Text Complexity…that phrase has been tossed about a lot since the launch of the Common Core State Standards conversation, but aside from that, it really is just good teaching practice to monitor and increase text complexity. So, for those of you that have been busy trying to keep up on the zillion other things in education, here’s a very brief introductory overview with some links for further information.
What it is NOT:
Text complexity is not necessarily more or longer. It really isn’t about higher reading level per se, more homework, or even more reading.
What it IS:
Increasing text complexity is a way to provide rigor in thinking and understanding by including texts with complex vocabulary, sentence structure and text organization. This can be done at every reading level and with any length text.
In light of the Common Core State Standards, the document identifies three inter-related aspects of text complexity: qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, and matching readers with texts and tasks. The authors define each of these as follows:
Qualitative evaluation of the text: Levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands.
This can best be measured by an actual attentive human being.
Quantitative evaluation of the text: Readability measures and other scores of text complexity.
This is usually measured by computer software. This takes into account text complexity features such as: sentence length, word length, and text cohesion.
Matching reader to the text and task: Reader variables (such as motivation, knowledge, and experiences) and task variables (such as purpose and the complexity generated by the task assigned and the questions posed).
Again, this is a human job.
As you can see, monitoring text complexity is no simple task. A trained teacher can effectively provide students with increasing levels of text complexity in a variety of formats. The key is training and practice. I see teachers all over the country working with Professional Learning Networks to increase their understanding and skill. Here are a couple really solid places to go for information. Find a group you resonate with and follow along through RSS feed, twitter, or facebook. There is no end to the professional generosity in our field.
Increasing Rigor in Your Classroom
Rigor, (and its counterpart, text complexity), has been the focus of my latest professional quest. As teachers, we know that rigor is key to high standards and high performance, but how do we ensure appropriate rigor for each child in a class of diverse learners? Well, of course providing for that diversity is the continual challenge for teachers in so many areas every day in classrooms around the world.
This ongoing quest to ensure rigor sent me out into the twittersphere and beyond, where I ran across an upcoming webinar by Barbara Blackburn hosted by Eye on Education. As I did my usual online vetting before I spent an hour of my time, I saw that my favorite team, Ben Curran and Neil Wetherbee from Engaging Educators, had interviewed Blackburn some months back. That was a good sign in my book, so I registered.
It was worth the hour. She had some great ideas that could be used in your classroom tomorrow. Layering texts by starting with a simpler version, and then after background knowledge has been established, layering in a more complex text, is an effective strategy that I’ve used often. Using multiple texts for each student to investigate a topic provides opportunity for differentiated rigor, as well as possibilities for comparison and more complex thought. Her Question Matrix for Opening Focus is not only good for widening the class conversation, but a good way to teach thinking skills. She even provided a word problem template for math. And just like any good party, attendees left with a bag full of helpful downloads. I do not own Dr. Blackburn’s book, Rigor is Not a Four Letter Word (second edition), but looks like it may be a good guide and toolbox to increase rigor in your classroom.
The conversation about rigor and text complexity will no doubt continue in the many online Professional Learning Networks, so let’s make sure keep each other posted as we go!
After several months in the making, it’s time to formally launch the new Global Classroom Mentors project, fulfilling a key goal of Global Classroom 2012-13.
We know what it’s like to get started with ICT and global projects … It can be a very difficult, challenging road; yet almost all of us have been informally mentored along the way.
Connecting and working with an experienced mentor makes a HUGE difference, and this is something we are hoping to share more widely through our new Mentor Teacher Contact Directory; helping teachers new to ICT and global projects find a source of support and guidance as they embark on their global journeys.
The directory, which can be accessed via our project wiki, is designed to help teachers find a mentor who works in a similar grade level and time-zone. You can connect with a mentor through email, Skype, Twitter; and request…
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Posted in Uncategorized
Irish-American Connection
Our new project with St Joseph’s National School (Scoil Iosaif Naofa) in Kinvara County, Galway, Ireland. We will be working with Máire O’Keefe’s class to research a man whose life touched both Ireland and Chicago through his music and his travels from a Cork County farm during the Great Potato Famine to the Chief of the Chicago Police Department. Join us by following along!
Posted in Education Technology, Global Education
Tagged Chicago, Cork County, County Galway, Galway, Global Education, Ireland, Kinvara, PBL