Tag Archives: Blogging

6 Reasons Why You Should Do a “Blog Study”

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by carlos.a.martinez

Talking with good friends Tom and Leah Whitford, we were discussing moving staff forward and some of the conversations that drive our thinking.  As I started to think about how many leaders do “book studies”, and have been moving those conversation back and forth from and online and offline setting, I thought about the notion of having a “blog study”.  I know that administrators like Kathy A. Melton have done this before, but I just wanted to write what this could look like.

For example, look at an educator blog (Bill Ferriter, Will Richardson or Dean Shareski could be good options) and have teachers subscribe through email to their posts.  As they write, perhaps have a discussion time once a week or month, on things that were stated in the blog, and whether they agree or disagree, and how those ideas apply to your school.  You can host a chat online through something like twitter, or keep them offline if that is what works best for your community.  Ensure that if you do pick a blog, make sure that it is someone that updates consistently and perhaps connect with the blog author and let them know that you are doing a “blog study” on their work.  This is something that you do not have to do with necessarily an educator blog (Seth Godin would be an interesting one), but I think that it would be more applicable to use a blog on education for schools.

Here are some of the reasons this would be beneficial:

  1. Powerful conversations can start from short time commitments.  Books can be very daunting in any profession where time is always at a minimum.  Reading an entire chapter from a book can take a large amount of time yet a post can take you 30 seconds and still spark a powerful idea. It can be a video that is shared, a quote, a podcast, or whatever medium that the author decides to use.  For some, video is a much more powerful medium to receive a message and resonate in an entirely different way than a written post.  The blog format can give educators an opportunity to have some powerful learning in small amounts of time.
  2. Anywhere, anytime, any place learning.  The nice thing about a blog is that I can access it from any device that I have connected to the Internet.  I can literally be sitting at the doctor’s office and read while I am waiting, or at halftime of a basketball game.  As long as I have my device with me, I can connect to that blog.  Although many people enjoy reading paper books, if you are not carrying that book, you don’t have access.  The Kindle app is a great opportunity to have that anywhere, any time, any place learning, but the blog guarantees that access.
  3. You are truly learning as you go with your staff.  There is a reason that administrators choose the books that they do.  They convey a message that the administrator is in total agreement with and they want to share that message with their staff in some manner.  With a blog, you might not necessarily agree with what the author has said on any day, but the discussion that can ensue is where the real learning can occur.  Yes, you will have an idea of how the author writes, but you have no idea what they are going to say.  The learning that can happen there can be truly authentic and real with your staff which could lead to some interesting conversations.
  4. Interactions with the actual author.  One of the biggest benefits of doing a “blog study” over a traditional book study is that you are more likely to be able to interact with the actual author of the blog.  Through the process of commenting, you can ask for clarifications on ideas, push back, challenge, or even thank the author for the idea.  After you read a chapter you disagree with, there is no opportunity for clarification from that author.  What is written is what you are left with.  More authors see the value in connecting through social media with people that read their books, but you are more likely to get a response from someone who is already sharing openly in that space.
  5. Learning can lead to more learning.  Bloggers rarely only share their own ideas, but often the ideas of others.  I have connected with many great blogs, twitter accounts, and articles by reading specific blogger material.  Learning (again) doesn’t stop at what is written on the page, and you can’t click a physical page in a book.  Many authors reference in books some other books that they have read, yet you have to put down the book, grab your computer, do a search, etc.  With a blog, you click and go.  Who knows that this will lead your staff towards.
  6. Teachers can see the power of blogging to start conversations.  The potential of a teacher of every teacher in a study writing a book is slim to nil.  The opportunity of them deciding that they write a blog is considerably higher.  Seeing the power of sharing ideas in different mediums might inspire them to do the same.  It may also encourage them to explore using this same idea with their students.  I was not comfortable starting my own blog until I was able to see what other blogs looked like and how they shared.  This might be the inspiration that others need to start sharing some of their own ideas and inspiration.

There are ways that you can do this online as well as offline.  Creating your own hashtag or blog space to ask questions can help archive your work, and using sites like Storify can help you share your ideas in a single space in an organized manner.  It can also open the study to others outside of your school.

