Shelley Owen commented yesterday that a teacher said to her that “[technology] is not in our contract.” Wow. It’s one thing to say as an educator, “I understand I need to do this but I need more help and/or support.” It’s another to say, “That’s not part of my job.” I don’t know the specifics of the...
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...
the entire scene just reeks of regression. That’s why the future of education will take a brand of forward-thinking educator (teachers / principals etc.) with enough deft and savvy to advocate for technology use in the classroom and enough courage (for lack of a more appropriate word) to wrinkle [districts’] social media guidelines and them...
Imagine that someone offered you something and said, “This might give you a short-term performance boost. If it does, we’re not sure how long the effect will last but we know it will diminish over time. The boost might be just a year or two and it’s all but certain that it won’t last more...
[In Part 1 of this conversation, I asked for others’ input and received numerous online comments plus some additional emails. In this post I offer my own thoughts. Warning: Long post ahead.] Dear Iowa superintendent and school board members, As founding director of the nation’s only university center focused on P-12 technology leadership issues, I...
May 14, 2012 by Scott McLeod 0 Comments I think I’m going to be on NPR’s All Things Considered today as part of its All Tech Considered segment. I was interviewed last week about the New York City Schools’ new social media policy for employees. Regular readers know that I’ve written about this in the...
The Republican Party of Texas states in its official 2012 political platform: We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs...
the Number One way that most of us know what we know is … autonomous, firsthand, curiosity-driven, wide-ranging, self-directed, trial and error, immediate feedback, personal experience. Number Two in efficiency is learning through shared experience and the dialogue that ordinarily accompanies it. The Number Three way we learn — from “delivered information”— is a distant...
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...
I confess that I’m struggling with Diane Ravitch lately (and not for the reasons I struggled back in 2010). I think that she’s a valuable voice in the educational policy landscape and I greatly appreciate her passion and her ability to energize educators and citizens as she speaks up against political and pedagogical abuses of...