Monday, June 29, 2015

“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Alice: I don't much care where. The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go. Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere. The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

Saturday, in our annual "Hack Education" unconference at ISTE, I proposed and held a session on "Tech-Ped": technology adoption driven by pedagogy. In other words, how can the education world become more like the Amish--deciding what our core values are, and then making technology decisions based on those values?

Radical thought, I know.

The Amish aren't, from what I understand, anti-technology. They just start by having some in their community test out a new technology, they then evaluate whether they think it is going to help or hurt their core values, and finally they make a decision about when and how to use it.

One gentleman said he thought that most schools were good at doing this. I asked the group. Pretty unanimously they said, "no, usually we're told some money has freed up, what should we buy?"

Neurons fired in my brain.

"Wait," I said. "How many of you actually work in a school where there even exists a defined belief in learning that you could use to measure a technology decision?" Not a hand went up.

As it turned out, there was one school that did. (More on that another day, worth telling). And most individual teachers, the group agreed, adopt technology based on their own personal beliefs about learning. But at an institutional level, technology decisions are typically not being weighed against a set of stated beliefs about learning.

Whoa.

(One then has to ask the question, what about all the other decisions that most schools make?)

Not having stated beliefs about learning doesn't mean you don't actually have shared beliefs. But it makes it much more likely that your shared beliefs are not the healthy, proactive kind, but probably the benign, this-is-just-how-we-do-things kind, and maybe even some of the less-healthy kind.

It would be interesting to ask, what are the unstated beliefs in your school and how do they manifest themselves?

Let's be blunt: if you aren't intentionally building together a culture of learning as a school, what in the world are you doing, and what do you expect to accomplish?

Friday, June 26, 2015

"Getting things done is not always what is most important. There is value in allowing others to learn, even if the task is not accomplished as quickly, efficiently, or effectively." - R. D. Clyde

I wish I could find the original of this story about the rancher and his young son. I remember it something like this:

A rancher takes his young son out to extend a fence on their property. He talks the boy through the work to be done, shows him the materials and the tools, and then--patiently talking him through it--gives the boy the opportunity to do most of the work.

The owner of the adjacent property happens by, seeing their handiwork, and gives the farmer a hard time about the quality. It's not the best fence-work he's ever seen.

The farmer replies to his neighbor: "You don't understand. I'm not building a fence, I'm building a boy."

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

"The kids in our classroom are infinitely more significant than the subject matter we teach." - Meladee McCarty

One of the most insidious results of mass-education is pervasive self loathing.

Ask students who didn't do well in school, and they will largely tell you that it was their own fault.

"I wasn't one of the smart ones." Or: "When I applied myself, I did well. But mostly I didn't." I can hear the echo of adult voices in those comments. Students repeating what they believe--or have heard--adults say about them.

Yes, taking responsibility for one's self is important. But it doesn't blossom out of thin air. There are a million tiny ways in which youth feel supported and encouraged to achieve; and a million tiny influences that affect their view of themselves. You cannot overestimate the value of a secure home, stable lives, and caring adults.

It's not like children are born responsible or irresponsible, or even that these are conscious decisions that they make; but they are often told exactly that. As they get older, their ability to make those conscious decisions does grow, but even that growth is highly influenced by the care and guidance of those around them.

I recently talked to a woman who had said she was very shy in high school. I told her that I'd heard somewhere that a large percentage of high school students don't have any direct or individual conversation with an adult during their average school day. She smiled, kind of sadly, to say that had been her. She hadn't done as well as she would have liked in school, she said, but it had been her own fault.

It's self-serving that we let her believe that. It saves us, in general, from pulling the emergency brake on the train and having to really sort things out. From recognizing that we take precious children and treat and talk about them like they are industrial output, in a manufacturing process that sends many to the reject pile, as if the process itself were not at fault.

I do an exercise when I'm speaking to large groups. I have everyone stand and ask them to play "rock, paper, scissors" with their neighbor. "Winners keep standing, losers sit down." Those still standing I ask to play with the closest other person also standing. Again, "winners keep standing, losers sit down." After only a few more rounds, there are usually just a few left standing. "Congratulations," I say, "you are winners! I know you're good, smart, thoughtful people." And of course they are, they gladly accept the compliments, bolstered by having so recently won their way to the top.

You can see by the smiles on their faces of the winners that being the winners, even of this dumb game, means something. Those in any circumstance lucky enough to be left standing will always believe that they deserve to be there, even when it has nothing to do with skill or industry.

"The rest of you," I say to all those who had to sit down, "are the losers." Most people get where I am going at this point. They are not in any way at this moment, except by pure chance, losers. They are just as likely to be good, smart, thoughtful people. But the game of chance actually makes them feel badly, and the label of loser certainly does.

How many youth, in the lottery of life, have we categorized as losers? More importantly, how many have we convinced to categorize themselves as such? Are there some we know who will say, as George Bernard Shaw did: "My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever: it was simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt."

Events + News - Future Ready Online Summit Today - ISTE Unplugged - Unawards - Homeschooling the Teenage Years

To subscribe to this newsletter, please sign up at LearningRevolution.com. Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues!

LearningRevolution.com

Two Week Calendar

  • Wednesday, June 24th from 11am - 7:15pm EDT Future Ready Virtual Summit: 2015 School Leadership Summit, Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. For more information and to register, please go to http://www.futureready.education.
  • Wednesday, June 24th at 4pm edWeb Webinar: Are You Ready for BYOD?, Have you been thinking about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)? Are you ready to learn more? In this webinar, Rachelle Wooten, Digital Learning Specialist at Fort Bend ISD, will provide a primer on BYOD, including digital tool recommendations, classroom management tips, lesson planning, and teaching tips. Rachelle facilitates the BYOD training in her district and has developed her own model: R.E.A.D.I.E.E to help teachers be Ready for BYOD. Whether you’re new or familiar with BYOD, get some helpful tips for your program during this live, interactive session. Rachelle will field questions from attendees after her presentation. Registration information here.
  • Thursday, June 25th at 3pm edWeb Webinar: The Art of Procurement: Balancing Price versus Performance, Common Sense Education’s Essential Elements for 1:1 Learning is a monthly webinar series that details strategies and practical advice about 1:1 learning programs. Learn how to personalize these essential elements for your schools. The series is presented by Jeff Mao and Steve Garton, who lead the Maine Learning Technology Initiative program for a decade. Registration information here.
  • Friday, June 26th at 3pm Starting to Homeschool: The Teenage Years, How can a teen's needs best be met by homeschooling? Let's talk about unschooling and homeschooling high school, how to decide if college is right for you, and how to take on internships, apprenticeships, work, and travel. We will explore the many different ways teens and young adults can join the adult world and make their way into meaningful work with or without a college degree. We’ll explore the college admission process for homeschoolers and present resources for creating successful applications. We’ll also talk about Uncollege and DIY College, among other options that are available. Register to view here.
  • Friday, June 26th - July 1st in Philadelphia, PA 2015 ISTE Unplugged, Each year hundreds of educators interested in social media, technology, teaching, and learning gather to build and participate in "unplugged"-style activities as a part of the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference. Go to www.isteunplugged.com and read below for details of this year's events. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