As I go through these points myself, I think there would be a lot of benefits of trying something like this.  Any other thoughts?  Suggestions for blogs to follow that would be good for this kind of learning?  I think that there could be some real power in this type of learning.

Thanks to Kathy A. Melton for the face-to-face conversation that helped me flesh out these ideas.

 

 

 

5 Reasons Your Students Should Blog

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Image from Bill Ferriter at: http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2012/12/what-are-you-doing-to-make-sure-your-students-are-well-googled-1.html

Image from Bill Ferriter (@plugusin)

As a school division, we are deep into developing blogs as portfolios with our students.  To do this with approximately 10,000 students is a major undertaking but the work is important and I really believe that students should have a space to share and reflect on the work. This should not be unique, but the standard.

With that being said, as a school division we have decided to use a blogging platform (Edublogs)  for student portfolios, as it can be used both as a “learning portfolio” (here is what I am learning right now) and a “showcase portfolio” (here is my best stuff).  Through my own experience both blogging, and using my blog as a portfolio, I have seen some powerful benefits of blogging that would directly benefit our students.

  1. Open Reflection – How many times do we actually just sit down and take time to reflect on what we have learned? How many times do we go to a conference and it is speaker after speaker after speaker, with no time to sit down and reflect on what we have learned?  Instead of simply dumping information into our brains, we have to take time to think about what we are learning and make meaningful connections.  Blogging has been hugely beneficial in doing this for myself because I have seen the benefit of sitting down, writing, and reflecting on what I have learned while also learning to create an emotional connection to the information.  Through being totally open, I have had the opportunity to learn from the comments and advice of others as well, which has helped me refine my own ideas.  By allowing our students to openly reflect, we do not only see what they learn, but they can learn from each other as well.
  2. Developing Literacy with Different Mediums – Blogging is a great way to write and share ideas, but there are many other ways that students can share content through this platform.  Using a site like SoundCloud can give students an easy opportunity to share their actual voice with the world. YouTube is an obvious one, but even presentations through SlideShare are helpful to tell stories in many different ways.  The nice thing about a blog is that basically anything with an embed code can be placed into that space.  This gives many different opportunities for students to share their voice while becoming fluent in “21st century literacies“.
  3. Student Voice – Building upon the last point, giving students a space to share their voice is extremely important.  Blogging should not only be “school related” but “learning related”.  In a blog, you may learn a lot about not only what students are learning in school, but what they are passionate about and hopefully how we could serve them better as educators.  In a world where everyone can have a voice, isn’t essential that we teach students how to use this powerful medium to share theirs in a meaningful way?
  4. Creating an Open Archive of Learning – At any point, I can go back to the beginning of my blog and see where I have learned.  Almost 600 posts later, I can see how I have grown and what my thought process has become and how has it developed.  I have seen the power of this by recently looking at my Twitter archives, but that is in only 140 characters.  Through my blog, I am able to look more in depth into what I have learned, and if I tag and categorize it properly, I am easily able to google my own work, as can anyone else.  The opportunity to search that this medium provides makes it a lot easier to go back and revisit what I have learned in the past, as opposed to flipping through notebook after notebook, trying to find something extremely specific.  Can you imagine googling your work from your childhood?
  5. Developing a Positive Digital Footprint - Recently I spoke to a university class on the notion of developing their digital footprint, and I simply suggested that they learn openly, and their footprint will happen.  It has been suggested by Will Richardson that our students should be able to be “positive google”, by their name, by the time they graduate and I would totally agree.  What are we doing as a school to promote a positive footprint?  I wish that I could say that I had the foresight that when I first started blogging that this would happen, but after doing it for several years, I realized that this is only one, albeit very important side-effect of writing a blog.

To be honest, not every student will take to blogging the way that we envision as teachers, and to be honest, that is okay.  If we make them do it the way we think it should be done, they might have trouble adopting this past the school setting.  That being said, if we do give them the freedom to write or share not only what they are interested in, but also share it how they like, it could develop into something very powerful that will also give them an authentic audience.

