I’m really impressed with this little mac app. Some beautiful photography is at your fingertips any time you need a little inspiration. I can’t wait to try making a few slide decks with this.
Zoommy helps you find awesome free stock photos for your creative product or inspiration
Source: Zoommy
Hey, if you are curious about just where all of these Cam Opener Proposals are coming from around the city, here is a map of all of the schools! Go check out how many teachers and leaders are taking part in your area.
Reinventing tech for the next generation of #goodgirlsgonegeek.
I love teaching and teachers. This movement for young educators is one of my favorite things.
I love what you have started here. I began teaching in 2004 at the age of 21, and even then there was so much negativity towards going into teaching. For me, though, it was all I had ever wanted to do. Anyone trying to talk me out of it or disparage the process of teaching and learning held no place in my discourse. But I think it was partially for this reason that I began connecting with others on the web, initially through blogs, but then with Twitter and later Google+. These were the tools that I used to fight back against the anti-teachers and reform efforts that were targeting the de-professionalization of teaching.
It is my sincere hope that this movement of yours continues to grow and becomes the dominant narrative for young teachers. I will do anything I can to help, but more than anything I will continue to encourage those passionate and driven children from our schools to go into teaching and to prize learning and inquiry. Again, thank you for your direction and your vision.
via #WhyTeach: Our Chance to Push Back | Young Teachers Collective.
Accountability in professional learning isn’t about requiring things. It is about making sure the learning is owned by the professional (the teachers, the leaders, etc.).
I really appreciate this approach to Personalized PD from a school leader perspective. This is something that we are starting to work on as an approach for our whole district, to varying levels of success. The one thing that caught my attention more than anything else was the idea that by making PD “optional”, you were actually increasing accountability rather than lowering it. I find this idea fascinating as it is entirely contrary to the narrative that is being created around most professional learning opportunities.
The traditional narrative is that in order to set high expectations for teachers, you have to require the PD that supports those expectations. You are offering up that because you are making PD optional, you are setting the expectations higher for yourselves as leaders of the professional learning experiences and higher for teachers who can make their own choices for how to achieve the goals that you have set for them. I believe you are also encouraging growth and reflection conversations much more frequently because the teachers have to make choices that are in their own best interest. They cannot blame anyone else if they do not achieve what they hoped for.
Sometimes, in our rush to provide everyone with a better learning experience, we gloss over the opportunities that currently exist for great learning that can happen both because of and in spite of current learning environments.
I am somewhat divided on the topic of AP classes, as the ones I took in English and Calculus were the ones I most enjoyed and remembered in all of high school. The teachers were supportive and made the courses about learning and not the test. However, my AP credits let me skip an entire year of college and start teaching even sooner. That was my goal, but I enjoyed every minute of the journey in getting there.
Now, I think that it is pretty likely that I enjoyed these courses because I was really good at playing the game of school. I could write an essay without trouble and I could study for a few hours and do well on tests. I do not believe that the ability to do those things should determine whether or not you have a great learning experience. I believe that opening up many other opportunities for kids to learn is the right approach. However, I do not begrudge those who enjoy the challenge of an AP-style curriculum. It isn’t for everyone, and we shouldn’t push everyone to do it. But, I don’t think we need to remove it as an option either.
Hello Everyone!
I just wanted to record a quick video to say the following things:
1. Welcome to the Project Cam Opener Community! I am so excited to learn with you in this space.
2. If you have been a part of Project Cam Opener in the 2014-2015 school year, we would like to you RE-APPLY to be a part of it next year. You can trade out your equipment if there are better/different items you would like to use, and you can change the scope of your project as well.
3. If you have already applied for next school year, bring someone along! Please invite other teachers in your school or that you have worked with from other schools to take part in Project Cam Opener. The more the merrier!
Thanks so much for being a part of this awesome community. I can’t wait to see what we create together.
This is awesome! I will be using this in nearly every email from here on out (alright, maybe not EVERY email).
The fastest way to include GIFs in your emails
write anywhere of the email body ::gif me thegifyouneed and the
gif will appear as soon as you stop writing
via Gmail GifLine | The Fast way to put GIFs in your emails.
The Stephen Johnson work I am describing is partly here. I believe deeply in expanding what is possible for our own learning and the learning of others.
This is the entire point for me: conferences can “give me the time and space to try new things and to discuss new ideas.” The way you are articulating this here is potent, and I do believe that until you have had some of these hallway or session moments, you don’t see professional learning (at conferences or anywhere else) for what it can be: transformational.
I believe in what Stephen Johnson talks about with “the adjacent possible”. Essentially, he says that new things are only possible because of what the last set of innovations has opened up. I think that effective PD is much the same way. While we might not immediately see the direct effect of attending a session or having an engaging conversation with a colleague, we should trust that new outcomes are now possible because they are now adjacent to our thinking. It is the “time and space” that allows us to expand what is adjacent to us.
A principal that is making some really great moves:
This post is brilliant. You are providing so much in the way of student ownership for learning and I really respect the way in which you have laid out the priorities for schools. The one thing that resonated with me most, however, was this statement:
“As a principal, I had to non-reelect several teachers over the years. None of them were released because of lack of proficiency in technology, standards, assessment, or curriculum, but rather because they ultimately could not connect with students.”
I believe that it is this connection that we are striving for each day, and without which, students will not learn. It is the re-imagined role of the student that is somehow elusive in the conversations about standards or technology integration. And yet, it cannot be written off. It is the whole of what we are trying to build.
So, let’s connect with our kids and let’s make those connections authentic enough to support them through some really difficult and important learning tasks. If you are doing these things at your school, you are doing right by your students. I thank you for it.