    As part of ISTE Unplugged we've launched the UNAWARDS site, where you can give your own personal education award to anyone you'd like. Go to UNAWARDS.com and share some love!
  • Sunday, June 28th at 9am in Philadelphia, PA Invent to Learn Day of Hard Fun @ ISTE 2015, Join Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager for an energizing day of learning using modern tools and technology. Making, PBL, STEM and more all on the menu for this hands-on, heads-in workshop. More information here.
  • Sunday, June 28th at 2pm in Philadelphia, PA Global Education Day at #ISTE2015, Join Lucy Gray, Steve Hargadon, VIF International Education and many members of the Global Education Conference community on Sunday, June 28th from 2-5 PM at the Philadelphia Convention Center (Room 103BC) for a special face-to-face meeting. Sign up to be put on the waitlist!

All events are listed in US-Eastern Time. To become an event partner and have your events listed here, please email amy@learningrevolution.com. For a full calendar of all upcoming events and conferences, click here.

Learning Revolution Events

Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit, June 24th

Each year TICAL holds an annual School Leadership Summit. This year's Summit, on June 24th from 8:00-4:30 PDT, will focus on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge. The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready. Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. This is truly a collaborative event made possible by the leading organization and event partners. For more information and to register, please go to http://www.futureready.education.


2015 ISTE Unplugged Events, June 26th - July 1st

Thanks to our generous friends at ISTE.org, our NINTH annual set of extra-curricular events at the ISTE conference this year will launch on the Friday before ISTE (June 26th) with an all-day open Maker Day--expect lots of table, activities, and fun for all ages, geared toward education. Saturday's all-day unconference features special guest Audrey Watters again this year, and huge shout-out to this year's unconference and evening party sponsor, StudyBlue and Shutterfly. Sunday is our fourth annual Global Education Summit, a three-hour event + connecting party you don't want to miss. The Bloggers' Cafe will be open Friday - Wednesday, and we're really hoping to add an education slam poetry event still. Stay tuned for all events at http://www.ISTEunplugged.com, which also has Facebook event links for each activity.


Global Education Day at ISTE 2015, June 28th

Join Lucy Gray, Steve Hargadon, VIF International Education and many members of the Global Education Conference community on Sunday, June 28th from 2-5 PM at the Philadelphia Convention Center (Room 103BC) for a special face-to-face meeting in which you can connect and collaborate with other globally-minded educators.


Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference: Tools, Skills & Competencies, October 20th

The fifth annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. The conference will be held entirely online and is free to attend. Everyone is invited to participate in this open forum designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. The Call for Proposals will open May 1st, immediately following the Library 2.015 Spring Summit (which had over 2,000 registrants and the recordings for which are now available). See this year's conference strands and plan to get your proposal in early. We are looking forward to the fifth year of this this momentous event, and to your participation!


2015 Global Education Conference, November 16th - November 19th

The sixth annual Global Education Conference is a free week-long online event bringing together educators and innovators from around the world. This year's conference will take place Monday, November 16 through Thursday, November 19, 2015. The call for proposals will open on June 28, 2015. The Global Education Conference is a collaborative, inclusive, world-wide community initiative involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels. It is designed to significantly increase opportunities for connecting classrooms while supporting cultural awareness and recognition of diversity and educational access for all.


Learning Revolution Blog Posts

Check out or subscribe to our new curated blog of posts from around the web that are focused on the disruptions taking place in teaching and learning: blog.learningrevolution.com. If we've missed a story, send it to blog@learningrevolution.com.

Partner Spotlight

KnowMyWorld

Know My World is a global education resource that connects participants digitally in shared learning experiences through digital cross-cultural exchange and social, emotional and cultural projects. Interested participants contact Know My World via an email request form on our website and are matched from our global database with a partner school in another country. Exchange relationships are facilitated and managed by a KMW staff member. Participants work with the KMW facilitator and each other to collaborate and plan projects for their students. More information at http://knowmyworld.org/.

Interested in becoming a Learning Revolution Partner? Please fill out a Partner Application today.

Daily Education Quotes and Commentary

Click through to see or subscribe to my daily education quote and commentary on my blog.

See you online!

Steve
Steve Hargadon
www.stevehargadon.com

Twitter Facebook Google YouTube

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Walt Kelly

When my grandfather was in the last stages of his life, suffering from dementia and unable to care for himself, he developed pneumonia. I took him to the hospital, where by mistake they administered a sulfa-based antibiotic.

His medical history and information clearly indicated he was allergic to sulfa-based antibiotics. Because of the allergy, he developed a large ulcer on his arm.

I'd learned, in my life, that in large, busy hospitals, it's important to be on top of everything as a patient (or a patient's caregiver). No matter how competent and caring the doctors and staff are, no one knows as much or can devote the time and attention as you can.

I'm sitting in my grandfather's room, nurses treating the ulcer, when the doctor comes in. "So," he says, "we're treating your grandfather for an ulcer."

"No," I said (politely). "He came in with pneumonia. He was given a sulfa-based antibiotic, which he is allergic to, and that precipitated the ulcer." Maybe the doctor would have caught this, but maybe not.

How often do we start treating people for problems that we have caused?

As a parent, I think the third decade of my parenting has been all about figuring out the damage I did during the first two decades to our children, and trying to make things better.  :)  I'm kind of joking, but I'm kind of not.

How much of the behavior, attitudes, and even aptitudes of children in school have actually been created by us? Are we busy trying to "solve" problems that we created?

If so, what does that mean about how we look for actual solutions?

