This interesting thought occurred during a conversation today. Are we living through a process whereby social media is finally breaking down some of the traditional divides that have kept education transformation suppressed? I suspect we are. What is twitter managing to do? Break down the barriers that have made it difficult for teachers...
Rwanda 2012 Reflection #4 – do you use your role for a higher purpose? As Principals, Superintendents or school leaders, do you use your position to try and ‘be the change’? It seems like a straightforward enough question – but probably one that bears a...
Rwanda 2012 Reflection #2 – ‘We could and should have done more’ – Kofi Annan, 2004 A journey I have just spent 8 days in Rwanda in preparation for a summit I am organizing with some colleagues – Innovate Rwanda (www.scil.com.au/rwanda). During these days, I had the privilege of being invited into...
Rwanda 2012 Reflection #1 Circumstantial Privilege I probably think way too much and I’ve had the opportunity to travel a fair amount in the last few years as part of a process to determine ‘next practice’ for our school. When in the air and looking at a map of the terrain over which...
Isn’t Twitter amazing! I have been in schools since 1978. But nothing has been like 2011, a real game-changing year for me, because I decided to take Twitter seriously. What I have discovered is a world of like-minded people who daily provide inspiration and ideas. A tribe. My tribe. I have also worked...
A valuable part of our professional journeys as educators is to look beyond our own experience and learn from others. One strategy that has worked very well for our circumstance has been to bend budgets so that we can recurrently send teams of teachers to learn from others. This strategy commenced a decade...
The title for this particular blog had its origin as I listened to a number of presentations on ‘blended learning’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_learning) at the Virtual School Symposium. I have for some years liked the notion of blended learning and it seemed a generally suitable term describing a learning environment where students could transition from the...
Okay … this lesson probably commenced in my early childhood if I count the number of hospital visits from bumping into (stupidly designed) concrete telegraph poles in Auckland, slipping off high chairs to raid the top kitchen cupboards or eating poisonous plants because they looked nice. But the notion of learning by doing...
I find leadership a fascinating topic. If something typifies our 21st century world for me, it is the lack of leadership where and when it is needed. This is evident in micro and macro contexts – in countries, communities and schools. The issue is possibly that the media focuses way too much on political...
About this time each year, I like to reflect on the past year and begin framing “goals” or “areas of emphasis” that will guide me through the forthcoming year. I don’t necessarily believe in New Year’s Resolutions, as they are so easy to break and forget about just days after the new year passes....
2011 has been an amazing year for me professionally – a year of great change at NBCS and a year of outstanding opportunities, travel and thinking for me. It has also been a year of new connections. I am going to try and capture some of the main insights during 2011 gained in...
Preface “Birds of a feather flock together.” How is it that various flocks of birds fly together in non-linear formation? How exactly do they communicate with each other to cut and cross paths in synchronized patterns? Is there a captain or a conductor or a coordinator? Do zigzagging birds rotate those roles of captain,...
I wasn’t there. In fact, I was almost literally half-way around the world. It happened at the ISTE conference in Philadelphia, and I’m in Dalian, China. The session was called: What Does it Mean to Be a Tech-Savvy Principal? I followed along on the #cpchat and on a tool called TodaysMeet, but I commented...
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether...
If you are planning to use the ‘flipped classroom’, then you might want to think about a few key ideas. Background: Here, on Connected Principals, Jonathan Martin has written a couple posts on the Flipped Classroom. In his first one, Reverse Instruction: Dan Pink and Karl’s “Fisch Flip”, he says: Increasingly, education’s value-add is...
Many teachers have the following one rule in their classroom: respect. Often it is expanded into respect for yourself, respect for others, respect for property. Respect is a quality that is essential to creating an environment where we can all flourish. Is this something that we always reciprocate to our students though? It is...
For about 2 months now I’ve been ‘out of the loop’. First I was on vacation, then I returned to a newly aggressive filtering of the internet in China. Unrest and uprisings in the Middle East have propagated fear of social networks and a People’s uprising here. I won’t go into detail about my...
I am extremely proud of the work that many of my colleagues have done with the Connected Principals website. We have been approached by Classroom 2.0 to do a live presentation on Saturday, at 12 PM EST. It would be great if you could join Patrick Larkin and myself to discuss the evolution and...
Patrick Larkin and I had the honour (he had the honor) of leading a conversation at Educon on Sunday and had some fantastic learning experiences ourselves with people from all areas of education. It was great to see so many of our “Connected Principal” colleagues able to attend both virtually and in person as...
In an effort to connect with more administrators while also providing resources that will help new, current, and aspiring leaders, the Connected Principals group has created a few more ways to connect. You can now follow Connected Principals on Twitter! You do not have to a Twitter account to see the resources that are...
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