For many families the pandemic brought school home giving them a birds eye view into what their children are learning. While some parents are seeing their children thrive, others are frustrated by what they see. They find it hard for their children to sit all day working on screens. They are discovering a lot of what their children are doing is having information fed to them that they could have easily learned by watching YouTube videos. When they see what kids are learning, they're wondering if this is really that useful for their 21st century lives. They are also realizing that this is not just a pandemic problem. It is likely equally hard for their children to sit all day being fed information in class too.
Sunday, January 3, 2021
5 Books for Families Who Are Rethinking School
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Ideas for Connecting with Families Remotely
After the pandemic hit, Lorrie Ayers, a family leadership coordinator in Brooklyn, New York realized she needed to brush up on her technology skills so she could continue to help families in her district feel welcomed. She attended weekly learning sessions offered by the district on various ways to use technology to connect with families. In the sessions hundreds of staff members who support families come together not only to learn, but to network, connect, and share how they are putting what they learned into practice.
She took what she learned and put into practice new, innovative, and even better ideas for connecting.
Ideas for connecting remotely with families:
Bitmoji: Make it fun! Use Bitmoji in communications with families to add a little fun and flavor to your outreach.
Social emotional check: It’s important to acknowledge how families are doing. Before interacting, do a little check to see, acknowledge, and address how they are feeling.
QR Codes: Make it easy for others to access your content by adding a QR code that can easily be scanned.
Mentimeter: Use live polls, quizzes, word clouds, Q&As and more to get real-time input - regardless if you’re remote, hybrid or face-to-face.
Virtual Coffee and Tea: No matter the beverage or time preference, virtual meetups make it easier for families to connect with schools. Provide weekly options for parents to connect with school staff from wherever they are.
Digital scavenger hunts: Families are encouraged to go outside, learn, and share using the district’s hashtag.
Zoom baking classes: It’s easy to teach a baking class from your own kitchen and learning to bake in your kitchen works well too.
Social media: Families may not read their email, but many of them love connecting with schools on Instagram and Facebook. Find the right hashtag(s), make it accessible, and strengthen the home-school connection.
Virtual fundraising success: Gone are the days of sending home envelopes with donations. Virtual fundraising enabled one school to have record-breaking fundraising success.
Digital elections: Rather than having to come face-to-face for PTA elections more votes could be counted with an election on Zoom and digital voting.
Virtual wine tasting: Tasting wine from your home is a great way to support local business, connect families, and have a toast safely.
Virtual award ceremony: Canva video lets you take creative content to the next level and design with amazing templates that can be used for celebrations, award ceremonies, exercise classes and more.
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Join Me at The Emergency #HomeLearningSummit
Here is some of what you can expect
Topics include
- Balancing home and school
- Blended learning
- Classroom 2.0
- Defining success
- Family & parenting
- Screen time concerns
- Microschools
- Mindful teaching & learning
- Student entrepreneurship
- Modern assessment methods
- Virtual and world schooling
Speakers include:
- Sarah Adefehinti, Community Steward at Enrol Yourself
- Zaretta Hammond, Author of Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain
- Chris Lehmann, Principal and CEO of the Science Leadership Academy
- Sugata Mitra, Professor of Ed Tech at Newcastle University England
- Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator
- Julie M Wilson, Institute for the Future of Learning
- Esther Wojcicki, Co-Founder TractLearning Inc, educator, journalist, mother
- Yong Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor, School of Education at the University of Kansas
How to navigate the Summit
- Sign up for future speakers who you can add to your calendar and watch live.
- All past speakers can be viewed for free for five days
- Sign up by November 30th for the $99 pass to access all content. After November 30th the pass price goes up to $149.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
What A #BidenHarris2020 Presidency Means for Education
I did a series on what a #TrumpPresidency meant for education. As a result, I was invited to Washington D.C. to do a press briefing on the topic. While there was possibility for some good, four years later, not much has changed as a result of his presidency.
Now that Joe Biden is our president elect, it's time to take a look at what a Biden / Harris Presidency means. Here are some highlights of changes that may improve our public schools. Let's start with what there is no focus on.
No focus on:
- Standardized tests
- Standards
- College for ALL
Areas of focus:
Safe, Healthy, & Innovative Schools
Build Innovative Schools
Prepare Students for Good Jobs (even without college)
Improve Teacher Diversity
Sunday, November 1, 2020
Here's How Virtual Work Can Be As Good (Or Better) Than Face-to-Face
Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irressitable Workplace by William Vanderbloemen and Reed Hastings's No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention are interesting reads with useful takeaways. However, both books provide the perspective of older, admittedly old-school, white men who have become used to many traditional practices.
Both Vanderbloemen and Hastings share the perspective that working virtually is harder and less effective than working face-to-face. Especially if the work being done is highly collaborative.
The books do touch a bit on virtual work, but they don't delve deeply enough. While these men run successful businesses, both books, and perhaps, even businesses, would benefit from reexaming their views and biases and providing more information from the perspective of those that have had great success with virtual work.
Office Space verses Virtual Space
Strategies & Platforms for A Workplace with Virtual Staff
G Suite & Whiteboards for Collaboration
My colleagues say my style is collaboration on steroids. I love collaboration with those inside and outside my team. Technology makes this flow extremely well. Here are some of the ways we do this.
Virtual Whiteboards for Collaborative Brainstorming
G Suite for Collaborative Documents
When it comes to collaboration, Google is king. We create all our work using apps like Docs, Slides, and Sheets. All our work is saved in a shared Google Drive. We don't use old-school attachments. We only share using links. No version control issues and we can work quickly and more effectively than working on documents on separate devices. When it comes to collaboration, Google is better than Microsoft and Apple whose products are glitchy and buggy in the collaboration department.
Microsoft Teams for Meetings
For meetings, it's Microsoft Teams for the win. It's the best for the following reasons:
- Discussions are persistent
- You can create meaningful hyperlinks
- You can easily include emojis, GIFs, files
- Everything is integrated right into the Teams platform.
- You can even incorporate Google or Zoom into Teams.
Microsoft Teams for Dropping By
Facebook and Teams for Chance Encounters
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NYC DOE teachers at a Microsoft Meetup |