Why do you believe students should blog? If they aren’t, why not?

Another Reason to Blog; Proactive Through Reflection

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by radical_vamsi

Before I started blogging, I now look back and realize how all over the place I was with some of the initiatives that I was hoping to implement within our schools early on in my school administration career.  I felt that with all of the great things that I read through on Twitter or other social sites, that I wanted to implement all of these in my own school.  I have learned and understood that this is something that is (and can be) extremely frustrating to a staff.  Although I am sure my staff knew I meant well, if we were to jump on every “great” initiative, I know we would never become a “great” school.  Too much energy is expended on implementing too many things, as opposed to narrowing our focus and getting to that transformative stage in our learning.

Then I started blogging and it actually helped me to slow down and FOCUS.  I started to be more thoughtful, critical, and reflective of what I was learning and was not so quick to jump on things like flipped classrooms and BYOD.  As I continue to read the book “Humanize“, one of the quotes that stuck out to me regards what great leaders do:

“There are, actually, plenty of books that can inspire self-reflection, buy nothing beats taking the time to write in a journal. The best leaders we’ve ever met all keep journals, so we think it is a good habit to develop.” Notter and Grant (2011)

So I look back at my own “journal”(my blog)  and see some continuous themes that seem to come up in my writing (“What is best for kids? Narrow our focus. Start with your why. Transformative learning) and how they have led me to actually be more proactive in the work that we do, as opposed to being more reactive to everything we see.  Before I started blogging, I would tend to be much more reactive than proactive.  By looking back, it was much easier to look forward.

But here is the thing when your “blog” is your journal.  I can google what I have learned.  This may not seem like a big deal (and didn’t) when I first started but over 500 posts into blogging, it makes a huge difference.  I have no idea how I would have done this if I would have wrote all of my learning in a book.  Often when moving forward, I literally google search my own work and by effectively using “tags” and “categories”, it has been much easier to find what I have learned before.  (It would also be easy to talk about how I have also developed my digital footprint as a learner but that is for another blog post.)

As I continue to work with groups, I focus on the importance of reflection and how it is crucial to moving forward.  The challenge I have received (as with many initiatives) is that there is no time.  My response has been that reflection is part of your work. It is important that you make it part of your day, as it should be a part of your student’s day.  We cannot just continue to dump information into our (and our student’s) brains without giving or making time to reflect.  It is essential that there is creation and connection along with consumption.

If we do not take time to look back, how will we ever be able to move forward?

You Should Read… (November 25, 2012)

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Plug Us In

I have been off and on writing this “weekly” post but I think that it is important to recognize some of the great content that I am reading out there that may have been missed in tweets and I like trying to culminate some of my favourite content for others to share in one space.  Here are a few things that I thought were great to share:

1.  Teachers Should Change How They Teach Students Today – There constantly seems to be a back-and-forth about changing teaching practices vs. teaching the way that worked for us as students.  In this great article that was a response to a New York Times piece and then offers a comparison to another article discussing students in an Ethiopian village and how they had learned to hack into a device and do some pretty amazing things:

Kids without schooling, without literacy, HACKED the Androids to turn the camera back on . . . without instruction.  That is a breathtaking example of how learning can happen with new technology if we are open to new ways of peer, community-based, shared learning…What the teachers in the NY Times piece need to take from this Ethiopian experiment–what all of us as educators on every level have to take from this experiment–is that, if we do not think learning is something so dreadfully dull that it has to be regulated, assessed, made compulsory, rule bound, divided into disciplines, and in all other ways “measured out in coffee spoons” (as T. S. Eliot would say), then the potential of kids and all of us to learn is enormous.  I have had to unlearn a lot of my own didactic forms of teaching over the years and have had to learn how to practice what I call “structuring possibilities for openness.”   It means biting my tongue, not solving the problem or coming up with the answers, but providing the opportunities in which students can help one another to learn and having faith that, if I stay back, they will in fact learn because, as humans, learning is what we do, it’s how we thrive.

Has learning changed or the opportunities that make it more conducive and engaging?  Just a question I thought of when reading this article.

