Fear of Missing Out… Fear of being left out… Fear of being left behind… As an educator, do we need to feel this fear? Do we need to feel a drive for growth? Now, maybe fear is not the greatest motivator. So how might we rephrase this: Desire to be on the leading edge… Desire…
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As I’ve written about before, I took part in the first installment of The Teachers’ Guild, run by IDEO. Its mission is to build collaboration amongst teachers to solve challenges in education. This particular iteration had this challenge prompt: “How might we create rituals and routines that establish a culture of innovation in our classrooms…
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Making something routine can be taken as making something ordinary, something we do without thinking. However, what I have learned over the summer from my work with The Teachers Guild and with Future Design Schools, is that Innovation as Routine is anything but ordinary, and requires deep thinking. I first heard about the Teachers Guild…
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Sir Ken Robinson’s latest book “Creative Schools” is not a simple rehash of what we know so well about his ideas and theories; rather, this builds on his previous work to present insights in to how to bring creativity into our schools. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. (Robinson) We face…
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When I asked my 5 year old son what he wanted to do over the summer, he said that he wanted to learn to play hockey. I’m not a hockey player, never played, and (what with the state of the Leafs these days!) don’t really watch it at all. So this past week, my son…
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Luckily enough, I was able to meet this author, Liz Arney, when I was on a research trip in San Francisco visiting innovative schools up and down the Bay Area. Liz made time to meet with both Justin Medved and I to explain her organization’s approach to finding schools that are innovative and finding ways to…
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I’m already thinking about coming back in January, and continuing to cultivate growth mindsets throughout my school. I’ve talked about my school being a Learning Organization, and how many of us have adopted Twitter to help grow our thinking and PLN (#BVGLearns). In fact, it was a colleague, Matt Clark, who posted on Twitter (@mattclark…
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One of the most provocative things I was told was to “sell your Smartboards, and buy 3D printers!” (Richard Byrne at the ECOO conference keynote address), and I’ve been exploring this idea ever since…big time! Reading, researching, attending the Toronto Maker-Faire, and visiting MakeLab in Toronto. I’ve discovered some incredible things about 3D printing: 1) The…
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How can I help? What do you need? Where do your students need support? These are the questions I ask my teachers, and myself, everyday. A technology coach is part leader, part follower, part IT, part EdT, but certainly all “learner”. In a recent White Paper, entitled “Technology, Coaching & Community”, the issue of awareness…
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How did my school go from almost ZERO twitter connections, to being part of a CIS Ontario-wide movement to connect on Twitter with other schools across disciplines and grades? What started as zero twitter chatter within my school, grew quickly to over 15 teachers, either starting new with Twitter or repositioning their Tweets to connect…
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