However, if I were to write goals for the new year, they might go something like this...
Thanks to my beautiful wife for passing this along to me, even though I thought she was poking fun at my need to set goals. :>)
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Circle inversion by fdecomite on Flickr |
If you had a chance to do a TED talk, what would it be about? What have you discovered, what do you know, what can you teach? You should do one. Even if you don't do one, you should be prepared to do one.
Change isn't an event; it's a process. (p.253)My run yesterday was certainly an event, but it wasn't the change. The change is my getting back into running. Likewise, handing our staff and students new technology in the coming months will be an event, but the technology itself won't create a transformative change. That change is going to be a long process, one for which we will be persistent.
To lead a process requires persistence. (p. 254)
That's the question that blogger and author Will Richardson would like us to ask of ourselves as educators. In an interview with Education Week from last October, Will shares:
...too few teachers have a visible presence on the Web. The primary reason this matters is that the kids in our classrooms are going to be Googled—they're going to be searched for on the Web—over and over again. That's just the reality of their lives, right? So they need models. They need to have adults who know what it means to have a strong and appropriate search portfolio—I call it the “G-portfolio.” But right now—and this is my ongoing refrain—there’s no one teaching them how to learn and share with these technologies. There's no one teaching them about the nuances involved in creating a positive online footprint. It's all about what not to do instead of what they should be doing.
The second thing is that, if you want to be part of an extended learning network or community, you have to be findable. And you have to participate in some way. The people I learn from on a day-to-day basis are Googleable. They’re findable, they have a presence, they’re participating, they’re transparent. That’s what makes them a part of my learning network. If you’re not out there—if you’re not transparent or findable in that way—I can’t learn with you.
If a student, parent, or colleague were to Google you, what would they find? How are you using online communities to learn and grow professionally?
Join in with us as we all learn what it means to say iLearn@ZPS.
Cross posted to the iLearn@ZPS blog.
If we move to a model that is student-at-center/teacher-at-periphery within a distributed learning community (one that, as Chris Dede states would, "enable a shift from the traditional transfer and assimilation of information to the creation, sharing and mastery of knowledge."), the teacher has TIME to take on the mentoring role. Educators would no longer have to scramble daily to be the fully-stocked "information vending machine" - rapidly dispensing knowledge to "cover" content standards/requirements - instead they could focus time and energy on knowing their learners.While I'd love to head off on a tangent and share how I see this as one of the benefits of 1:1 and student-centered learning that we're trying to achieve, I'll practice what I preach to my students and stick to my topic.
What if we as educators not only believed, but regularly practiced this statement?
What if we shared not only our lesson ideas, but also our thinking?
What if we shared not only our knowledge, but also our questions?
What if we shared not only our successes, but also our failures?
What if we shared not only our joys, but also our sorrows?
What if we shared not only our hopes, but also our fears?
How would it change your life as an educator?
How would it change your school community?
You're invited to share your thoughts at the ZPS 1:1 blog.
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