2.  The Daily Routines of Famous Writers – I just love some of the quotes and thoughts from this article as that many people are exploring blogs and how we can have students engaged in their own writing.  What I get from the article is that there is not “one-size-fits-all” approach to this but we just have to just start:

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

But if we are blogging do students have to write?  Darren Kuropatwa offers a different perspective on what the blogging medium provides and how text is not the only option.  What are some tips that you have to get students and/or teachers to write?

3.  Freedom < —  A Vehicle For Leadership – Kristen Swanson refers to a recent Leadership 2.0 session offered by Chris Wejr and shares thoughts on the differences between “Freedom From” and “Freedom To”:

Chris caught my attention by talking about freedom. While everyone wants freedom, some people want “freedom from” and others want “freedom to.”

In unhealthy, fear-based organizations, people want FREEDOM FROM the rules that exist arbitrarily. They want to escape the entire situation. They seek points, credit, dollars, or some other external reward. A leader in this type of organization must constantly monitor the team’s compliance.

In vibrant, collaborative organizations, people want FREEDOM TO innovate, create new structures, and solve problems. A leader in this type of environment simply needs to nurture the ambitions of the team.

So here is my question on this…can a healthy organization have elements of both?  For example, if a leader provides “freedom from” boring staff meetings so that teachers have the “freedom to” spend more time focused on professional learning, is that not what we want?  Kristen discusses this in her own post but what are your thoughts? Is one more important or is there a correlation?

So Star Wars and Disney have created a partnership and I love this “Disney Song” that was created from the movie.

Enjoy!

Empower Their Voice

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cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by HowardLake

It seems that serendipitously, if you are continuing to read blogs, some ideas that may be floating around in my head are made clearer by reading what others wrote.  In many of my conversations with educators and students, we have talked about empowering students to have a voice in not only learning, but to actually make a difference in the world.  Bloggers like Martha Payne and my friend Alyssa have inspired many in different ways through their blogs and by sharing their voice.  In both of those instances though, it was not necessarily a school or teacher empowering them to do this, but a parent who guided and gave them an opportunity.

So why should a teacher give these same opportunities in the classroom, especially with the demands of the profession and often an overwhelming curriculum that we must cover. In an article by Dana Edell titled, “Why Students Should Blog”, she discusses the power of blogging and why it is beneficial to our kids:

Though often more informal than structured essays, blogging can encourage young people to trust that their written words have power and that expressing themselves through written storytelling can transform themselves and our communities.

In the same article, Edell shares the story of a young woman challenging a company on some of the stereotypes that there were reinforcing with their product line and how her voice had made a difference:

Stephanie, 22, wrote a piece in December critiquing a popular toy company’s new line that was marketed for girls. She believed that the company’s pink and purple beauty salon reinforced negative gender stereotypes. She was angry. She wrote about it. Her blog post circulated throughout the blogosphere and eventually garnered a Twitter response from the toy company. SPARK decided to take the issue further and launched a petition that was supported by a dozen more blog posts by girls, expressing their charged opinions about the toys. Mass mainstream and social media attention led to a meeting with executives at the toy company. We have recently seen positive changes from this company, showing us that they not only read our concerns, but also listened and took action. It all started with a blog.

 Pretty neat huh?  A young woman voicing her opinion and making a difference; isn’t that something we want to happen because of schools?

I was then pushed to think about the art of writing from a post I read from Ryan Bretag and how what we do with student blogging  often takes away from the things that we love in the blogs we read (transparency and emotion are two big ones for me):

What makes us want to make everything fit into our preconceived notions of school assignments and activities? Why do we value and appreciate the great blogs that are out there BUT FAIL TO USE THOSE AS MODELS for students and their blogs? Why do we use models so far removed from what we consider powerful?

This is not to say that every teacher is intentionally doing this but the reality is that it is happening.

I get that not all students will be writing at the level of the blogs we read but that isn’t what I’m referencing when I say use those as models. I mean modeling the qualities that draw us time and time again to blogs.