Monday, June 22, 2015

"My child is not defective." - Steve Hargadon

Years ago we had a child struggling in school. Really struggling. I went to watch this child in class, probably in the third grade, and I vividly remember how painful it was to see our child completely faking it--not really understanding much of anything that was going on, but pretending to; it had to be a living hell every day.

So we took our child to be tested at the local offices of a national organization that specialized in learning challenges. When the tests came back, my wife and I sat down with the counselor and she went through the results.  "Your child has difficulties in the following areas," she said. Yes, we agreed, it made sense. I said: "So, students who have difficulties in those areas--what do they tend to do well? What kinds of things are they normally good at so we can focus on those?" My idea was to figure out positive areas so that along with any remedial work, there could be encouragement in areas that would be more reinforcing.

"You don't understand," she said. "These are deficiencies. There are no positives."

We walked out.

I'm not happy with the way in which I allowed the system to lead me to believe, over lots of years, that this child was behind, not capable, and defective. But I am proud of leaving that meeting.

How many students and parents allow a rigid system, that recognizes and rewards only certain kinds of capabilities and skills, to define a child as defective? How many start down the path of medications, making it difficult to determine what are the results of the lack of play and outdoor time and caring adults, and what are the effects of the actual medications? How many children who are physically-oriented, or just naturally start reading or learning later, carry the label of defective learners their whole lives? How many children blame themselves for problems caused by confined learning, dangerous additives, or commercially-driven food illness?

The first step, it seems to me, is declaring that our own children are not defective. This is something we have to, as parents, come to realize for ourselves, and it is often not easy. There are so many ways in which it is tempting to collude with the negative and disabling messages which are at the very heart of consumerist propaganda. Those messages are designed to instill in us the belief that we are not capable on our own, without the help of such-and-such person or program or expert. If we don't actually determine, ourselves, that the idea that our child is defective is unacceptable, we'll never be able to stand up to those messages or the messengers.

The next step is to add an exclamation mark to the phrase. "My child is not defective!" Once we realize that the defective label on any child is not OK, then we need to be willing to take a stand and push back on those who have accepted the views of childhood and learning that allow significant percentages of students to be declared such, instead of working to help every child. I believe this is at the heart of the opt-out movement, but I also worry that 1) for many, it's just the particular tests they are concerned with, and 2) that those tests are just one element of a broader culture of defectiveness that remains unchallenged in parents' own minds, not just in the system.

When I traveled in India, I was intrigued by a caste system which gave a rationale for one's place in society. If you were born into the lower caste, it was because of something you did in a previous life that caused this. It gave a comforting rationale both to the dispossessed and the upper castes for your place in life. No need to actually wonder if it was fair, since ultimately you were to blame or to take credit for what were clearly accidents of birth.

Think things are different here? Think again.

ISTE UNPLUGGED Special Newsletter - Change in Maker Day - Hack Education - Party - Global Ed Day Waiting List - Poetry Slam - More


The annual ISTE.org conference starts at the end of this week in Philadelphia, and for the NINTH year we have a set of grassroots-organized "unplugged" events that you can participate in for free, centering on the Hack Education unconference all day Saturday, June 27th. Oh, the fun!

Friday, June 26th, Maker Day: Well, this attempt at a first pre-ISTE maker "fair" just never got off the ground. Lots of interested parties, but we needed someone on the ground in Philadelphia to make it happen, and no one was able to. So sorry. Anyone who was planning to attend this and still has the day available, email me (steve@hargadon.com) and we'll plan some alternative social / deep-dive activity, maybe explore cool food and conversation?

Saturday, June 27th, Hack Education: 8:00am - 4:00pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center. #hacked15 or #hackeducation


Part of the EduBloggerCon tradition, Hack Education is the ninth all-day unconference held the Saturday before ISTE, and it's a great event for beginners and regular attenders alike! Come join us for an amazing community experience filled with interesting conversations in a highly social environment. Our special guest host will again be Audrey Watters of Hack Education!

Hack Education is free (thanks to the amazing generosity of ISTE and our sponsors). IMPORTANT: There is no formal signup, but for planning purposes, communication, and connecting with others, it's helpful to have you indicate your attendance at the Facebook event page here. If you are juggling other activities or travel, you are welcome for any portion of time you want to attend.

Honestly, this is a great event, and many will tell you it is the event to attend at ISTE because it's all about connecting and sharing. Hack Education is based on the idea of an "unconference", and is organized by the participants in real time on-site. It's maybe better referred to as a "collaborative conference." There are no formal presentations, just "conversations" that you or others facilitate. Those who lead sessions are not expected to prepare material but just to facilitate discussion. If you're not sure what to expect for Hack Education, take a look at the photos and schedule from Hack Education 2014. Every year is different but equally fun!

Saturday, June 27th, Evening Party: 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Grand Ballroom D, 1201 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Hack Education will wrap up at 4 pm, and we hope you take some time to enjoy the tastes of downtown Philly for dinner before heading to join fellow Unplugged attendees for networking and drinks at the 2015 Hack Education After Party. The two-hour event will feature hands-on activities, door prizes and a chance to continue conversations with ed tech community members. The first 100 guests to arrive will receive a free drink ticket.

The Hack Education After Party is free for attendees, thanks to the support of conference organizers and sponsors:



Sunday, June 28th, Global Education Day:  An extension of our annual Global Education Conference, Global Ed Day at ISTE is proving to be super-popular. In our third year, last year we had to get a room that would accommodate 250 attendees, and we still had to turn away close to 100 people at the door. This year ISTE was generous enough to provide us with a room for 400, and even so we are already in wait-list status. A good problem to have, but tough for those who can't attend... You can still get on the waiting list here, and more information is here and here. (Do come by and say hi to us at our booth in the Global Poster Area after the Sunday keynote.) Special thanks to sponsor VIF International Education.

Monday, June 29th, Slam Poetry – The Education Experience:  Join us from 5:30–6:45 pm in room PCC 113BC as students from the Philly Youth Poetry Movement do a mini-poetry slam on education. (This is a Birds-of-a-feather session.)

Tuesday, June 30th, Technology & True Learning - Ed Tech to Liberate Learning or Enforce Compliance?: Join us from 5:15–6:30 pm in room PCC 103A, Table 1, for a conversation about the core values of ed tech. (This is a Birds-of-a-feather session.)

