Twitter Favorites (weekly)

January 28, 2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Is Success Predetermined?

January 23, 2012

This post will hopefully generate a little discussion.  I have a lot of questions about this and I’m hoping you might be able to help clear my thinking with some of your thoughts.

Success.  We all want it for ourselves and for our children and students, but I often wonder – what kind/level of success?  I think we can all agree there is a very wide variety of success and what is considered successful to some, may not be successful to others.  For example, for some families, graduating high school is a success.  For others, high school graduation is just a small step towards something bigger.

Questions I have about Success:

1.  Do you think students know, as they’re going through school, the success level that’s expected of them?  Is this expectation something they put on themselves or something others, like parents or teachers, try and establish for them?  I often think the expectation of teachers for students is not always on par with the expectations parents have.

2.  Is success predetermined?  Once a person hits middle or high school, can we pretty much tell the ceiling for that individual?  Perhaps?  We often tell kids – you can do anything you want, if you put your mind to it.  Are we really being honest with them?  Do you really believe that?  I’m not sure.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should tell a 5th grader – “Hey kid, good luck working at McDonald’s because you won’t amount to much more.”  What I’m saying is this – based on their appearance, speaking and communication skills, and family expectations, can’t we tell that a particular student has the chance to do something special and that another student probably won’t?  There are exceptions to this and various levels of special, but I wonder if a student’s success level is largely predetermined?

3.  How do you think kids evaluate success?  Do they consider a job with a high salary successful?  Are they successful is they have a solid job and can live comfortably?  Do they want awards for their job?  Perhaps a promotion?  Do they even think about it while in school or does this develop once they get in the workforce?

4.  Once students get in the work force, do you think they regret the effort they put in school because they realize how important it was.  Would they have done things differently knowing how it would impact their success on the job?

 

 

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Twitter Favorites (weekly)

January 21, 2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Twitter Favorites (weekly)

January 14, 2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Twitter Favorites (weekly)

January 7, 2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Twitter Favorites (weekly)

December 31, 2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Twitter Favorites (weekly)

December 17, 2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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To the Point!

December 11, 2011

Twitter can be a wonderful thing.  Sure, it can be a place to play Name that Tune

or see what others might be eating for lunch,

but more most of us, it’s much more.  It’s a place to share your thoughts, pick up some great ideas, and participate in a thoughtful discussion.  A week or so ago, an interesting hashtag popped up and started gaining steam.  I had no idea what was going on because I caught it after things started.  I started reading some tweets that were extremely clever and showed the humor of many of the people I follow.  I couldn’t help but continue following the #pencilchat discussion.  After a while, I realized I better figure out how this discussion began.  I did a little investigating and came across this.  It really sums up the discussion and it gave me a better understanding of how the #pencilchat discussion started and, in a way, helped me enjoy the tweets more.  In a nutshell, the word pencil was being substituted for computers or some other educational technology tool to express teacher’s frustration and feelings regarding their use in schools.

I encourage you to checkout all of the tweets for #pencilchat, but below are a couple of my favorites.




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Twitter Favorites (weekly)

December 10, 2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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SLATE 2011 Recap

December 9, 2011

A few days ago, I attended the SLATE Conference in Wisconsin.  I attended this conference last year, the first year of the conference, one more targeted for administrators than any I know of.  This year was a unique situation for me because I attended the conference not as a teacher.  If you read this previous post, you know that I recently changed jobs and no longer work in a school.  Every conference I’ve attended in the past was as a teacher, but not this one.  In the past, I went to sessions with an eye on what I could learn and take back to use at school.  In some cases, it was an idea to use with the students, in others, it was something to share with the staff.  This year, I wasn’t looking at things from that perspective.  In fact, I’m not sure what perspective I was using.

In my new position with Discovery Education, I’m responsible for many things, some I’m probably not aware of yet, but part of the job does include sharing with others.  For some reason, it doesn’t feel the same as heading back to school and directly sharing what I learned.  You might think sharing is sharing, but this just felt different.  I have to figure this out and how to use my time effectively now at conferences.  I attended a few sessions and picked up a few ideas, had a great dinner with the my DEN friends (Steve, Rita, Whitney, and others) regretted a few things (missing TamL17 ‘s Evernote session, formally meeting Curt Rees & other WI stars), met some new faces (Beth Lisowski , Melissa Pientok, Tim Hoffman and more) and chatted with familiar ones (John, Tami, Chad, Jena, Scott & Rachel) – typical stuff at a conference.  I didn’t have a bad experience, I just had a difference experience.  It was an experience I never had before.  I wonder if I’ll have the same feeling when I attend my next conference.

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