Simply telling our kids what they should blog about does not make them their blogs. It makes them our blogs that the students are simply writing; there is little ownership and it is not something where we empower our students to actually use their thoughts and their voice. 

If we want our students to make a difference in the world (not only in the future but now), and blogging is something that we see as an opportunity for doing this, how do help them take this next step?

Well…here’s one way…

I have been watching Jabiz Raisdana’s work regarding student blogging very closely and he gives some fantastic advice to educators on getting authentic student voice:

Blogging is about trust. Trust takes time. Students must feel safe to become vulnerable and open up. This trust is not built online, but in your classroom, when you are together, as a group, face-to-face. It is built through effective classroom discussions at the table and understanding the power of commenting and conversations. It is building offline spaces that are fun and creative and open to new ideas and projects. It is built by  sharing as much of yourself with your students as you can. Share your music, your ideas, and texts that move you. Share your contacts and friends and model what you teach. Use your network to show the power of networks. Before you know it your students will be writing about all kinds of things…

What I was most impressed with Jabiz was not what he had shared with educators, but what he had shared with his students to build that trust and show his belief in them.  He recently wrote a post entitled, “I Believe“, which he openly shares how he is inspired by his students:

I believe in you. I believe in your voice and your writing. What you write and how you write, right now in your life is you. For better or for worse it is true. If you wait until you are writing is perfect or good or accepted you will be waiting forever. If you wait to be yourself and stand behind your ideas you will wait forever. Confidence is about being happy with who you are and where you are in terms of skills. Confidence isn’t about measuring up to other people’s expectations. I don’t believe in good or bad or ranks or judgements or comparing or anxiety. I believe in confidence through risk and self-esteem through vulnerability. I believe in trust. I believe in communities.

An open, honest, and caring post that models what we would want from our students.  And what does he get from this?  A student that writes an amazingly powerful, courageous and honest post that, at this moment, has over 70 comments from people all over the world inspired by the honesty of his message:

And I envy those people in the Lunch queue who just turn around, talk to random people and become best friends (and beyond) instantly. I find it hard to go beyond my class. And those lunch groups. ARGHHHHHH. I try to join them, but how? Do I just walk up, come up with something amazing to say and just hang out? Because I can never find the right thing to say. And I’m not popular. And people don’t take me seriously…But then there are the endless websites that tell you to be yourself and not change your personality. So now what? How do I change the fact that people go “Oh, what’s Solal doing here?”to my face? And if they say that to my face, what must they say behind my back?

Judging by the comments and honestly, my own feelings, Solal inspired many kids and adults alike with his words. Sharing his experiences of what many of us have gone through, he has shown us that we are not alone.  Again, the thoughtful use of technology can bring people together and humanize us in different ways.

A couple of things here.  Does Solal have the understanding of how to blog this if his teacher does not model it first and give him the opportunity?  Does Solal have the courage to write this post if his teacher does not show his belief in him?  I will be honest here that I believe that we can never really teach this to our students if we do not experience this opportunity ourselves.  Many educators are working with their students to try and give them the opportunity that they themselves have experienced and many educators are starting to wonder what would happen if all teachers blogged.  Our voices matter.

How are you empowering the voice of your students?  Stories like these strengthen my resolve that we have to continue to create these opportunities for our kids to make a difference in our world.  And if it wasn’t for so many that shared their thoughts and stories, I am not sure that I would have been able to write this post myself.

Thanks to all of you that are willing to share.

(If you are reading this and thinking, “I should really start blogging”, here are some links that might help you get started.)

(Visible)Thinkers and (Reflective)Doers

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Klearchos Kapoutsis

Reflecting on the ISTE Leadership Forum opener on Monday morning with Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn, they ended their workshop on system transformation with a curious slide and quote (paraphrased beft from memory):

“There are two types of people in the world; thinkers and doers.  Which one are you?”

Now I get what they were saying, that we should be taking action to make a difference in our system, but this little tag line threw me off.  If we are really moving ahead with system reform, we need to be both “think” and “do”; there is and should be no separation.  Think too much with no action is as useless as doing without contemplating before and after.