All Conference, Bloggers' Cafe: look for signs for the ninth-annual bloggers' cafe gathering area, and find folks to have great conversations with. The Bloggers' Cafe is a location set aside by ISTE as one of their "lounge" areas for the conference, and is open the full duration of the conference. Often filled well-beyond the seating capacity generously provided, it becomes base camp for some, a landing place for others. The "BC" can often be intimidating to the beginner as they recognize the names of well-known bloggers or social media folks--but the name of the game in the BC is "EVERYONE'S WELCOME!" If someone doesn't notice you or introduce you to the group they are with, it's not for lack of manners, it's just because they are so involved--so please, introduce yourself!



OK, so there you have it. If you're going to Philadelphia for ISTE, I hope to see you and that you enjoy the conference and our events. If you're not going to ISTE, I know it's not fun to get this kind of an email. We feel your pain. Because these events are so very much face-to-face oriented, they don't get broadcast; but do remember we have a lot of other events on LearningRevolution.com that are broadcast, and we'll "see you online" soon!

Steve Hargadon
Founder, LearningRevolution.com

Friday, June 19, 2015

"You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence." - Abraham Lincoln

I have a good friend who told me that she no longer posts what she really believes on social media sites. She's afraid, I think, that it could hurt her career.

So, I understand why, after the phone tapping of the Associated Press offices, some reporters indicated that they were now not pursuing certain stories out of fear. But regular people like you and me, not posting our opinions? Wasn't the Web going to give us a greater opportunity to share and openly discuss, or respectfully debate, important issues?

If my friend is not alone (and I don't think she is), why has the Web potentially created the opposite of independent thinking? Are we afraid that someone might read something we posted and disagree with it, that it would hurt our job prospects in the future to have an opinion that someone may not agree with? Weirdly, yes, I think this is part of what is going on. But it may be bigger than this.

Benjamin Franklin's famous quote captures ones of the reasons that the United States was formed as a republic and not a democracy: he said democracy was “two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." We talk of democracy and democratic voice often as the be-all and end-all, but what if the Web's full flowering of it actually leads us to be less independent, not more?

Is there some way in which the democracy of Web leads us shallower, safer voices? Where we want lots of likes and followers, and so we become highly attuned to what we think is OK or not to say, like some kind of social pressure gone mad? Does tyranny over what we will say, as it turns out, actually arise from the democracy of the platform (to paraphrase Plato)?

This thought scares me. It's something I didn't expect. (Of course, I'm still channeling Dave Eggar's The Circle.) If it's true, how do we help students participate in such a way as to give them actual initiative and independence?

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his chapter of Democracy in America entitled, "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear," may have predicted this danger, albeit without having any idea of the technologies of the Web:
It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood.... 
It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals...

Thursday, June 18, 2015

"Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inherent in Emerson's quote is a sense of time. Life takes time. Lessons are lived over time and our understandings evolve with time, measured sometimes in years or even in decades.

Immediacy is the enemy of time. Not just the desire for instant gratification, but the temptation to believe that everything can be understood or solved right away. Immediacy, or the inability to see the past and to plan for the long-term, has an evil twin: the celebration of not-knowing. When we desire to solve right now, we can't afford to recognize that others have gone before us and struggled with many or most of the same issues we face, have thought deeply about them, and have left us a legacy of understanding if we're willing to read or learn about them.

Immediacy cultures are narcissistic, shallow, and without root. Go to any of the social events in the ed tech world and talk to those seeking to "solve" education and you'll find that their strategies are not the result of years of reading and thinking through Emerson's life lessons, but based on a belief that not knowing the subject more deeply is actually somehow an advantage.

And perhaps it is, if measured in the attention and money provided in the bubble of Silicon Valley. But not when measured against the lives of our youth, and the strength of our cultures.

There is a belief that not knowing frees us from the burdens of doing things the way they have been done before. It's a smoke-screen, a way to avoid responsibility for acting with the responsibility that come from life lessons lived and understood over time. A way to avoid actually learning deeply ourselves.

I'm listening to the audiobook version of Dave Egger's The Circle, a semi-fictional book about a social media company that swallows up Google and Facebook, and where the technology increasingly makes everything everywhere public. It's a world so consumed with the immediate moments that real life is pushed out of the way for the thrill of being noticed by others in the moment. Everything is vivid and real-time, and yet nothing is authentic or real. It's such a jarringly-close portrait of where we are--an exaggeration that is all-to-easy to imagine being real--that I've had to stop listening a couple of times because it's been so uncomfortable. The energy of the immediate overrides sense and logic, careening toward disaster.

In the world of education, immediacy "solvers" project their own inability to be in the depth of time to schools, teachers, and students. Test results should be immediate. Problems should be immediately apparent, consequences immediately meted out, and behaviors immediately changed (think medication). Determinations of attention, intelligence, and skills should have immediate implications.

This is not just silly, it's downright scary. It's dehumanizing to children, disrespectful and demoralizing to adults, and dangerous to everyone.

An inability to think in terms of and over time leaves us just with constant agitation, but not with real solutions. It's information without wisdom. It's an hypnotic spell which must be broken.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Future Ready Schools 2015 - Online Event on June 24th

TICAL and the Learning Revolution Project invite you to join us for our annual School Leadership Summit, held online, and this year focused on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge.  The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready: setting a vision and creating the environment where educators and students access the tools, content, and expertise necessary to thrive in a connected world.

All are welcome to attend, there is not cost, and we ask you to circulate this notice. To register, go to:


The following partner organizations have helped us to build a great program: AASA, the Alliance for Excellent Education, Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, Association of California School Administrators, CETPA, Common Sense Media, CoSN, CUE, ISTE, and SETDA. We have organized a truly amazing schedule and lineup of speakers for you, including: Rowland Baker, Andrea Bennett, Bob Blackney, Susan Brooks-Young, Kyle Brumbaugh, Jon Corripo, Rafranz Davis, Harry Dickens, Dr. Lisa Gonzales, Karen Goss, Matt Harris, Renee Jackson, Keith Krueger, Mike Lawrence, Brian Lewis, George Lieux, Nancy Mangum, Jeff Mao, Joe Mazza, Tom Murray, Kecia Ray, Dr. Luis Rodriguez-Cazares, Joe Sanfelippo, Andrew Schwab, Tony Sinanis, Peter Skibitzki, Dr. Gabe Soumakian, Katrina Stevens, Dr. Beth Stewart, Dr. Devin Vodicka, and Mary Ann Wolf.

