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Original Photo Credit: 96dpi via Compfight cc     Adapted by: Tracy Watanabe cc Twitter Chats are fabulous self-selected professional development. A Twitter Chat Group is a group of people who come to Twitter to "discuss" a specific topic of interest. During the Twitter Chat, moderators will ask questions around the topic, and participants will answer. It requires some fast thinking to respond and read other responses. Every Twitter Chat I've been part of has given me new ideas/resources, affirmed other ideas, and/or motivated me to follow through with the next step. For example, the recent discussion on Connected Principals Twitter Chat , #cpchat, discussed how principals (and administrators in my case) can use Twitter to help connect educators. How can districts give Professional Development credit for Twitter Chats? I've grappled with this idea for a few years and believe I've come up with a solution that would work in my school district. ...

Original Photo Credit: star5112 via Compfight cc Adapted by Tracy Watanabe Two heads are better than one.   October is Connected Educator's Month . Get connected, and move beyond connection to collaboration. Collaboration is key for this day and age in both face-to-face and virtual environments. One of my favorite collaborative tools include Google Apps for Education. The presentation below was created for a training I offered regarding collaborating in Google Apps and tips for management with those tools . What are ways you use Google Apps to collaborate with others? What management tips would you add to this? What thoughts or questions do you have about collaboration and management in Google Apps?

Grading should support the learner by being meaningful, accurate, consistent, and encouraging. Grades should encourage student success and the learning process by providing a valid measurement of student performance and achievement. The frustration is, there is nothing consistent with grades. We all grade differently. It's subjective no matter how we look at it because how one teacher would grade something is different than the teacher next door, which is different than the teacher across the district, which is different than the teacher in another district.  What would happen if teachers forgot how they were graded when they were in school, and instead used a grading system that fostered student learning? What would that look like?  #1 Academic achievement is separate from learning dispositions and behaviors Academic grades should measure the student's learning, and be a valid reflection of what the student has mastered according to the state (or district) standards...

Professional development manifests itself in many ways online and in person. It takes place through conversations, classes, Twitter chats , workshops, blogging, book studies, challenges, team meetings, etc. Leadership Day 2013 Image by Scott McLeod Model what you want to see Sometimes the best professional development comes informally through the behaviors of others, influencing how I think and what I think about. I learn so much from my children. We have fabulous conversations about life, they share new perspectives and creative solutions with me. They also teach me how to be a better person through their inquiries and their behaviors. I do my best to be a good model for them, but some of their behaviors are ones I'd like to see change, but no matter how much we talk about it, they continue with the same behaviors. That's when it dawns on me, they are behaving the way we the parents are behaving. So, if I want their behaviors to change, it means my behaviors have t...

Technology has changed how we do things in our daily lives such as shopping, banking, communicating, and it has changed how we should do school. Photo Credit: Reeding Lessons via Compfight cc When I was a child, I remember spending so much time going through microfiche to find just the right bit of information to share with the teacher. In those days, finding the right information and recollecting that information was the mark of a good student. Today, knowledge and information is at our fingertips. In fact, there is so much information that it's tough to know where to start and what's the best source to use. Therefore, accessing the right information at the right time is more important than just finding information. Focusing on skills rather than knowledge is a shift in how we do school. It changes what students are taught and how they are taught. What do these shifts look like in the classroom? This type of learning is easy to capture because there are ...

One-to-One is a learning initiative, not a technology program. It's not about shiny objects; it's about how the technology is used, and giving all students ubiquitous access to use it. Task predicts performance Students can use the same cool tool for lower-level thinking and higher-level thinking. Externally, the product may look the same (such as a presentation made with Prezi), but the learning outcomes would be quite different when they use it for higher-level thinking . If the student task predicts their learning outcomes and academic performance, then creating a learning task at Webb's Depth of Knowledge Levels 3 or 4 is the goal. How do you want students to use technology in the classroom? 9 Wrong And 8 Right Ways Students Should Use Technology on Edudemic focuses on technology, a tool, being used for learning outcomes. Some rights reserved   CC by William M Ferriter -- via Edudemic via George Couros Strong ways for students to use technology...

Living in an age with information at our fingertips can be challenging when there's so much of it. That is why it's important to prioritize and focus on the content I want. One tool that helps with that focus is Feedly , a RSS tool. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. However, when I see "RSS" I think of it as "Read So Simply," because that's what it does -- it takes the blogs and news articles I want to keep an eye on, and collects it for me in one organized place to let me know when it's been updated. The importance of RSS RSS is important for several reasons. It saves time on the information highway because the resources I want to learn from come straight to me. While I could ask for it to be emailed to me, let's be honest, I don't want all those emails! With RSS, I can pick and choose when to go visit those resources. As a member of the blogosphere , reading other people's blogs is an important part of the blogging proce...