Are You Using Leading-Edge, FREE Learning Resources from CK-12 Foundation?
September 18, 2014If your school is not accessing the FREE products and services of CK-12 Foundation, you are throwing away precious dollars and leaving leading-edge learning tools on the shelf. I gave a brief overview of CK-12 in #EdJourney after an interview with founder Neeru Khosla. Here is a quick video overview: In addition to fully accredited…
“Great” and “Leading” Schools: Reflections From Visit to Palo Alto High School
September 17, 2014What is the difference between a “great” school and a “leading” school? Which would you like to be? Where would you choose to send your own child? How might a school be both? I spent several hours with Kim Diorio, second year principal at Palo Alto High School yesterday. Paly High is as close to being a private school…
Rich “First Review” of #EdJourney via Educator Michael Zavaga
September 15, 2014“Principal learner” at the Trinity School in Montgomery, Alabama Michael Zavada, has written a wonderful “first review” of my new book, #EdJourney. He says it is a first review because he is biting off the book in smallish chunks and thinking as he goes. What a great “novel” strategy for good learning! Here are a…
The Design of Business/School via Roger Martin
September 11, 2014In my metaphor of educator-leader as “farmer”, the principal/superintendent/head of school farmer’s job is to nurture and grow a strong learning organization. The teacher farmer’s job is to nurture and grow strong students. This interview with Roger Martin, Dean of the Business School at the University of Toronto is a great nine minutes. Translate his…
Join the #EdJourney Discussion
September 10, 2014Six boxes showed up at my door late yesterday, 50 copies of my new book, #EdJourney. In 90,000 words I do my best to tell YOUR story of how schools are overcoming the enormous challenge of innovating to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world. If you have followed my blog, hopefully you have…
Praise for #EdJourney From Teacher for Teachers
September 9, 2014Innovation in schools occurs when “regular, like-able people” can engage the process in a trusting, supportive environment. In her review on Amazon of #EdJourney, 4th grade teacher Lisa Goochee, now teaching in Brazil after global experiences from Philly to China, finds those common elements of successful innovation that are available to every educator-leader: …showcases how regular,…
Radical Shift: Students Own the Walls and Halls at Ortiz MS
September 8, 2014“What does a transformed learning space look like? How can I show my teachers what student-owned learning entails? Where can I send them?” These are questions I hear from nearly every school CEO I visit who is seriously trying to evolve the system away from the traditional assembly line model of teacher/subject/routine-centric education. Here is…
Review of New Book #EdJourney via Thought Leader Mark Crotty
September 6, 2014Thoughtful leaders. There is a mouthful: thoughtful, leader, thought leader; those who are all three are rare, not because we lack “thought-lead DNA”, but often because we are consumed by busy lives and day jobs. I have frequently pointed Twitter followers to Mark Crotty, head of school at St. John’s Episcopal in Dallas who takes the…
Considering a Design Challenge? AK12DC Leading the Way
September 5, 2014Design thinking is grabbing hold as a mainstream process for problem solving and building value in K-12 schools. A few school groups are taking it to another level: using regional or district-wide design challenges to deeply embed the skills and outcomes of long-term, sustainable design thinking into their culture and norms. Design thinking is born…
“Focus on Kids, Not Ourselves”: Guiding Principle At Design 39 Campus
September 4, 2014“All we have to do is focus on the kids and not ourselves.” That was principal Sonya Wrisley’s response as I gawked at the seemingly vast amount of space that her students have in the newly-opened Design 39 Campus in Poway Unified School District. I could not get over how open, how “not densely packed”…
Four Essential Questions for K-12 Design Challenge
September 3, 2014In building a design challenge for a group of public schools within the Poway Unified School District, we have defined a short list of essential guiding questions: How might we re-structure foundational elements of the traditional school model (time, space, leadership, allocation of people and budget) to increase effective differentiation of learning that will meet…
Steve Jobs, Apple, Fanatical Focus, and Your School
September 3, 2014I am almost done reading the powerful biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaccson. It is certainly a must read for all of us who have grown up with, or are the recipients of, the generation of technology/design geniuses who changed the world forever. While Jobs was anything but a role model of empathy or perhaps…
Search Blog
Connect with us