The fun starts at 8:00am Pacific / 11:00am Eastern on Wednesday, June 24th. The full schedule is at http://www.futureready.education/schedule.html, and you do need to register to watch the event live or to see the recordings (which will be available within a day).

We hope you enjoy this event.

Rowland Baker
Executive Director, TICAL

Jason Borgen
Program Director, TICAL

Steve Hargadon
Founder, LearningRevolution.com


Tuesday, June 16, 2015

"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else." - John W. Gardner

As you might easily guess, I appreciate the sentiment of the first half of this quote, and the idea that all education should ultimately be self-education.

As to the second half:  many of us have felt that the inevitable result of the growth of the Internet would be a flourishing of democratic learning, as more and more knowledge becoming accessible on the Web would create an open library for the world. In some very significant ways, this has become true (think Wikipedia, YouTube, Google).

But in other interesting, maybe even a little disturbing, ways, this renaissance in information hasn't necessarily led to a revolution in how we view learning, or in student independence. Even with the push-back to Common Core and with the opt-out movement, culturally the physical school building still overwhelmingly defines learning. Parents are just as obsessive about traditional measures and how they open (or don't) the doors to the right college or university.

Granted, online classes are becoming more ubiquitous, but when I talk to most students taking them, their eyes are as dull as ever. And OK, FaceTime and Facebook and the rest now allow conversations about homework assignments as well as the inevitable social. But many of us entertained grander visions of the Internet exploding the walls of the classroom, taking learning anywhere, liberating the innate desires of individuals to map their own learning destinies. Students with mobile devices flooding the streets and the world, conquering life.

Unless I'm missing something significant, students just don't seem any more academically independent than they were ten years ago.

Perhaps part of that is that the entertainment options through the Internet create their own new forms of passivity;

Perhaps another part of that is that there's a significant incentive for schools to maintain their roles and functions as the gateways to learning;

But perhaps, more than anything, part of that reflects the ways in which I and others in the tech world have a tendency to superimpose our unrealistic pedagogical desires on each wave of technology, a little blinded to the historical inevitability of the how traditional systems ultimately, slowly, but inexorably, absorb new technology, smoothing off the revolutionary edges while doing so.

I remember the excitement, the passion, the absolutely contagious energy there was in thinking about how the Web would change learning. Now I watch commercial companies, foundations, and others use the same language and words that we once did, but almost in a robotic, methodical, marketing-speak way without any sense of revolution.

John Holt, Ivan Illich, Seymour Papert, Howard Rheingold... I feel your pain.

Monday, June 15, 2015

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." - Lily Tomlin

I'm pretty sure this very funny Lily Tomlin quote was referring to the "rat race" of the work world, where "still [being] a rat" meant being a bad person (or a gross animal).  But for a minute, let's shift to thinking about education.

If we re-frame this quote for education, the rat race could mean "rats in a lab" and being a "rat" is being a thing experimented on and controlled.

I gave a talk at a conference being held at the main Google campus a couple of years ago, and in it I said that I though most students leave high school having learned one primary lesson--that they are not good learners. I mentioned the top, small percentage of students who are very successful in high school (good grades, good test scores, good college opportunities) as being the minority exception. After the talk some college-aged students, interns at Google at the time, came up to talk with me. They told me that even though they were in that top group that I was calling successful, they didn't leave high school believing that they were good learners. They had learned, they said, how to get good grades, but they didn't consider themselves good learners. They won the race, but they still saw themselves as rats.

Let's leave aside the obvious, which is that if I'd really spent time with them, I could have convinced them that learning how to game the system meant they actually were very good learners; but their point was made and well-taken. A "lab rat" system doesn't produce tiger- and lion-like behavior, it produces rat-like behavior. Those who have learned to be really good rats still see themselves, and through themselves a whole system of life, based on being rats.

There is no way I could have used the following quote as the post title (a little too shocking!), but it's worth considering:
The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens. - H. L. Mencken
Who benefits from "good citizens" or "lab rat" graduates? That fascinating question, my friends, is at the heart of understanding (I believe) why years and years of education reform generally don't really change things. If it's beneficial to the profit, power, and privilege of certain groups to have an education system which doesn't truly liberate learners, those groups are not likely to want to see it change. Many reform groups are more interested in having the system work toward their own ends, than to see changes which would diminish its effects.

There's a very tangible thread, from the progressive era almost a hundred years ago, through behaviorism and propaganda, to worries in the 1960s and 70s about the impact of too much independent thinking; there are many who believe that an excess of democracy makes it difficult to govern a modern nation. Perhaps, if we look into our own hearts, we might find that we believe the same. Control, most of us parents have learned, is a wicked shortcut, but one we often knowingly take because the alternative is so time-consuming.

And so, while we use the language of freedom, democracy, and empowerment in talking about education, that may not be what we actually expect our school system to produce. In fact, it may be that we want and need it to produce the opposite. Rats are much more manageable than tigers and lions.

Events + News - This Month in School Libraries - ISTE Unplugged - Future Ready Virtual Event - Global Ed Day


To subscribe to this newsletter, please sign up at LearningRevolution.com. Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues!