I don’t want to break it down into the simplicity of thinking and doing but to actually push the thoughts that we need to be “visible thinkers” and “reflective doers”.  Many leaders are extremely thoughtful, yet they tend to keep these ideas in their head.  Yet in the context of any organization, with schools specifically in my mind, it is beneficial to open up learning to others to improve practice in our schools and classrooms:

“When we make the thinking that happens in classrooms visible, it becomes more concrete and real. It becomes something we can talk about and explore, push around, challenge, and learn from.”  Ron Ritchart, Make Thinking Visible

As a leader, if my thought process is left to my own mind, how does that push our learning ahead as an organization?  With the technology that is predominant in our society, the opportunities to open your learning to others is easier now than ever.

Once we start moving on our thinking and become active “doers”, we need to step back and look at the work that we have done and grow from the experience.  In this powerful article by Col. Eric Kail, he states, “…experience is only as valuable as what we do with it.”  To move forward, we definitely need to learn from looking back.  Kail goes onto push how reflection is imperative for leadership:

Gaining wisdom from an experience requires reflection. In thinking back on the significant events of my life, experiences good and bad, it was the act of assigning meaning that has made all the difference for me. Reflection requires a type of introspection that goes beyond merely thinking, talking or complaining about our experiences. It is an effort to understand how the events of our life shape the way in which we see the world, ourselves and others. And it is essential for any leader.

Reflection is what links our performance to our potential.

The fantastic thing now is that making our thinking visible and actively reflective are elements of our practice that are easily meshed with one another and can often be done in the same space.

Dean Shareski talks about how the art of reflection through blogging will improve the quality of education, as well as the growth of each individual teacher:

I’ve yet to hear anyone who has stuck with blogging suggest it’s been anything less than essential to their growth and improvement…There’s a natural transparency that emerges. The teachers who blog as professionals in this reflective manner in my district invite anyone to look into their classrooms and you can get a picture of what happens on a daily basis. This goes a long way in addressing accountability concerns.

School administrators that ask this of their teachers need to model it first.

Stating that there are “two types” of people often is going to receive some pushback, so I think about what I am trying to embody to others I work with.  But if there is a “type” of person that I want to learn with, it will be that “visible thinker” and “reflective doer”.  Imagine if we embodied that as educators and it trickled down to our students?   Our future would definitely be in good hands.

You Should Read…(August 5, 2012)

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by mrsdkrebs

We are in the final week of our Australian tour and I will have to admit I am pretty tired. We have met some amazing people and I have a ton of great ideas to bring back to our school division, so I am grateful for all of the connections that I have made and the wonderful ideas that have been shared. Thanks to all of you both online and offline :)

In the spirit of sharing, here are some interesting/helpful articles that I have found this week:

1.  Do you confuse what you do with who you are? – This was a great article discussing how we often identify ourselves by the positions that we have.  I know that I often tell people that I am an educator and am extremely proud of the fact, but is there something else I should be focusing on?

What difference would it make if you responded to “What do you do?” with a slightly surprising twist? What if we started a movement of sorts and, one by one, conversation by conversation, we played a little game and each of us changed things up a bit?  It could sound something like this:

Them:  “Hi, my name is …. I am the president of XYZ Company. What do you do?”
You:  “Nice to meet you.   My name is Jack and:
“I am a terrific husband.”
“I am a proud mother.”
“I am a good friend.”
“I am absolutely content and happy!”
“Today, I am making a difference by …”

I loved this article because it has pushed my own thinking about what I do and how I define myself.  It probably will do the same for others.  How will you start the conversation the next time you introduce yourself?

2.  The Connected Educator Starter Kit – This is an extremely comprehensive document that has been shared

Whether you just dip your toe in the water by trying a few of these activities or you dive in headfirst and take advantage of this entire month-long, do-it-yourself professional learning journey, we’re sure you’ll find something to challenge you or spark your interest. This guide is separated into 31 days worth of online activities (one for each day during the month of August) to get you started into your journey as a connected educator and learner. How you use the kit is up to you.

It is a great document shared by the Powerful Learning Practice to give you some ideas of how you can take part in this event.

