Last week here I posted my 8 Guiding Questions for Becoming A School of the Future, which were published in a new booklet from the National Association of Independent Schools A Guide to Becoming a School of the Future. The 60 page document, prepared by Robert Witt and Jean Orvis as lead authors and which I...
I highly recommend a brand new online publication, A Guide to Becoming a School of the Future. The 60 page document, prepared by Robert Witt and Jean Orvis as lead authors, is an attractive, appealing guide and deserves reading by every principal, connected or not. (Its intended audience is independent schools, but I...
Technology and innovation are accelerating rapidly outside education, but not rapidly enough inside education. To quote NAIS President Pat Basset, Schools which are not schools of the future will not be schools in the future. Like others, I am fascinated by pieces forecasting the coming changes in schooling, and I am inspired by their example...
Here’s news that seems to be surprising some people: what students think about their teachers’ teaching is accurate and relevant. Any and all efforts to improve schooling for our fast-changing era must, I believe, respect, honor and care about what students tell us. Let’s use the evidence of our students’ perceptions alongside of...
Perhaps my greatest professional passion these days is promoting innovative schools cultures, and particularly ones which facilitate our students in becoming innovators. So I am especially taken with a new article in Wired Magazine (January 2011), by TED curator Chris Anderson, on “How Crowd Accelerated Innovation Can Change the World.” (Or see Anderson’s...
David Brooks is an old faithful for me, an inspiration for his ability to bring wisdom and broader understanding to the daily events of our time, and to draw from our society trends of larger sociological or even philosophical significance. I don’t always agree with him, often I don’t, but I am nearly always...
On Saturday, our hometown Tucson was struck hard by an individual acting without conscience, without rationality, and possibly without sanity. This terrible strike hit us at our community’s most sensitive place: not only did it harm and kill many fine, fine people, it hit us...
In my own effort to lead a 21st century school, I am finding no issue more difficult than determining the appropriate role of the AP exam and AP exam preparation curriculum. It cannot be ignored that the AP is an important symbol and signifier to many families of a high caliber academic college prep secondary...
Solitude and Leadership, the title of William Deresiewicz’s much circulated American Scholar article intones. Solitude and Leadership: one cannot help but lower one’s voice and slow one’s enunciation as the title is enunciated. This piece has been shared with me by many, the estimable David Brooks recently cited it as a top essay of the...
Milton Chen, the longtime Executive Director of Edutopia, has a terrific new (2010) book, Education Nation. John Robinson has very effectively reviewed and summarized the book at 21st century principal; as John says, “Chen’s book provides many ideas for educational innovation and reform. It is a great addition to the 21st century administrator’s book...
False and mistaken binaries cloud our minds far too frequently. We look at an impending dramatic transformation, such as what is happening with technology in education, and our minds often cannot help but create binary, zero-sum pairs: more technology must mean less face-to-face communication or less active, physical learning. Mentally, we cannot help...
The Chronicle of Higher Ed recently ran a valuable piece (November 19) containing many inspiring anecdotes of university reputation-building success entitled “How to Build a Perception of Greatness.” In it, they “outline some principles of slowly and sustainably building a perception of greatness,” drawing upon examples at dozens of colleges and universities. ...
Remarks to students, 12.8.10. Exams are next week: how many of you are looking forward to taking exams? I hope the answer is many of you, because I believe that when a well-prepared mind engages with a well designed test, fireworks can happen inside our minds. I had many experiences of feeling more...
I’m inspired by Patrick Larkin’s posting of Chris Lehmann’s presentation; like Patrick and Chris, I too fear that much of what we ask and require high school students to do “stinks.” I don’t think that much of what we do motivates our students via autonomy, mastery, or purpose. All of us who are...
Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction? Digitally driven distraction is the bogeyman of the hour. We ed-tech advocates should make clear in every way we can that we are more concerned about distraction, not less, than other educators: the difference is that we talk about the problem of distraction by framing the issue more...
We know that content memorization must no longer the goal of our learning programs; what our goal must be is that students can make the most sense of the voluminous and fast-accelerating quantity of information which will forever be at their fingertips, and about which they must be able to think critically, to select,...
The three things I am most passionate about these days in my educational leadership (and blogging) are the following: Empowering students to be more engaged, active, vigorous learners by providing them the digital tools to go, explore, research, collaborate, publish, create, and communicate in web 2.0, online learning environments. Transforming learning by transforming assessment,...
As the internet revolution continues to build and increasingly influence everything under the sun, so too it is going to have a massive impact on teaching and learning in K-12 schools. Educators who don’t anticipate this change and work to ride the wave will be subsumed by it, I fear. Quality instructional delivery for...
To learn. Like many others, I read books and articles, attend conferences, workshops and trainings, and visit other schools in order to learn more about best practices and innovative new approaches. But I know about myself that I will retain much more, and be much better able to draw upon and use that...
Michael Horn, Clayton Christensen, and Curtis Johnson return with a new edition of Disrupting Class, and a new whitepaper on a topic of concern to all of us, Student Motivation. I reviewed favorably and discussed Disrupting Class about two years; I think it is an important book to inform our thinking about where K-12 learning...
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