Baker's Half-Dozen

There is . . .growing support for experimentation: in March, Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, released a draft National Educational Technology Plan that reads a bit like a manifesto for change, proposing among other things that the full force of technology be leveraged to meet “aggressive goals” and “grand” challenges, including increasing the percentage of the population that graduates from college to 60 percent from 39 percent in the next 10 years. What it takes to get there, the report suggests, is a “new kind of R.& D. for education” that encourages bold ideas and “high risk/high gain” endeavors" -- Sara Corbett

These days, the homework I give isn't based on some arbitrary idea of how much work a kid should do 'at home' to reinforce something we did in class, but rather it's a matter of asking the students to do something necessary to prepare themselves for the next class. Homework becomes an act ofpreparation -- and hopefully sparks some anticipation not for seeing what you 'got right or wrong', not for seeing if you can jump through that next hoop, but anticipation for taking part in the next day's discussion, activities, and learning. -- Shelley Blake-Plock

A music minister in a local catholic church in my area was in an
article in our state Arch Diocese publication. He uses an iPad for
all of his sheet music. No more lugging around binders and cases of
music. It is all contained on his iPad which fits nicely on his piano
music rack. -- Gabriella Meyers

I lean toward seeing a future where self-organized learning rules, and that the role of school is to develop the passion, motivation and skills necessary to help kids become amazing learners as opposed to pretty good “knowers.” - Will Richardson

"No one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are (in business lingo) "scalable" -- easily transferable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains." -- Robert Samuelson

“All power corrupts; Power Point corrupts absolutely." --Edward Tufte

Today's Take-out from the Opinion Drive-thru

Today, I'm sharing quotes form three of my go-to sources:

Will Richardson

"We say we want our kids to be problem solvers, but all too often, when faced with the challenges of a changing educational landscape, we don’t offer solutions. Instead, we offer excuses as to why we shouldn’t solve the problem, why it’s better to just keep on keepin’ on. And solving these problems is getting easier and easier, actually, as more and more schools have already done the heavy lifting to find and implement solutions. It’s not like anyone needs to reinvent the wheel any more. And it’s also not like you need a solution overnight, either. Frame the problem, create a timeline and a process, and have at it. If you had say, two years, is there really NO way to solve that access problem?"

Shelly Blake-Plock

(About homework) "The key is in having kids do things outside of class that will complement or drive things within class; problem is that too often homework not only fails to do this, but in fact instills bad habits and resentment towards school in general. As the school-day itself is gradually redefined over the course of the next decade, I do think however that our concept of what exactly homework is will change."

Chip Heath and Dan Heath

"Many leaders pride themselves on setting high-level direction: I'll set the vision and stay out of the details. It is true that a compelling vision is critical . . . . But it is no enough. Big-picture, hands off leadership isn't likely to work in a change situation, because the hardest part of the change-- the paralyzing part-- is precisely in the details."

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"Take Out" with generous permission of americanvirus