3.  What are the 10 secret benefits of blogging? - Blogging has been one of the best activities that I have taken part in during my career and I am a big advocate of what it can do for ourselves professionally.  This great blog post offers some great insights on what blogging can do for our own development and I believe that this is something our students should be doing.  Educators should be modelling this to our students first though and they can find some great benefits if they stick with it:

Blogging for me has been a path to not only to self expression but self fulfillment that has become a journey of self discovery. I have found what works for me and what doesn’t. I write about topics that resonate with my soul and purpose while keeping focused and relevant.

These elements combined have provided an experience that has both changed me and others around me, both in the physical and cyber world. It is an exciting time to live where you can connect to your global tribe with rich multimedia that transcends time and place.

Take a look at the 10 benefits listed in this article by the author in a wonderful post.

4.  Reddit Photographer Captures Candid Marriage Proposal – This is a great example of how the world is both extremely small and caring.  During a marriage proposal, someone caught the moment and shared the visual through social networks to see if they can find the new couple:

Joel Bush didn’t know anyone was watching when he got down on one knee to propose to Jennifer Orr. But photographer Patrick Lu happened upon the couple on the capital grounds in Austin, Texas and shared his beautiful picture to Reddit: “Did any of you propose at the capital last night?”

The post made it to the top of /r/Austin with 1,400 up votes (the highest of all time in that subreddit), and Redditors offered many suggestions on how to locate the mystery couple…

“I felt Reddit was the only place where a post like this could generate enough exposure,” Patrick Lu, the photographer, tells Mashable. “Austin is actually a growing haven for tech companies and startups, and I had a gut feeling that the couple worked somewhere in that space (the man was wearing flip flops and jeans, and that’s like a uniform for us programmers these days). With a lot of techies, you have a lot of Redditors. I figured someone would have recognized them eventually.”

Although Reddit has some negative examples of social media, it is these cool stories that also need to be highlighted.

As a final share, I just wanted to share this hilarious video on the infectious Gotye song.  It is not something that may be relevant to schools, but it is just pretty funny.  I hope you get a laugh out of it!  Have a great week!

Summer Blogging Challenge

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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cambodia4kidsorg

There are a ton of “challenges” out there about blogging daily or 30 blog posts in a month and I think they are absolutely great for many.  That being said, with summer here for many of us on this side of the world, I am not an advocate of staying connected the entire break.  It is great to start some habits over the summer that will continue on into the school year, but it is important that people have an opportunity to recharge their batteries, spend time with family and friends, and just enjoy themselves.

So as a “happy medium”, I would like to just offer an idea for people that are either trying to start or a blog, or give themselves a jumpstart.  Sitting with David Wees last night, he reiterated the importance of a blog as being his space for learning, which is something that I think is extremely important.  This modelling of learning is something that I really believe we need to do as educators/leaders.  Often though, many people are trying to have the next great original idea, when blogging is a great space to just share thoughts on what they are learning.

Here is my suggestion/challenge…

Similar to the “You Should Read” posts that I try to do weekly, I would suggest blogging about one article that you have read that you find interesting or perhaps helpful to your personal goals, or organizational goals.  Share some quotes, ideas, and then your own thoughts about the article.  I think it would also be helpful to those encouraging others to use social media in their school to reference where they received it from.

Here is a quick example of how it could look:

I recently found this great blog post that Bo Adams tweeted out this morning referencing a “Letter to New Teachers“.  Here is a powerful quote from the post:

“Congratulations—you’ve chosen an excellent career that will ensure that no two days are ever alike for you, that you won’t die from sitting on your your butt all day long in font of a screen, and that you’ll spend most of your day interacting with people who you can have a tremendous positive influence over. You will also be constantly stretching your brain to learn new things—how to teach a particular concept, how connect with a withdrawn student, how to learn some new technology to add to your repertoire, and sometimes how to just survive to the end of the day.”

This blog post reminds me of the Apple letter to new employees that helps to create a culture of innovation and excellence.  Setting the tone for the year, or even a career, is so extremely important to the work that we do with people.  We all know that what you do in the first day or week with your students to help build a classroom that is built upon trust, relationships, and a culture of learning is so important to your entire year; this is no different than the tone we set with the adults in our school.

