Back To Graduation Requirements

Here is an article that The Columbus Dispatch published earlier this week.  The article comes after the graduation committee made some recommendations to the Ohio State Superintendent of Instruction about new graduation requirements.

Here is another informational/op ed from The Columbus Dispatch about the new graduation requirements.  This one is more for your reading and thinking on.

Questions To Consider:

1.  What do you think of the new proposal that eliminates the need to "pass tests?"

2.  Does such a proposal really "water down" a diploma?  Is there a better option that doesn't involve a test?

3.  What do you think, is it too hard to graduate with our current system?

Were You Hired To Do That?

This week I would like to present to you another "thinking" article.  An article to make you think a bit about how we talk with our students and help prepare them for the future.  I came across this article during some personal professional development I was doing on Twitter.  One of my colleagues, Josh Clark, shared it on Twitter.  It is a great article.

The article's title sort of explains what is contained in it.  Interestingly enough, many of our students go on job shadowing and could possibly experience such a conversation.

Questions To Consider:

1.  We all have stories about first jobs and starting out, how could those be useful in helping to prepare our students?  Have you ever told those stories?

2.  There is a great quote near the end of the article that includes this statement;
“That’s not my job,” off their lips will have a far greater advantage over those who use it."
Is this something our students hear a lot?  Can we help to address this idea/concept?  

3.  Have you been able to share your experiences in the educational field with someone job shadowing?  You all have great experiences, you are encouraged to do so.

Appreciate What You Have

A few days ago my wife and I were talking about some of the horrible illness that is impacting so many people that we know (mostly cancer).  We then started talking about how no matter who you are, what age you are or what you believe in; bad things will happen to you.  Immediately after this, we started talking about all the great things that is happening in our life.

I am not really sure how this applies to what we do at the school everyday, but I felt like it was the right thing to write about this week.  I decided to search some articles online about appreciating what you have and I found this one.  If you are more of a visual person here is a short animation about gratefulness.

Questions To Consider:

1.  What does gratefulness look like in your life?  How can you model that in your classroom?

2.  Do you think you can impact some of these social emotional factors of students, like being grateful?  Is that important for us to be doing?

3.  How can a student show gratefulness in your classroom?  How could you recognize it?

More Thoughts on 1:1

As we get closer to a 1:1 policy for next year, I thought it would be beneficial to use the blog for some PD on that.  Last week I provided you the SAMR infographic again and had you think about that.  I would encourage you to have that as a reference as you think about how you might want to start to (at your level of being comfortable) incorporate more technology use.

Here is am an excerpt from an article from edutopia.org.  The article outlines 5 steps to implementing a practical 1:1 policy.

Please take a look at the article and think through the questions below.

Questions To Consider:
1.  The beginning of the article says that students should know that technology is an "avenue to learning."  What a great way to think about incorporating the more readily available technology.  How could that be communicated to our students?  Both in your classroom or district wide.

2.  What a great reminder that not all students are as technology advanced as we believe them to be.  Even as adults that haven't been brought up with all the technology some of our students have, we may have more knowledge about technology than our students.

3.  The article talks about our students having to be able to filter information.  How can we help them develop that?  Do we need to measure that?  Do we think our students can do that now?

SAMR- What are you comfortable with?

This is a graphic that we talked briefly about in our last staff meeting. Carolyn explained what this all meant in terms of coffee and that progression.

We started looking at this in our most recent TBT meetings because of our discussion about 1:1. I thought it would be a good idea to use this again in our blog for the week. Hopefully, this gets your brain working about how you might be able to make some of these SAMR things happen in your classroom if the technology is more readily available. Or possibly, you don't want to think about SAMR in terms of technology but just teaching techniques. I would encourage you to keep this handout somewhere you can look at while planning.

Questions To Consider:
1. What simple substitution have you been doing for some time now with technology? Think of a way that you might move that substitution to Augmentation.

2. How about in your teaching techniques, can you think of a technique you would like to build upon? Possibly get it to the redefinition. How would you get there? Who could help you? What PD would you need?

3. Think about what other resources, training or interactions you would need to better be prepared for a possible 1:1 program next year. Let me know what would be helpful.