LearningRevolution.com

Two Week Calendar

  • Monday, June 15th at 8pm TL News Night LIVE!, This is a LIVE show presented in news show format featuring a Wrap up of “This Month in School Libraries” and deeper discussion of topical school library issues with special guest experts. Did we mention it was LIVE? Join here.
  • Thursday, June 18th in Greenfield, MA Forum for Alternative Earth-based Higher Education and Sustainable Living & Learning, The Forum is at the Greenfield Community College Downtown Center on Thursday, June 18th from 4pm - 6pm EDT. The forum will include brief presentations by Dr. Larry Buell and Nikomo Peartree and several invited guests involved in “hands-on” education. Using a combination of music, spoken word, TED talk-type presentation, and participant interaction, all in attendance will develop a heightened understanding around the practices of educating, informing, and activating teachers, students, community leaders, and organizations in the “best practices” of sustainable ecological living for people of all ages and circumstances. Buell and Peartree will focus on the proven methods of the University of the Wild based on self-directed learning, mentorship, and living & learning community principles. For information and registration contact Dr. Larry Buell at larrybuell@earthlands.org or at (978)724-0412 or Nikomo Peartree freedomschoolmovement@gmail.com or at (857)342-3769.
  • Saturday, June 20th at 12pm CR20 LIVE Weekly Show - Ten Marks Math Program, Classroom 2.0 LIVE is an opportunity to gather with other member of the community in regular "live" web meetings. Details to join the webinar at http://live.classroom20.com. You can follow us on Twitter at #liveclass20.
  • Sunday, June 21st at 7pm TechEducator Podcast: Get your ISTE on!, The ISTE Conference is just one week away. What do I need to do to have a successful conference? What should I pack? What sessions should I attend? Join us LIVE to talk about this amazing week of networking. More information here.
  • Wednesday, June 24th from 11am - 7:15pm EDT Future Ready Virtual Summit: 2015 School Leadership Summit, Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. For more information and to register, please go to http://www.futureready.education.
  • Wednesday, June 24th at 4pm edWeb Webinar: Are You Ready for BYOD?, Have you been thinking about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)? Are you ready to learn more? In this webinar, Rachelle Wooten, Digital Learning Specialist at Fort Bend ISD, will provide a primer on BYOD, including digital tool recommendations, classroom management tips, lesson planning, and teaching tips. Rachelle facilitates the BYOD training in her district and has developed her own model: R.E.A.D.I.E.E to help teachers be Ready for BYOD. Whether you’re new or familiar with BYOD, get some helpful tips for your program during this live, interactive session. Rachelle will field questions from attendees after her presentation. Registration information here.
  • Thursday, June 25th at 3pm edWeb Webinar: The Art of Procurement: Balancing Price versus Performance, Common Sense Education’s Essential Elements for 1:1 Learning is a monthly webinar series that details strategies and practical advice about 1:1 learning programs. Learn how to personalize these essential elements for your schools. The series is presented by Jeff Mao and Steve Garton, who lead the Maine Learning Technology Initiative program for a decade. Registration information here.
  • Friday, June 26th at 3pm Starting to Homeschool: The Teenage Years, How can a teen's needs best be met by homeschooling? Let's talk about unschooling and homeschooling high school, how to decide if college is right for you, and how to take on internships, apprenticeships, work, and travel. We will explore the many different ways teens and young adults can join the adult world and make their way into meaningful work with or without a college degree. We’ll explore the college admission process for homeschoolers and present resources for creating successful applications. We’ll also talk about Uncollege and DIY College, among other options that are available. Register to view here.
  • Friday, June 26th - July 1st in Philadelphia, PA 2015 ISTE Unplugged, Each year hundreds of educators interested in social media, technology, teaching, and learning gather to build and participate in "unplugged"-style activities as a part of the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference. Go to www.isteunplugged.com and read below for details of this year's events. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

All events are listed in US-Eastern Time. To become an event partner and have your events listed here, please email amy@learningrevolution.com. For a full calendar of all upcoming events and conferences, click here.

Learning Revolution Events

Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit, June 24th

Each year TICAL holds an annual School Leadership Summit. This year's Summit, on June 24th from 8:00-4:30 PDT, will focus on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge. The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready. Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. This is truly a collaborative event made possible by the leading organization and event partners. For more information and to register, please go to http://www.futureready.education.


2015 ISTE Unplugged Events, June 26th - July 1st

Thanks to our generous friends at ISTE.org, our NINTH annual set of extra-curricular events at the ISTE conference this year will launch on the Friday before ISTE (June 26th) with an all-day open Maker Day--expect lots of table, activities, and fun for all ages, geared toward education. Saturday's all-day unconference features special guest Audrey Watters again this year, and huge shout-out to this year's unconference and evening party sponsor, StudyBlue and Shutterfly. Sunday is our fourth annual Global Education Summit, a three-hour event + connecting party you don't want to miss. The Bloggers' Cafe will be open Friday - Wednesday, and we're really hoping to add an education slam poetry event still. Stay tuned for all events at http://www.ISTEunplugged.com, which also has Facebook event links for each activity.


Global Education Day at ISTE 2015, June 28th

Join Lucy Gray, Steve Hargadon, VIF International Education and many members of the Global Education Conference community on Sunday, June 28th from 2-5 PM at the Philadelphia Convention Center (Room 103BC) for a special face-to-face meeting in which you can connect and collaborate with other globally-minded educators.


Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference: Tools, Skills & Competencies, October 20th

The fifth annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. The conference will be held entirely online and is free to attend. Everyone is invited to participate in this open forum designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. The Call for Proposals will open May 1st, immediately following the Library 2.015 Spring Summit (which had over 2,000 registrants and the recordings for which are now available). See this year's conference strands and plan to get your proposal in early. We are looking forward to the fifth year of this this momentous event, and to your participation!


Learning Revolution Blog Posts

Check out or subscribe to our new curated blog of posts from around the web that are focused on the disruptions taking place in teaching and learning: blog.learningrevolution.com. If we've missed a story, send it to blog@learningrevolution.com.

Partner Announcements

Digital Cross-Cultural Exchange via Know My World Webinar Series, June 24th, July 8th and July 22nd

A 4-part webinar series developed by Know My World, a global education resource organization, that focuses on using digital technology and cross-cultural exchange to address social issues within classroom curriculum. The projects in this series involve students in a dialogue and collaborative activities that create global conversations while creating change in local communities. All webinars will be conducted in our Australia Series web conferencing room at http://tinyurl.com/29tyznz.


Partner Spotlight

CUE

CUE inspires innovative learners by fostering community, personalizing learning, infusing technology, developing leadership, and advocating educational opportunities for all.  More information at http://www.cue.org/.

Interested in becoming a Learning Revolution Partner? Please fill out a Partner Application today.

Daily Education Quotes and Commentary

Click through to see or subscribe to my daily education quote and commentary on my blog.

See you online!

Steve
Steve Hargadon
www.stevehargadon.com

Twitter Facebook Google YouTube

Saturday, June 13, 2015

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." - Linus Pauling

There are a lot of practical skills that are not a part of traditional notions of school but that arguably could or should be. Basic financial skills are usually included in such a list, as well as anything to do with car, home, and work-life maintenance.

Why schools provide so little practical preparation is something of an interesting mystery, opening the door (for those who are ready) to a deeper conversation on the purposes of schooling. But that's a topic for another day.

More apropos to Pauling's quote, why is it that so many important thinking skills and strategies are not taught?

