Posts Tagged ‘
innovation ’
I may be revealing how much television I watch, but those K12.com Oregon Virtual Academy commercials are everywhere these days. Issues of school choice aside, their refrain of praises for online learning has me thinking more and more lately about the role of technology in education. How will new technologies help students’ learning? How will digital tools change the classroom? Will all these developments help create critical thinkers and global entrepreneurs (with “21st century skills”), or will they disconnect people from each other and create a generation of frenzied consumers of the overwhelming digital stream of information?
In our current ChalkBloggers poll, not one person has selected “Utilizing new technologies” as the most important element of classroom instruction. That’s a relief to me. I would never want a teacher to sacrifice real interactions (like providing constructive feedback and creating a positive and open learning environment, the two top answers) to let a computer do it for them. No one wants robotic teaching.
But certainly, lessons can be enhanced with new digital resources—and more and more, this and future generations of technology-steeped children will need to be reached with constructive interactive tools in the classroom. No one can completely shut off to new technologies and risk being left behind. The trick is finding a balance and carefullychoosing the most effective tools that will enrich, not distract from, student learning.
But how to sort through the myriad options that seem to be growing and changing even faster everyday? It seems like a full-time job just to keep up. But I’ve found a few new online resources (of course) that look to do the work for you.
(more…)
Category:
education technology, innovation, student achievement, student success, teaching strategies |
No Comments »
Tags: classroom tactics, innovation, resources, student achievement, student engagement, teaching strategies, technology
I love reform. I’m excited that as a state and nation we are looking at making changes to public education. But sometimes in moving forward, it’s good to look back.
I’ve been moved to look back at my earlier career by the publicity around Jose Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and product of the California middle school where I taught. I’ve been thinking about the Jose days (mid-90s) and the staff and organization of that school. Of course, he is only one student, but there were many new immigrant kids who did quite well there. So what were we doing there that worked?
One thing that we did have was lots of faculty communication across the grade levels. I taught an intense and rigorous program partly because it was jointly developed by all the teachers on the 5th grade team. We met every Wednesday during prep, opened our plan books and shared. As a 5th grade teacher in a 5-8th grade school, I was reminded in staff meetings and in passing about where kids needed to be in order to be successful in later grades. There was a mindset that we were preparing kids for college. It helped that we were a Silicon Valley school sitting in the shadow of Yahoo, Netscape and SGI, where innovation and hard work were cultural norms in the neighborhood.
(more…)
Category:
education reform, professional development for educators, student achievement, teaching strategies |
No Comments »
Tags: classroom tactics, collaborative culture, education reform, innovation, learning styles, professional development for teachers, reflection, student achievement, student engagement, teacher effectiveness, teaching strategies
There are some very inspirational leaders in the education profession. These are the people who seem to have the capacity to view the big picture and articulate so clearly what they see and hear. Linda Nathan, headmaster of Boston Arts Academy, author, and Harvard instructor in democratic schools, is such a leader.
Linda came to Oregon in May as the keynote speaker at the Oregon Small Schools Leadership Institute in Ashland. The theme of the one day Institute, led by E3 Small Schools Director Kathy Campobasso, was “moving forward.” Linda spoke with rich and vivid examples on the importance of leadership with a strong and clear vision and about the complexities of sustaining the work of personalizing education through the power of small. Principals, teacher leaders, teachers, superintendents, and board members from 22 small high schools participated in a variety of break-out sessions. They shared outstanding practices that are happening in their schools and celebrated the positive results.
Students from southern Oregon small schools presented a panel on their small high school experiences. The concluding forum was presented by Duncan Wyse, Executive Director of E3, Barbara Gibbs of Meyer Memorial Trust, and Linda Nathan on the importance and challenges of moving forward with positive school change on the state and national level. All were inspirational!
(more…)
Category:
small schools, student achievement, student success |
No Comments »
Tags: class size, collaborative culture, innovation, inspiration, Oregon schools, student achievement
It’s Chalkboard’s core belief that the best way to improve Oregon schools is to strengthen and support our teachers. So we’re thrilled to see this goal put into practice with the Oregon Educator Professional Development Commission’s new teacher resource website, which officially launched on Monday.
The site, www.OregonTeacherQuality.com, serves as a one-stop-shop for educator professional development tools and resources, including links to State and Federal standards, educator preparation programs, and a searchable database and calendar of over 100 useful articles, publications, websites, and events. It looks to be a great first step for anyone interested in becoming a teacher, and will also serve to reinvigorate and engage veteran teachers, keeping everyone up-to-date on the latest research, ideas, and available supports. Read the full press release here.
