• The Networking, Ever-Present, Highly Connected School Leader

    No jail cell or straight jacket could hold him! He shucked off handcuffs as easily as gloves. – Sid Fleischman (Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini) Challenges and Successes: Online Communities of Practice by Ann Ware (Ed Tech: Focus on K-12, Winter 2015) The role of the school leader has always been an…

  • New Literacies

    We were never born to read. – Maryanne Wolf Creating Digital Authors by Melody Zoch, Brooke Langston-DeMott, and Melissa Adams-Budde (Phi Delta Kappan, November 2014) Three literacy education professors see opportunities that technology can afford in today’s classrooms. They draw on others’ work in defining new literacies: New ways of reading and writing made available…

  • Teacher/Learner

    The most powerful way of thinking about a teacher’s role is for teachers to see themselves as evaluators of their effects on students. – John Hattie Battle of Semantics by Melissa Emler (Connecting to Create Greatness, January 2, 2015) A former high school English teacher and current education consultant confronts the concept of separating teaching from…

  • BlendEd

    Unlearning is more difficult than learning something new, and one of our most important challenges is to let go of existing structures in order to build more effective ones. – Alan November, from his book Who Owns the Learning? Preparing Students for Success in the Digital Age (Solution Tree, 2012) Hybrid Classes Outlearn Traditional…

  • Benchmarks of Quality

    I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really…

  • Trouble the Image

    Engagement in practitioner research is one way to trouble the images held by the education community, the policy community, and the public. – Nancy Fitchman Dana Kimberly Schools Create Award-Winning Literacy Model by Jen Zettel (Appleton Post-Crescent, December 16, 2014) A Wisconsin school district was profiled for their efforts to improve student literacy achievement. Using…

  • Beyond Technology

    The medium is the message. – Marshall McLuhan New York City libraries will soon let patrons “check out the Internet” by Nancy Scola (The Washington Post, December 4, 2014) New York City residents can now check out an Internet hotspot to use in their own homes. This normally monthly financial obligation is available to…

  • Beliefs and Values

    Leadership is 90 percent pulling weeds and 10 percent planting seeds.- Austan Goolsbee Common Core Reading: Difficult, Dahl, Repeat by Cory Turner (nprED, November 15, 2014) National Public Radio profiled a fifth grade classroom and their use of Common Core-aligned texts and practices. Turner described one lesson on close reading, with the teacher getting…

  • Publicly Private

    If you don’t want to see it on the front page of the newspaper, don’t put it in an email. – Former principal at a school I taught at a decade ago ClassDojo Adopts Deletion Policy for Student Data by Natasha Singer (The New York Times Bits, November 18, 2014) After an article was written…