If having good ideas comes in part from having lots of ideas (and it's surely a very significant factor), why do we rarely discuss the collecting, curating, care and feeding, testing, and ultimate filtering of ideas? Do we ourselves have a system for keeping track of ideas? A journal, perhaps, or a folder on your phone for audio notes, or a way to use Evernote or Trello or some other electronic tool?

I certainly do, and those methods are some of the most significant elements of my intellectual/work life. How would we teach these methods?

Or, similarly, what about the mental tools that allow us to understand and take advantage of how our ideas change and deepen over time, sometimes taking years to come to fruition--do we have conscious strategies for allowing time to work on our thinking? I would guess that most of us do, but maybe have never articulated them even to ourselves, much less tried to pass them along to others.

What about learning the value of true diversity? These would be the skills of listening to and truly considering perspectives different than our own?

Or the crucial importance of developing meta-cognitive awareness, including the abilities to manage our own emotions and responses, to not get trapped by basic forms of propaganda and logical fallacies, and how to avoid the dangers of group-think?

You're likely to have thought of other skills I haven't mentioned.

In some ways, the greatest riches of intellectual life lie undiscovered and untapped by our current definitions of education, unless one is lucky enough to find a real mentor or is encouraged to read great books (the measure of which in many ways is their ability to bring to life this kind of thinking). College used to be the place where much of this intellectual work was discovered, yet now seems often as barren of this focus as secondary education usually is.

If schools are for developing thinking skills, perhaps we might measure how we are doing by how we answer the questions above.

Friday, June 12, 2015

"When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become." - Louis Pasteur

In posting this quote, I wanted to know if Louis Pasteur was religious. The answer appears to be: sort-of. Catholic by birth, spiritual by temperament, believing in an ordered universe, but dedicated to the ability to think freely. In the language of our day we might say, spiritual but not religious.

I am interested in whether our belief in the value and potential of a child depends on a religious or spiritual viewpoint. To believe in the innate value and potential of a child is a hard conclusion to reach with science alone (unless one argues that evolution favored this as a social belief, and then we're negating it as a independent belief, which makes this whole post moot).

In the late 1800s the incredible advances of scientific study inevitably turned to our own human situation, especially that of our cognition, and we see ascent of psychology. Psychology arguably starts to replace much of what was previously discussed in philosophy.

As a part of that transition, I think we have struggled with the particular gulf that psychology and the scientific study of the brain has created in our view of children. The behaviorist view of all actions being the result of stimulus and response leads us away from a less-scientific belief in the inherent worth and potential of children. And while a lot of our actions in the education world reflect a behaviorist view (structured, top-down, behavior-focused, with an acceptance of bell-curved intelligence), I think the ideas that drive the passion of most educators are actually more in the "believing" realm.

Am I seeing this dilemma accurately?

Thursday, June 11, 2015

"In some cases we learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself." - Lloyd Alexander

Lloyd Alexander wrote a series of fantasy books for youth that I read and loved as a boy.  (Until I looked up the Wikipedia link for him I had no idea we shared a Philadelphia and Haverford College background--nice!)

I can't be sure I fully understand what he meant by this quote, especially since it was pre-Internet. Perhaps it was the idea that in searching for places to find an answer one would often serendipitously would across all kinds of other interesting information, which is maybe less true now in the age of Google.

But a possible alternative take here would be discovering that for many interesting questions, there is no one easy answer. That good people often have different answers for different and good reasons. And part of life is figuring out how to determine our answers while still respecting the different answers of others.

For example, how do we determine what a good education is? The answer to that question is going to be very different depending on our individual circumstances, the time period in which we live, and the culture that surrounds us.

Is there even a right answer to that question?

If not, does that change how we hold the conversation? 

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

“There’s really one good question to gauge the outcome of a student’s educational experience. Does the student want to learn more?" - Seymour Sarason

This quote was referenced in a discussion online, but I haven't been able to verify that it's accurately attributed. But it does seem pedagogically accurate to me.

Another way to say this, as I've heard Pat Farenga remark, is that you can tell the quality of the learning by who asks the questions: the teachers or the students.

These quotes describe a version of learning that might be called "liberatory" (liberal, or "freeing") of the individual mind. Of course, in juxtaposition, there is mandatory or forced learning, which is "compulsory" and more communal. That we don't have easy ways to differentiate the words education or learning according to these two ends is a part of the difficulty we have talking with depth about the topic. And in the current political climate, the push toward education and learning for jobs or national competitiveness fall so squarely in the latter category that the former is almost not talked about at all.

Here's a sobering quote from 1859:
"A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
To be fair, between "liberatory" and "compulsory" learning is something we might call "apprenticeship" learning--fact-based fields of endeavor (e.g., law, medicine, the sciences) where there is a body of knowledge that must be acquired through memorization. While the usual defense of our current K-12 public system (and the associated high-stakes testing) is that it exists for the purpose of students mastering some common knowledge, an honest assessment would have to conclude Mill's contention to be more generally true.

Monday, June 08, 2015

"Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us." - John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto is an interesting figure in the history of US education. Ask anyone in the alternative education or homeschooling worlds, and they will know of him. Most everyone else will not.

Mr. Gatto was New York City teacher of the year three years in a row, then New York State teacher of the year in 1991, and in that year announced his retirement in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal titled "I Quit, I Think," declaring that he no longer wished to "hurt kids to make a living."

Nothing like criticizing the education world as a whole to go from heroic to obscure very quickly. But he's worth learning about and from. His thinking in that op-ed piece will challenge you:
I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think.
... 
I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.
 To the point of the original quote, he goes on:
In 26 years of teaching rich kids and poor, I almost never met a “learning disabled” child; hardly ever met a “gifted and talented” one, either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by the human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.
Here's the actual quote in context, from his book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling:
I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. I didn't want to accept that notion--far from it--my own training in two elite universities taught me that intelligence and talent distributed themselves economically over a bell curve and that human destiny, because of those mathematical, seemingly irrefutable, scientific facts, was as rigorously determined as John Calvin contended. 
The trouble was that the unlikeliest kids kept demonstrating to me at random moments so many of the hallmarks of human excellence--insight, wisdom, justice, resourcefulness, courage, originality--that I became confused. They didn't do this often enough to make my teaching easy, but they did it often enough that I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.
Interestingly, I think many of us harbor deep conflicting thoughts about our children: that they are inherently valuable and capable of genius; but that they might be flawed or defective, thereby disappointing us or somehow reflecting our own weaknesses or failures. In the simplistic world of teaching and testing, many of us have succumbed to categorizing our own and others' children in equally simplistic ways. And yet the world, and these children, are not simplistic or simply-categorized, and Mr. Gatto's quote should remind us that it is our perspective on them that will determine what we see in them--and what they are surely then most likely to see in themselves.