We’re especially excited about this development as an example of the public sector, private sector, non-profits, and the government coming together for the united purpose of improving educator effectiveness – and therefore, Oregon schools. The Oregon Educator Professional Development Commission was established in 2009 through Senate Bill 443, a joint effort of Chalkboard, the Oregon Education Association, the Oregon Department of Education (which, since then, has been responsible for coordinating the Commission’s work), and others. Two years later, we are now seeing their work reach teachers in a very real, meaningful way.
What do you think of the site? While the it is set to grow, check it out now and offer your own feedback to shape this valuable resource. We can’t wait to see where it goes.
Category:
Chalkboard Project, professional development for educators, teacher effectiveness |
No Comments »
Tags: education agenda, innovation, inspiration, professional development for teachers, resources, teacher effectiveness
My class of teacher candidates and I are reading Teaching 2030, a book that uses wonderful ideas from practicing teachers to discuss their changing roles. As the title suggests, the authors (Barnett Berry and the TeachersSolutions 2030Team) offer analyses of the present to project a positive future. The book discusses the union movement and its effects on the present roles; learning ecologies and technological changes; differentiated pathways and careers for teachers; and teacherpreneurism and innovation. It is the latter concept – teacherpreneurism – that most intrigues my teacher candidates and me.
First, a definition. Teacherpreneurism is not educational entrepreneurism: recruiting people from outside schools to “fix” what is inside the present schools. Instead, teacherpreneurs are “teacher-leaders of proven accomplishment who have a deep knowledge of how to teach, a clear understanding of what strategies must be in play to make schools successful, and the skills and commitment to spread their expertise to others – all the while keeping at least one foot firmly in the classroom.” (Teaching 2030, p.136) In other words, the goal of these people would be to work from within to make schools better. The premise is that good teachers, especially, but not exclusively, young ones, want to stay within teaching but not within the cradle to retirement of working only in a classroom. Instead of moving to administration, these newly envisioned roles would allow teachers to work with students but also with their colleagues and students beyond their own classroom in a variety of ways – and they would be paid accordingly, both in personal satisfaction and in salary differentiation.
When my students talked about these ideas, they became interested in what happens in schools now and wondered why these sorts of opportunities don’t seem to exist. So I had them watch videos of the CLASS Project, especially the Sherwood District which is trying anew salary schedule to allow teachers to move in that direction. http://educators4reform.org/participating-districts/sherwood-school-district/ I wanted them to see that in Oregon change has begun. (A side note: many were really surprised how the teachers in the CLASS project talked about the lack of supervision and evaluation before implementing these changes. Most of them have a very limited understanding of the profession they are entering, and I often think how their lack reflects society as a whole.)
We here in Eugene are experiencing yet another round of deep cuts, school closures, and furlough days. All of this publicity discourages my class – will there be jobs for them? And that is why I have them read this book so they can envision an alternative kind of schooling. While Rahm Emmanuel’s comment of “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” came back to bite him, I do agree that this present funding crisis offers us a way to rethink how we teach. Or, more specifically, how children learn. Whether we reexamine our outdated high school Carnegie units and the structures that result or apply technology to allow for individualized instruction in our over-crowded classrooms or some other yet-to-be-thought-of idea, we have the opportunity to create a new future. We Oregonians pride ourselves on innovation in environmental and health issues; why not in education?
Category:
CLASS Project, education reform, professional development for educators, teacher advocacy |
No Comments »
Tags: advice from students, collaborative culture, education reform, innovation, teacher advocacy, teacher frustration
“All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artist as we grow up.” ~Picasso
Ken Robinson agrees, “We don’t grow into creativity; we grow out of it. Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. They’re not frightened of being wrong.” But something happens that shuts down this inherent spark. Robinson claims the classroom is to blame for crushing creativity saying, “We are now running national education where mistakes are the worst things you can make.” Listening to his bold interpretations, I cannot help but nod along with his words. Because yes, a magical quality exists within children—the willingness to try, to step into the unknown, to create from scratch—that allows creativity to thrive, and yet somehow, somewhere, it disappears.
Too many classrooms suck the creative spark out of children—suffocating with standards and structure, judging on numbers and ranking with letters—merely equipping students with the tools necessary to obtain the “correct” answer using minimal time, effort, and resources. While this may be optimal for industry—high accuracy and efficiency—it’s far from preparing students for who they can be: innovative, collaborative, authentic, critical-thinking intellectuals and creators.
But the story doesn’t end here, for the crushing of creativity is not confined to classroom walls. No. It’s contagious and running rampant throughout all levels of education in America. Teachers, administrators, board members, union representatives, educational leaders… we all face that fear of making a mistake, which drives us to choose the shortest, simplest, most familiar, most likely to be “right” route. We do what’s been done before—because it’s safe. (more…)
Category:
education reform, student success, teacher advocacy, teaching strategies |
No Comments »
Tags: classroom tactics, collaborative culture, creativity, education agenda, education reform, innovation, inspiration, learning styles, student engagement, teacher frustration
