Working At The Edge

Make School Different: Digital leadership & Transformation

Engagement

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I’m starting to think more about engagement and what we do best as teachers to engage our students in learning. Engagement is a slippery slope. What looks like engagement to me may be passive compliance to you. This distinction became much clearer to me as I attended two days of professional development in the new […]

Time and Change

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Two great videos shared on different blogs today. The first comes from Scott McLeod and Dangerously Irrelevant. The video shares the important idea that we need time if we are going to be creative. For me personally, this idea connects to conversations I have had with a colleague who has moved to central office from a […]

Know a skeptical parent? Have them watch this.

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This video, created by Frank Romanelli (discovered via Kevin Hodgson’s blog – Kevin’s Meandering Mind), struck me as an excellent watch particularly for parents skeptical of the changes happening in the world today as a result of technology. I’m particularly thinking of parents who say things like kids don’t read/write enough, they spend too much […]

The Mirror

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It’s human nature to not want to take responsibility for problems. We are good – very good –  at this behavior in education. One of the most common problems I hear about (largely from adults – parents and teachers) is the “distraction” of technology. And the scapegoat is almost always, “the technology” or the students. […]

Immersing Ourselves

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This was posted by Making Thinking Visible on their Facebook wall earlier today: Changes in our ability to access information and engage in non-school based vehicles for acquiring information are pushing schools and educators to think beyond the delivery of information as their prime role. It really resonated with me, even though I’d like to […]

TEDx NYED – My notes….

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This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the TEDxNYED event at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. I enjoyed attending the event and was pleased to hear so much about the importance of students creating and collaborating. We don’t do enough of this, via technology tools, in schools. Unedited LiveStream is […]

Internet Filtering: Aligning Goals and Actions

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Internet filtering is a big issue in schools. School leaders struggle with how stringent to apply the internet filter. Filter sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and tools like Skype because they are a “distraction”? Or see value for learning in this list and model and coach students (and teachers) in effective and proper use? […]

Is BYOD good for learners and teachers?

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Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) certainly seems to be a topic among many school leaders – locally and nationally. In fact, at the state technology conference in Pennsylvania (PETE&C) this past February, there was an entire strand of sessions on BYOD. I do not work in a BYOD district so I do not have any […]