Edina Digital Age Learning

Disclaimer ; These thoughts are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. This post has been ruminating for a few months. Glad to finally get all my thoughts down. What is Personalized Learning? Last December, Pernille Ripp , educator and author of “ Passionate Learners: How to Engage and Inspire Your Students ,” posted on her blog about 5 Tenets of Personalized Learning . This post resonated with me, as I believe she really hit on a key aspect: Start with the STUDENT! Here are the 5: Student Voice Student Choice Student Planning Student Reflection Student Action My Take Giving students voice, and REALLY getting to know the students, fits in perfectly with our district’s embrace of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Instruction , along with Doug Fischer’s work on “really getting to KNOW your students! Student Choice does NOT mean everything is a free-for-all. The idea is to give them choice in What they learn, How th...

As I've mentioned in a previous post , October is Connected Educator Month . Yesterday, I had an experience that reminded me of the power of sharing , making connections, and opening up the door to possibilities. For the last two years, my district has been involved in looking at what our schools will look like in the years to come. We have done studies at the Birth-Grade 5 and Secondary level , and have some pretty cool projects underway. Yesterday, the Communications department sent out a link to a video they created to share one of the shifts in learning, personalizing learning . Edina Public Schools - Personalized Learning from EPS Communications on Vimeo . I decided to ask for some feedback on the video from Will Richardson , who was the keynote speaker at our district kickoff a few years ago , and someone whose opinion I respect. What followed, was a good back and forth conversation that I captured in Storify below: [ View the story "Connections ...

Last spring, our district developed our 2015 Technology Plan . Using our district mission statement as a foundation, we identified 4 goals in the plan: Unleash student's passion to be lifelong learners Empower and enhance excellent teaching Engage families in a partnership for education Demonstrate excellence in service, operation, and productivity On Monday, we will have our yearly district kick-off event, and the tech plan will be one of the key components. I will have a small roll in the morning session, sharing an "Aha!" moment from my experience as an educator.  We will also showcase members of our Edina Teaching and Technology Cohort , a group of 25 educators who spent the last year in a job embedded, professional development experience where they earned a Teaching and Technology Certificate from Hamline University . Cohort members will conduct poster sessions , showcasing how they transformed their instruction this past year. I'm proud to have had th...

Yesterday, Sara Swenson , Edina High School Librarian (She prefers that term!) shared the following video with me via e-mail that she found on an NCTE Web s ite . I thought that the video crystallized for me the potential for educational technology integration, 21st Century learning and learning beyond the classroom walls. It is something we are working on with our Community of Practice . That isn't to say that there won't be road blocks to navigate, or crevasses to traverse! We know they exist now! I was intrigued to see the teacher's role defined in such creative ways!! When people ask you what you do for a living, do you respond as "teacher", "educator", "instructor", facilitator", or are you a "Connected Learning Incubator" or are you still "Keeper of All Knowledge Which Is Good?" Hmmm ... Then this morning, I checked my Twitter feed and Will Richardson had posted about a conference on the Future of Education ...

I couldn't go to the National Education Computing Conference in San Antonio, but I was able to watch a great session on using streaming video in the classroom, right in my kitchen while I made dinner! Free video streaming by Ustream

Two articles came across my desk recently that I thought I would share. The first, is an article about student blogging from 21st Century Connections . It speaks to some of the concerns that staff have had about student blogging being too "schoolish" and offers up a way to engage students and allow them to drive the discussion. What I also liked about the article was the concept of not just getting students to write thoughtfully, but also to use blogs to get students to read critically. The second article was an interview Daniel Pink conducted with Thomas Friedman on education in a "flat" world . In the interview they discuss the need for a liberal arts education, and both left and right brained instruction. Will Richardson had an interesting video post on the brain from Jill Bolte Taylor that has some good left and right brain information.

Earlier today I asked CoP members, and other staff who are blogging with students if they had any students who fit Will Richardson's definition of a good student blog . Later, I saw Clay Burrel's post at "Beyond-School.org" regarding one of his students who fit the bill as an excellent student blogger. It may be worth giving kids an exemplar of what student blogs can look like. Tim K's response regarding his students attitude about blogging at school brings up an interesting point, "some suggested writing about movies they see outside class (definitely makes it seem less “schoolish,” which seems like a problem with blogging assignments in general). " Do blogging assignments seem too "schoolish" ? How can we make them more authentic, and less busywork? I'd love to hear your comments.