The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing

We all went to Brittany's graduation reception and Christy reminded me of the quote from my Valley days. It deals with focus. I used to remind the kids that their academic focus was most important as we spent hours practicing for extra curricular activities. Stephen Covey origin.

I also remember WIN? What's Important Now? That has a Lou Holtz origin.

And Gretzky- "Skate to where the puck will be"

Lance Armstrong- "Are you riding or hiding?"

Viktor Frankl

Found a youtube of a 4:22 speech in which Viktor uses an analogy from flight school to help understand how we should treat people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD1512_XJEw

From David Warlick

Here are just a few suggestions for administrators for promoting these conversations:

1. Hire learners. Ask prospective employees, “Tell me about something that you have learned lately.” “How did you learn it?” “What are you seeking to learn more about right now?”
2. Open your faculty meetings with something that you’ve just learned – and how you learned it. It does not have to be about school, instruction, education managements, or the latest theories of learning.
3. Make frequent mention of your Twitter stream, RSS reader, specific bloggers you read. Again, this should not be limited to job specific topics.
4. Share links to specific TED talks or other mini-lectures by interesting and smart people, then share and ask for reactions during faculty meetings, in the halls, or during casual conversations with employees and parents just before the PTO meeting.
5. Include in the daily announcements, something new and interesting (Did you know that a California power utility has just gotten permission to start buying electricity from outer space?).
6. Ask students in the halls what they’ve just learned. Ask them what their teachers have just learned.
7. Ask teachers and other staff to write reports on their latest vacation, sharing what they learned – and publish them for public consumption.
8. Ask teachers to devote one of their classroom bulletin boards to what they are learning, related or unrelated to the classroom.
9. Include short articles in the schools newsletter and/or web site about research being conducted by the teachers – again, related or unrelated to the classroom.
10. Learn what the parents of your students are passionately learning about, and ask them to report (text, video, Skype conversation, or in person to be recorded).
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11. Find ways to be playful at your school — and perhaps feel less grown-up. (see Do Grown-ups Learning?)

1 to 1 Institute

First, The keynote speaker surprisingly was a 1985 W-SR Graduate. Angela Maiers (maiden name – Fink) is an educational consultant from Des Moines. She presented well.

Her website is http://www.angelamaiers.com/

She spoke about Web 3.0. The slides and notes from her presentation are on her website.

Second, http://vimeo.com/7416500 is a video explanation of a School for One pilot from New York. It is interesting in that they have developed an algorithm that automates some of the instructional decisions teachers make daily and customize each students learning experiences. It’s way out there.

6-Word Stories

6-Word Stories - R Enough

by Dr. Z

6-word stories could be considered eXtreme short stories. It is said that Ernest Hemmingway once proclaimed his 6-word story, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.", as his best work.

Wired Magazine asks sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers to write their own 6-word short stories.

• The sun explodes . . . eight minutes left. - Maximus

Pete Berg launched a Six Word Stories blog in Dec, 2008. This is where he stores thousands of 6-word stories. He has these catagorized by subject and author. It is possible to submit your own and receive comments from the readers.

• For Sale: Guitar. No strings attached. - Mathijs hoitsma

Visual six-word story group project on Flickr

• Bearded pensioner held over yuletide breakins - 5/10

Writing 6-word stories is not easy. You must first envision an event or tale that you want to tell. Then you whittle away the words it would take to convey your ideas about this story. Finally, you have the true essence of your dissertation.

Lemov's taxonomy

have had friends ask me what I think of our neighborhood school, and my answer is quite simple. I tell them, "The school is only as good as the teacher your child has that year."

When Doug Lemov conducted his own search for those magical ingredients, he noticed something about most successful teachers that he hadn’t expected to find: what looked like natural-born genius was often deliberate technique in disguise. “Stand still when you’re giving directions,” a teacher at a Boston school told him. In other words, don’t do two things at once. Lemov tried it, and suddenly, he had to ask students to take out their homework only once.

It was the tiniest decision, but what was teaching if not a series of bite-size moves just like that?

Lemov’s Taxonomy. (The official title, attached to a book version being released in April, is “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”)

The article describes the work of Doug Lemov, a teacher, principal, and charter-school founder who has written a book called Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College.

Nichification E. Abbey

In the classroom, teachers have thought about this issue, at least subconsciously. When teachers allow students to choose their own groups, students will pick groups that make them comfortable and that have similar interests. This can be a very productive strategy. But on the other hand, many teachers see they have a responsibility to pair students with those they don't normally visit with in order to extend their thinking.

But, have you ever had this discussion with other educators? How to get students out of their clique-boxes and learning from other students in the class? I haven't in all my experience in teaching, which makes the issue of online nichification more dire and more pressing.