1650 was closer in spirit to the time we live in now than it was to 1450. The change was so enormous …but what was also clear is that there was never a moment where everybody said, “Oh I get it. This is what the printing press is going to do. Well let just do...
Category: change
How long has it been since you were really bothered?
Ray Bradbury perhaps said it best: “We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” Rethinking learning and teaching is being bothered by something important and real. Ryan Bretag via http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2981
Our inability to change our ‘business models’ may be the death of us
Saul Kaplan emphasizes in his new book, The Business Model Innovation Factory, that every day more organizations are finding that their ‘business models’ have run dry. This is challenging and stressful for leaders and employees since, as the book trailer below notes, most have been immersed in only one type of business model for their...
Are you going fast enough? [SLIDE]
Upcoming travel and events December 3-5 – International School of Amsterdam, The Netherlands February 3 – Virginia Is for Learners Innovation Network, TBD, VA February 25-26 – Missouri Educational Technology Leaders CTO Clinic, TBD, MO March 10-13 – Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary June 8-9 – Roanoke County Public...
Two quotes from Diane Ravitch
Although I don’t know how one would objectively measure this, I think lately Diane Ravitch has been even more vocal on her blog than usual. Here are a couple of quotes that caught my eye today: [Reformers] say they want “great teachers.” But they demonize and demoralize the teachers we have now. What plans do they...
Microadjustments to the current system are insufficient
effective implementation cannot be done by making microadjustments to the current system. We cannot, for instance, install project-based learning as a new layer on top of the standard instructional approaches we have. We cannot squeeze real teacher development into three annual inservice days and a monthly faculty meeting. Each of the strategies requires us to...
Troublemaker [SLIDE]
Upcoming travel and events December 3-5 – International School of Amsterdam, The Netherlands February 3 – Virginia Is for Learners Innovation Network, TBD, VA February 25-26 – Missouri Educational Technology Leaders CTO Clinic, TBD, MO March 10-13 – Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary June 8-9 – Roanoke County Public...
Building the plane while flying it
“We’re building the plane while flying it!” How many of us have heard this phrase in presentations about the need for schools to move more quickly toward an uncertain and unknowable future? [yes, I’ve used it myself once or twice] How many of us have had someone show us this video from EDS? Nearly always there...
If you’re afraid of change, social media is a distraction and a risk
Seth Godin says: If you’re eager for change, every bit of information and every event represents an opportunity to learn, to grow and to change for the better. You hear some advice and you listen to it, consider it (possibly reject it), iterate on it and actually do something different in response. On the other...
Change agents and the hiring dilemma
Here’s a working hypothesis: The organizations that most need change agents probably are the least likely to hire them because change agents typically make people with non-change orientations scared or nervous. If the people within were already oriented toward change and innovation, their organizations wouldn’t be the ones in the most need of change agents....