Stuff I learned about in just one week.

As I mentioned before, I was a Twitter neophyte.  I wish I had understood earlier the learning power of 10 minutes of twitter feed review.  I understand it now. I’m not going to be shy about sharing this simple personal learning network resource.  Looking at last week, here are a few things I learned over the course of one week.  One of things to which I pay attention is how often I see the same or similar ideas being mentioned.  These are often very good ideas.

• Read an article that asked, “Business survey: Which of the following would you say are the most critical skills for employees in your organization to possess today? Select up to three.”  Here are the results.  Are we giving teachers and kids enough opportunity to practice these skills?

• Learned a whole bunch about Harriet Tubman.
• Professional learning for educators. Over and over again the idea that PD must be led by teachers.  Top down rarely works.  A great phrase popped up when describing what it’s like sometimes to be in education.  People have lots of conversations “about us, without us.”  This is true.
• Lots of news and articles about the testing pendulum swinging back to sanity.  A piece of information about a student on a given day.  Helpful, but limited.  More helpful to look at larger group information, but still limited.  Not the be all and end all of anything.
• Learned about a woman named Grace Hopper.  “The most dangerous phrase in the language is ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” -Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.  Bio: http://goo.gl/zDFt3t.  We’re adopting that quote all over the place, including in a draft vision we’re creating for our 1:1 work with kids and teachers.
• Read about the idea of schools having become ‘distribution centers’ rather than ‘discovery centers’.  This notion makes me wonder when and why does curiosity fade?

These are just some of the ideas from one week.  I should have set 10 minutes aside everyday as a principal or a teacher to swim around in the resources and thinking.  I would have been better at both jobs.

Author: Jnelson

Jeff Nelson Fife School District Assistant Superintendent:Teaching-Learning-Innovation 39 years as an educator. 16 years teacher 3 years assistant principal 12 years principal 8 years Assistant Superintendent BA, Washington State University MAEd, Washington State University Previous member of AWSP Legislative Committee Previous member of UW Tacoma PEAB, Administrative Certification Established and maintained Fife’s first website for 7 years Present work includes establishing the first Teaching/Learning/Innovation department in the Fife School District. Examples of responsibilities include: teacher/administrator professional development, assessment, TPEP, curriculum/materials review, 24 credit requirement, technology levy leadership, teacher/administrator bargaining. Initiatives underway in Fife, as a result of new TLI Department: AVID, OER, Curriculum and Materials reviews, Student Perception Pilot with CSTP, Google Expedition Cofounder of Educational Internet Communications, LLC. Marketed and sold one of the first online grade checking programs in the US. Consulted with Seattle Educational Internet Company for 2 years. jnelson@fifeschools.com twitter.com/jeffnelsonTLI View all posts by Jnelson