Today's Reads

After a marathon session of grading literary analysis papers, I have a little down time.  Thus, I'm sharing the cool stuff I've stumbled across via the web, Twitter, and colleagues.


I guess Legos can even make math cool.

Source: oneperfectdayblog.net via Sarah on Pinterest

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Love this one too.  I'm going to use it in one of my summer tech classes.

Source: educatorstechnology.com via Kurt on Pinterest

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I love this one: 15 Ways You Know You are a Disruptive Innovator in Higher Ed

1. Your colleagues think you’re crazy, but the students think you’re awesome.
2. You’re exhausted.
3. If you left your institution tomorrow, they’d be screwed.
4. Your inspiration comes from your twitter feed, blogs and experiences “in the wild” much more often than it does from a textbook or trade journal.
5. You’re passionately curious.
6. You juggle anywhere between 1-3 side projects at any given time.
7. Your initiatives cannot be explained in one or two words (ie. it’s not just a weekend program for students, it’s a freakin’ EPIC experience…let me tell you more about it)
8. Your job is a platform. It’s not just a job, it’s a way for you to inspire others and create things.
9. You have an opinion about important matters, ideas and issues…and you share it.
10. You’re working with offices on campus that no one in your department has worked with.
11. Your office is not perfectly neat at all times.
12. You stay late, not because you have to, but because this stuff is so cool and you’re in the zone.
13. You’re not afraid of the path less traveled no matter how messy it might be.
14. You fail at least once a day/week/month/semester–whatever it is you’re failing, and it’s because you take risks.
15. At the core, you believe in students and they drive all that you do.

So where does that put you in the grand scheme of disruption?

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Twelve reasons to get your school district tweeting

Quite frankly, Twitter has been the best thing to happen to my teaching and professional development since I went back to grad school.

What are you non-Tweeters waiting for?


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Millennial Employees:  Tips for Hiring, Managing, and Retaining Young Staff

A colleague sent this to me, and it's great.  And so true.

Here are my favorite tips that I try to use in my classroom to get the most out of these kids.

1. Overcommunicate. All the time.

Most Millennials grew up in a warm, supportive environment in which they were constantly told they were the best or brightest--regardless of the facts. As a result, their thirst for immediate feedback is never-ending. Accept this reality and overcommunicate. Hold regular all-hands meetings. Provide feedback, good, bad, or otherwise, in the moment. Shine the spotlight on those who truly deserve it, and should you need to terminate an underperforming Millennial, offer thorough clarity on why and how that's being done. There can never be enough clarity when it comes to communicating with Millennials. Give them an opportunity to speculate on any decision you make, and you'll experience a hellish version of the corporate grapevine 2.0 run amok.

This is one thing that really works.  If students don't get what's going on in class via our weekly syllabus that I put into their hands at the beginning of class each Monday, then they can find digital copies of it on Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook.  I can text it to them as well.  Plus, I can upload it to our class blog.  Talk about over communication!

My favorite bit of advice comes tacked on to the end of the article -

Perhaps the best piece of advice I can provide you is this: Display your vulnerability and own up to your own mistakes. It's one thing to hold Millennials accountable for their misdeeds and misspellings. It's quite another to stand in front of scores of young, impressionable employees and admit that you, the CEO, were solely responsible for a mistake. Being authentic with a generation that prizes authenticity above all else is probably the single best way to manage the unmanageable.

When students (or workers) can see themselves reflected in you (whether it's their passion, fear, foolishness, curiosity, interests . . .) it always makes it easier to engage them.

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You may be a bad teacher if . . .

Now how can't you be intrigued by a blog post with that title?

1.  You may be a bad teacher if you still use the same lesson plans you laminated 20 years ago.

2.  You may be a bad teacher if you don't really check to see if students are learning until the summative assessment.

3.  You may be a bad teacher if you think students doing poorly on the test is a sign of rigor.

4.  You may be a bad teacher if students are sitting in rows in your room NEVER talking to each other.

5.  You may be a bad teacher if you publicly make fun of student errors and encourage students to do the same.

6. You may be a bad teacher if your idea of differentiation and "using data" means to re-teach a concept to the entire class when there are several low grades.

7.  You may be a bad teacher if you think assigning huge ditto packets of worksheets = effective use of supplemental resources.

8.  You may be a bad teacher if you think sharing clear learning targets is "spoon feeding" the students.

9.  You may be a bad teacher if students can master all of the summative assessments in your class but still fail because they didn't comply with your busy work paper requirements.

And finally, 10.  You may be a bad teacher if you recognized yourself in any of these statements and prefer to make excuses rather than change what you're doing.

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Cynicism is contagious; so is hope.

Which camp do you want to be in?  I'm an optimist by nature, but there are days when it's easy to give in to the cynicism.  But why?  Does it ever do you any good?  

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And I'll end with this gold mine - 50 Education Technology Tools You Can Start Using Today.

Given our move to 1:1, which tools are you going to use to become a better (and more disruptive) teacher?