What an amazing 24 hours it has been! Yesterday at this time we were networking, and preparing to listen to Dr. Reshan Richards (@reshanrichards, The Constructivist Toolkit) share with us his six moves:
- Look out for your classroom by looking out of your classroom.
- Care for all learning spaces: physical and digital.
- Share Relentlessly! You never know what doors might open for you and your students.
- Save & respect time to develop and share talents.
- Align to your mission or throw out & rewrite your mission.
- Keep the offramp open & use it frequently.
And then this morning we were inspired by Will Richardson (@willrich45), who asked us “are you a teaching culture or a learning culture”. And in examining that culture, he asked us to consider our:
- Beliefs
- Context
- Practice
Alignment and co
nsistency is necessary to move education from a Traditional to Transitional to Transformational. He quoted Seymour Sarason: “Productive learning is where the process engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more. Absent wanting to learn more, the learning context is unproductive.”
After three breakout sessions, where I learned about Peel’s new assessment app, GAFE, and collaborative tools for student assessment, we were treated to Jennifer Gonzalez’ 10 Ways to Nurture Student Growth with Technology (@cultofpedagogy, Cult of Pedagogy):
- Start Small
- Step Aside
- Present Problems
- Share Stories
- Provide Access
- Make Time
- Iterate
- Expect Problems
- Publish
- Participate
Can you tell that Reshan’s #3 and Jennifer’s #4,9 and 10 have inspired me? My blog has become like my lifelong struggle with my diet: I begin with great intentions, but Jennifer’s advice #1 and #6 fall by the wayside when let my busy schedule and grand ambitions stand in my way.
As we head into the coming school year, I again will be making my “new year’s resolution”, and will consider Jennifer’s invocation to Iterate and to Expect Problems, and the will continue to Publish and Participate.
I’ll use Will as my model, and adopt his eclectic approach, so you should expect more frequently, but possibly shorter, blog posts over the next months.
See you back here next week!