So what do you do in your school to help set the tone at the beginning of the year?

That’s it…an entire blog post that shared some quick thoughts, someone else’s blog post, promoted the use of social media for learning, and asked a question of your readers to promote conversation and learning.

So for those who like lists, here it is:

  1. Find a great article and write a short blog about it. (Try 2-3 times a week)
  2. Reference how you found it.
  3. Share some thoughts on the post.
  4. Ask a question to promote learning.
  5. If you are on Twitter, use the hashtag #learn365 and any other ones that you find applicable to the work you are doing.

Hopefully this little challenge could help spark some writing in a way that shares learning but doesn’t have you spending your entire summer in front of a computer!  Please feel free to share this challenge with others who may be struggling with some ideas for blogging :)

You Should Read…(December 4, 2011)

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I can’t believe it is December already, but time tends to move fast when you love what you do :)  There are so many great things that I saw this last week, that it was tough to decide on just three, so I picked four instead.  Some of the links that I am going to share this week literally brought me to tears, and whenever I feel that emotion from what something shares, I think it is essential that I share with the rest of the world.

1.  A Father’s Personal Accounting – Stephen Kennedy, wrote this beautiful and reflective post about his own three children and the education that he thought was important for them.  I love personal posts as I truly believe that it is emotion that will move school forward, not only data.  If people are invoked to do something by the heart, they are more likely to do it.

Here is a quote from his post:

I believe my children – and to be fair to my extraordinary wife, “our” children – are unique, bright, and creative young people.  But I have to tell you, yours are as well.  Where education has to go next is personalizing itself to bring out that uniqueness, that brightness, that creativity in all children.  We’re lodged in conventions that work – but they don’t work as well as they could.

Things are changing.  My children, your children, and all of us have to collaborate, communicate, and conspire together to minimize the lost opportunities.  I take that process personally, very personally.

Read this post as it is masterful and touching in the way it talks about education moving forward in such a personal way.

2.  Making Learning Visible – Neil Stephenson, an educator at the Calgary Science School, shared some awesome work from his students and educators, which always provides other educators with some amazing ideas on how they can implement this into their own work.  It is a simple, yet powerful post that discusses not only the final product of learning, but the process.  It is essential that students are given the time to reflect on the process of learning, to not only understand what works for them, but to also understand how far they have really come.

3.  Learning About Blogs For Your Students –  Silvia Tolisano talks about the importance of reflection in the process of teaching, and takes some of the “push-back” phrases that she has heard and deconstructs each argument:

I do see blogging as a journey. It is not as simple as waking up one morning and deciding “Let me blog with my students” or attending one Professional Development workshop or conference presentation about blogging and thinking to yourself: “I’ll start blogging on Monday.”

The journey begins with reading blogs, but it has to continue with WRITING.

I firmly believe, that an educator who expects his/her students to blog for learning, NEEDS to be blogging for their own learning. 

Blogging has been something that has really helped me to reflect and grow in my own practice and it is something that I institute regularly into my own practice.  I am glad I am not the only one who thinks this is important.  (You can also read this great post on blogging by Dean Shareski.)

4.  What’s Going On – This video was shared today with the #psd70 hashtag by Jenni McIlhone and I was blown away by the power and the emotion of this child trying to reach out after being bullied for several years.  I remember my own childhood being bullied and know that those scars last forever, and I found myself remembering how tough it was to be a kid while I watched the simple sentences this child shared.  As he moves forward, you can see the struggle that he is going through yet is obviously trying to use a venue like YouTube as either a cry for help or therapeutic means.

Please be aware that although this is a great video to share with kids, there is some strong language in the names that the boy is being called.  It is uncomfortable to watch but again, it gives a picture of what the child is going through.


I am hoping that there is something within these four links that will help your practice or will continue to push thinking ahead.  I am always inspired by the work of others; no wonder the year goes so quick!

Have a great week!

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Kati.Rodrigues