Edina Digital Age Learning

Way back in November 2007, I joined Twitter. Finally, in the spring of 2008, I realized I needed to follow people. One of the first people I followed, was an educator from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Dean Shareski. Today, I had the pleasure of hearing Dean's presentation as a keynote of TIES 2016: Whatever Happened to Joy? And How Do We Get It Back? Joy should be integral to what we do every day! He had 3 moments in his teaching career that made him realize joy was so important... Looking at a photo from his first year, "Why doesn't Christina ever smile?" Did she ever find her joy? It was a moment that mattered most. He was walking through an elementary school, and kids were singing as the teacher played guitar. There is something powerful about community, coming together and doing things collectively. Around 6-7 years ago, and lip dubs first came out. and he saw this one: With regards to this video: Does it address outcomes? Do it and the heck w...

The title of this post was inspired by a conversation lead by David Jakes this past weekend. I'll write more about that presentation in a future post. It's Not About the Tool! This fall, Will Richardson kicked off our district back to school gathering challenging the staff in our district to " Redefine Awesome !" He pointed out that, " The great thing is.." We now have an easy connection between one's passion to learn and the resources to learn it." "Unleashing student passion for learning" is one of the cornerstones of our district technology plan , along with "Empowering great teaching! Even the wording speaks more to educational philosophy and pedagogy, rather than " let's get some cool tools! " To me, the focus of this document, and for that matter the National Educational Technology Plan , which I'm a big fan of, is on LEARNING , not on the tool! The learning is the most important part. If it can be done ...