Edina Digital Age Learning

Today I was walking down the hall between our middle school and high school and came upon this scene: Here's what I like about this picture as it relates to our Bring Your Own Device initiative: The student in the middle is using her personal device on our network (You can tell by the bumper sticker on the front, and the fact that it's a Mac in a PC district!) This meets our goal of personalizing student learning .  They are working in the middle of the hall way ( Anytime/Anywhere learning outside the walls of the classroom ). They were all collaborating on the document she was working on ( Enhancing 21st Century Skills ).

On August 29, noted education author and speaker, Will Richardson spoke to our staff at the district kick-off event. His talk, " Learning In A Networked World: For Our Students and Ourselves ," is one I have seen a few times, but his message was new to staff here in Edina. Prior to his talk, our Superintendent, Dr. Ric Dressen, shared many of the positive things that have been happening in Edina. Our district has been recognized by many National and International organizations for excellence in education . Our district administers more AP exams than any district in a 5 state area, and graduates saved over $2 million in tuition costs through their success on those tests. The word of the day was: AWESOME ! After a brief story about how his children learned how to use a program via Skype from an 11 year old in Scotland, Richardson asked a question of the audience: How do we define learning? Richardson shared this definition from Seymour Sarason: The great thing is.." We...

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...

 I had to leave the ISTE conference early due to transportation issues, so I finally got a chance to hear this amazing talk, from Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia today. I've had the pleasure of knowing Chris for the last 3 years, and I consider him one of my heros! Many of the ideas Chris brings out in this talk are the reasons I am a teacher, and why I have been passionately involved in educational technology for the last 23 years. Someone else commented that all you need to know about the talk, and Chris's philosophy can be summed up in the first 7 minutes of the video...you'll see why!! So what do you think? Are these ideas worth spreading? How do we make that happen?

The Global Learning Imperative: How do we, as teachers, help empower our students to take their learning experience global? Alan November moderated this session, featuring Kathy Cassidy from Prairie South Schools in Saskatchewan, Michelle Anderson , Principal in Deer Creek Schools in Oklahoma, and Larisa Shelkin , Founder of the Global Technology and Engineering Consortium in Boston. November started by a story about asking "What is the most important 21st Century skill?" to the CEO of the biggest bank in the world. The banker said, "empathy," because we need people who can evaluate the dynamics of a big project from the perspective of others. The worst people at this are Americans. He asked some West Point teachers the same question, "Patreaus had asked his staff to read, 3 Cups of Tea. The mission had changed from win the war to win the peace. Empathy is a critical skill in this endeavor. Michael Wesch, said empathy as well. Blocking social media t...

The session began with ISTE President, Holly Jobe, sharing her vision, including authenticity, and student centered learning. I was impressed with her philosophy, and her background with the Pennsylvania Classrooms for the Future program . I think ISTE has made a great choice in leadership! This year's keynote was John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, and a uthor of Brain Rules . I first heard of Dr. Medina a few years ago through Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen Website , then I bought the book.I blogged about his ideas about multi-tasking, here . Medina talked much faster than I could take notes on (Still not used to typing on the iPad), so I will share the Twitter feed here of the keynote for important quotes that were shared: How does formal neuroscience apply to Ed tech or education in general? He says we don't know! Still, certain mythologies have evolved: We only use 10% of our brain's capacity There are people who are Left brain dominant and others wh...

Jackie Gerstein suggested this topic because she believes that the teacher is no logger the "only expert" in the room. She has a great presentation on this here. It's worth the time to view! Flipped Classroom: The Full Picture View more presentations from Jackie Gerstein She feels that students can find these videos to get the information from experts rather from the teacher, who may or may not be an expert. Here are some notes from the conversation: An AP History teacher shared that he assigned lectures on Monday's and had small group discussions in a blended format over the next two days. Teachers without good discussion skills benefit from smaller discussion groups, and as we found in Edina, students can go deeper into topics of interest. This teacher starts the year lecturing and showing them how to take notes and get information from the lecture.He requires the students to show their notes in order to participate in the small group discussion. This ha...