- one school doing schoolwide broadcasts to celebrate student/team achievements instead of assemblies; the students run it - yea! we already do the broadcast!!!! we still have assemblies though...
- reflection time is so small now with the rapid growth in technology - how do you combat that? That is why we hear great things but have NO time to implement them effectively or in a timely manner.
- "Leadership in the 21st century is different...leaders today are leading from within...Vision is absolutely the key."
- Can change happen on a large scale, or does it need to be individualized - on a small scale? The vision can be on a large scale,but you need to give people license to be great. It needs to be good fun for teachers as well as students.
"It's about the space. It always is."
- Shared spaces where teachers and students can read, be on the web, text, relax, etc. Places esthetically pleasing and relaxing - conducive to learning. I wish we had shared spaces like this for students and teachers that were not huge herding areas (i.e central stairwell, cafeteria - yuck). Most teachers don't like being in those areas, why would the students? How about a place that the students AND teachers would enjoy relaxing in?
- "Put mirrors on the wall...it transforms the space." Can we even have mirrors in our schools?
- Little blow up spaces where students can sit and work quietly. They are like tiny inflatable rooms/pods/stations that are actually really quiet and can be deflated when not in use. Too cool!
- Big children working with little children. We could have students at the high school work with kids at the primary, elementary, middle, intermediate schools.
- Outside of the school remodeled into a skate park. "Make the school a more playful place...it's not a hospital. They are going to be there for a long time."
Neighborhood Learning Centers
- "One of the things we do so badly is celebrate children's learning in the community." He put an artist in residence in all the schools and their job is to celebrate what the students are doing in the school. That is what is advertised around the town!!! They also did it with the older people in the area.
- Students have spaces in the community (not just in the closed walls of the school) to showcase their best work. Have them get in the HABIT of exhibiting their learning!!! Have the students teach the other students in the school, in the community - Not just in a few classrooms!
Other thoughts:
- Have students text their thoughts, suggestions, etc. to a certain number. We could do that with class meetings, assemblies, classes, etc.
- Do we want to lead in education or do we want to follow? "We must take great care to avoid the UK mistake of over-testing against narrow targets." - from the Australian conference Unfortunately, we OVER-test here as well.
- The countries that are doing well in education are the countries who are comfortable with who they are.
- heppell.net - all of his info - He has a phone blog where he takes pictures as he goes around the world and blogs about them - This is along the lines of what I'd like to have my AP kids do. Should I have them do it on a specific topic, or just life in general and anything interesting they find? Any suggestions?
- Talking Heads program - online chat of head-teachers in UK - Why couldn't we do that? we could start an eClassroom for the dept heads within our own school, or the technology committee (do we even have one), or the heads of a particular subject across the district, state, country, world !!!! Am I getting ahead of myself? I'm just excited! I'm already set on doing an eClass for my English Department (some will want to kill me, but so be it ;-) We need to start leaving global footprints instead of national ones.
- From a cab driver in Singapore: "We have great natural resources, they're called children."
- the learnometer project http://rubble.heppell.net/learnometer/
- One interesting thing from the above website: "doctoral profession - turning every school worldwide into a micro-research centre where the hypothesis is that the school can improve, the scholarship is to see what other schools have found to be effective and practice is to harness it for that improvement..." Teachers can earn their doctorate within their own school...Get a cohort within your school to work on this together. See more about it at http://www.heppell.net/doctoral/
- Search for mental arithmetic on YouTube - amazing way to learn multiplication!!! So awesome!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xF4hOcDi5Y This is crazy!!!
- How many people in the real world..in the workplace are doing timed essays? None. Instead of assigning an essay, have them find one of those essays online, critique it, change it, fix the grammar, etc. That is a 21st c skill...something more realistic.
- School accountability is essential...but NCLB is a catastrophe. We have to be accountable to our parents and students. Parents rarely see what students are doing. We have to do a better job of articulating our students' work. "if you are trying to teach students water safety, we don't keep them away from water for 13 years and then throw them off the pier." That is one of the best things I've heard all day. We have the technology; why are we keeping them from it? We need to teach them how to use it at an early age...just like we would teach them how to be safe around water. I wish everyone in our district felt that way.
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