Perhaps we tell ourselves, in the midst of drugging, constraining, and categorizing children, that we are being realistic, practical, or pragmatic--and that Mr. Gatto is being naively positive. If so, I would suggest that we need to take a very hard look at ourselves in this area, for a society that has trouble seeing and taking the time to support the potential of every child will face serious generational consequences, and the loss of a moral center.

Events + News - Future Ready June 24 - Global Ed Day at ISTE - Library 2.015 Proposals - NMC This Week

To subscribe to this newsletter, please sign up at LearningRevolution.com. Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues!

LearningRevolution.com

Two Week Calendar

  • Monday, June 8th at 8pm TL Virtual Cafe - #TLChat LIVE!, Second Monday of each month is the Teacher Librarian Twitter Chat. Follow #TLChat on Twitter to participate.
  • Tuesday, June 9th - Thursday, June 11th in Washington D.C. 22nd Annual NMC Summer Conference, The NMC Summer Conference is a one-of-a-kind event, attracting highly skilled professionals interested in the integration of emerging technologies into teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. This is your opportunity to connect with thought leaders within the education industry who are pushing the envelope to infuse innovation and creativity into learning experiences worldwide. Gain tremendous insight on planning for, implementing, and evaluating cutting-edge technologies and learning approaches. More information at http://www.nmc.org/events/2015-nmc-summer-conference/.
  • Saturday, June 13th at 12pm CR20 LIVE Weekly Show - Math Playground Games and Apps with Colleen King, Classroom 2.0 LIVE is an opportunity to gather with other member of the community in regular "live" web meetings. Details to join the webinar at http://live.classroom20.com. You can follow us on Twitter at #liveclass20.
  • Sunday, June 14th at 7pm TechEducator Podcast: Google Maps with Josh and Friends, Bring the power of custom maps to your students using Google MyMaps. This flexible platform allows students to create and customize points on a map for any use you can imagine, from plotting a story to creating a collaborative map of the world's volcanoes. Be sure to watch to get some ideas about how you can use this tool in a variety of content areas! More information here.
  • Monday, June 15th at 8pm TL News Night LIVE!, This is a LIVE show presented in news show format featuring a Wrap up of “This Month in School Libraries” and deeper discussion of topical school library issues with special guest experts. Did we mention it was LIVE? Join here.
  • Saturday, June 20th at 12pm CR20 LIVE Weekly Show - Ten Marks Math Program, Classroom 2.0 LIVE is an opportunity to gather with other member of the community in regular "live" web meetings. Details to join the webinar at http://live.classroom20.com. You can follow us on Twitter at #liveclass20.
  • Sunday, June 21st at 7pm TechEducator Podcast: Get your ISTE on!, The ISTE Conference is just one week away. What do I need to do to have a successful conference? What should I pack? What sessions should I attend? Join us LIVE to talk about this amazing week of networking. More information here.

All events are listed in US-Eastern Time. To become an event partner and have your events listed here, please email amy@learningrevolution.com. For a full calendar of all upcoming events and conferences, click here.

Learning Revolution Events

Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit, June 24th

Each year TICAL holds an annual School Leadership Summit. This year's Summit, on June 24th from 8:00-4:30 PDT, will focus on the pillars of the U.S. Department of Education's Future Ready Pledge. The Pledge is a commitment by district leaders to work with educators, families, and community members to make all schools in their districts Future Ready. Future Ready Schools: 2015 School Leadership Summit will be held online using Google Hangouts on Air. The event will be free for all to attend and to watch the recordings. You must register to watch the event live or to see the recordings. This is truly a collaborative event made possible by the leading organization and event partners. For more information and to register, please go to http://www.futureready.education.


2015 ISTE Unplugged Events, June 26th - July 1st

Thanks to our generous friends at ISTE.org, our NINTH annual set of extra-curricular events at the ISTE conference this year will launch on the Friday before ISTE (June 26th) with an all-day open Maker Day--expect lots of table, activities, and fun for all ages, geared toward education. Saturday's all-day unconference features special guest Audrey Watters again this year, and huge shout-out to this year's unconference and evening party sponsor, StudyBlue and Shutterfly. Sunday is our fourth annual Global Education Summit, a three-hour event + connecting party you don't want to miss. The Bloggers' Cafe will be open Friday - Wednesday, and we're really hoping to add an education slam poetry event still. Stay tuned for all events at http://www.ISTEunplugged.com, which also has Facebook event links for each activity.


Global Education Day at ISTE 2015, June 28th

Join Lucy Gray, Steve Hargadon, VIF International Education and many members of the Global Education Conference community on Sunday, June 28th from 2-5 PM at the Philadelphia Convention Center (Room 103BC) for a special face-to-face meeting in which you can connect and collaborate with other globally-minded educators.


Library 2.015 Worldwide Virtual Conference: Tools, Skills & Competencies, October 20th

The fifth annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. The conference will be held entirely online and is free to attend. Everyone is invited to participate in this open forum designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. The Call for Proposals will open May 1st, immediately following the Library 2.015 Spring Summit (which had over 2,000 registrants and the recordings for which are now available). See this year's conference strands and plan to get your proposal in early. We are looking forward to the fifth year of this this momentous event, and to your participation!


Learning Revolution Blog Posts

Check out or subscribe to our new curated blog of posts from around the web that are focused on the disruptions taking place in teaching and learning: blog.learningrevolution.com. If we've missed a story, send it to blog@learningrevolution.com.

Partner Spotlight

EdTechReview

EdTechReview (ETR) is a community of and for everyone involved in education technology to connect and collaborate both online and offline to discover, learn, utilize and share about the best ways technology can improve learning, teaching, and leading in the 21st century. More information at http://edtechreview.in/.

Interested in becoming a Learning Revolution Partner? Please fill out a Partner Application today.

Daily Education Quotes and Commentary

Click through to see or subscribe to my daily education quote and commentary on my blog.

See you online!

Steve
Steve Hargadon
www.stevehargadon.com

Twitter Facebook Google YouTube