Edina Digital Age Learning

George Couros , creator of ConnectedPrincipals.com was the Tuesday Keynote at the TIES 2015 Conference  talking about " The Innovators Mindset , the title of his latest book."  George's definition of the Innovators Mindset is the belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents are DEVELOPED, leading to the creation of BETTER ideas! How do you leverage strangers? For our wedding photos, we tweeted, "Does anyone know of a good photographer in Edmonton?" My mom is turning 80 and she's just now learning to read and write, but she's open to learning. She texts him with Emoticons.  His dad came to Canada in his 20's with a 2nd grade education, and raised a family and went from a dishwasher to owning a restaurant, yet we complain about moving from Word to Google Docs!" "Transformational leaders don't start by denying the world around them. Instead, they describe a future they'd like to create instead!"  -Seth Godi...

Rafranz Davis , author of the book, The Missing Voice in EdTech  Conversations, Bringing Diversity into EdTech " was our keynote speaker at the Edina Learning Institute. All of us as teachers have had times where we were NOT innovative, creative, brilliant! She is the first college graduate in her family, and comes from a very supportive close knit family. She comes from a "Minecraft Family," as a way to create as a family, both at home and outside. She loves that she can bring that outside activity into her classroom. As a student, in 5th grade she realized that she couldn't focus in class, as she began to day-dream. She felt like she didn't belong, and didn't have the platform to do creative things. It fueled her desire to become a teacher, to help students just as herself. She remembers the Tandy 1000 and AOL, and the first time she logged on to the Internet. It was the greatest thing ever to have access! It reminded me of waiting 4 hours to ...

Dr. Yong Zhao was the Monday keynote at the TIES conference. His latest book, The Big Bad Dragon, The Myth of Chinese Super Schools , reviewed by Diane Ravitch, here , discusses what we really need to focus on with education reform today. Zhao started talking about Nokia phones, looking at how they used to be the most popular. Who killed Nokia?  Nobody killed Nokia, but Nokia itself. It tried to make a dumb phone smarter, Apple tried to make a smart phone! In education, are we modifying existing school, or are we trying to invent something different? He's been looking at developing language software for a long time. We have done a lot of work. Technology and other reforms have failed. "Progressive education" No Child Left Behind Race to the Top Common Core All of these "reforms" really haven't transformed, or solved our problems. Obama and Bush's reform efforts have been about the same. Once you get to the top, you fall down off t...

Today's Meet: http://todaysmeet.com/create14 Doug Johnson , Technology Director for Burnsville, Eagan, Savage, shared his thoughts on creativity at the opening session at TIES 2014 . Vasco De Gamma was an influencer of Doug's in regards to creativity, due to the project his grandson did regarding him. He had created a first person narrative, where he was going to tell DeGamma's story, and was told by the teacher that he couldn't deliver it, and had to just read the report. Perhaps the teacher was so focused on standardized test scores, she couldn't get past that. Goals of the talk; Why is it imperative we take developing creativity seriously? Pink in "A Whole New Mind: Can someone overseas do it cheaper? Can a computer do it faster? Am I offering something that satisfies the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age? 60% of an iPhone is pure Apple profit. How can they have 100% markup on a device? Because they have convinced us ...