The notion of delivering content is not one that creates images of an engaging classroom. While my belief is that content/curriculum should be discovered, shared, and uncovered, teachers do deliver content in varying degrees. A question I posed nearly three years ago and continue to challenge educators with is this: how are you rethinking the [...]
I spent some time this weekend watching Finn explore lentic ecosystems. As we wandered and discovered, we found the frogs hopping on what appeared to be a sort of lily pad to be most exciting. Take that with our recent love of the frogs in various Disney movies, it is safe to say I’ve spent [...]
Grades bother me. They always have. I learned quickly the meaningless nature of grades. They were everything to me early in elementary school but junior high exposed their flaws: they were rewards and punishment, they were status symbols, they sometimes represented quality while at other times represented quantity, etc. Most of of all, they had [...]
As part of a discussion starter for class tomorrow, I’ve been assigned to help a new teacher better understand one of Marzano’s nine instructional strategies: how and why this strategy facilitates student learning, sample activities or plans that could be used with students, and method(s) to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy on student learning. [...]
With twists and turns of the camera, Nintendo highlights in its most recent commercial an “escape to reality”, an escape to the world where lines and spaces have blurred. It is this notion of blurring spaces that continues to intrigue me and serve as the foundation of many of my explorations: physical and digital spaces, [...]
Ten years ago with a journal in my hand, I spent 100+ hours observing classrooms in and surrounding Bloomington Normal area. Most of the observations centered on how the teacher served as a facilitator as well as the structure of the classroom. While there were prompts that guided us to explore specifics, the overall experience [...]
Cross Posted at Leader Talk The potential of emerging technologies and the philosophy behind web 2.0 to transform the learning environment continues to excite me, but there is a need to create new mindsets instead of presenting examples, ideas, and presentations based upon traditional and old mindsets of their use, a retro-fitting or “old way, [...]
As I sat on our patio engrossed in my daily read, the light screeching of bicycle tires startled me and drew my intention towards a mother stopped on the sidewalk looking back at her still moving daughter saying “Stop for a moment”. Curious as to why anyone would stop in such a relatively boring spot [...]
“Lecturing is a bad teaching practice, would you agree?” I not only agreed but challenged my fellow soon to be teachers to break the evil chains of a world of teacher-centered, direct instruction hungry educators driving students to boredom with their buckets of wisdom waiting to be poured. After years in the classroom and recent [...]
Cross Posted on Education Week’s Leader Talk I continue to wonder where the instructional leaders have gone. It seems to me that too many leaders are being pulled away from their core mission just when education, teachers, and students need leaders to inspire a new, more powerful direction. So, I challenge you, instructional leaders, to [...]
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