11 Takeaways fr @Globalearner (Alan November's) Talk to #NYCSchoolsTech Leaders

Alan November spoke to a group of leaders from New York City. Here are the takeaways and resources I collected. 

1. Make thinking visible. It’s not as important to know “what” a student does as it is to know “why” they do it.  
• Tools to do this are PRISM http://prism.scholarslab.org and VERSO http://versoapp.com/
2. The real revolution is not technology. It is information. Don't ask what tech we need, ask are the students/staff getting the information they need when they need it. Determine if students own the learning. 
3. Stop delaying feedback. Game design and instant responsive feedback has it right.
• More at http://ayogo.com/blog/data-analytics-for-learning-game-design-is-doing-it-right/
4. Stop lecturing and consider more assessment not less with students leading the learning. Test twice.
• More at http://mazur.harvard.edu/sentFiles/Mazur_274537.pdf and http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/twilight-of-the-lecture
5. Beware of the curse of knowledge. An expert can't understand a beginners learning issues. The more you know, the less effective you become.
• More at https://hbr.org/2006/12/the-curse-of-knowledge 
6. Teachers sell a product to a market that doesn't want it.
• From Dan Myers Ted Talk on curriculum make over https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover
7. Don't start with content. Start with real problems.
• More at http://www.101qs.com/
8. Pilots and surgeons have a checklist. We need to determine what an educator's checklist should include.
• More at http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/
9. Assessment can be the silent killer of learning. We're so focused on giving rubrics that we're hurting kids.
• More at https://youtu.be/CBzn9RAJG6Q?t=8m55s
10. To ask good questions students need to know the types of questions to ask. 
• More at http://www.fno.org/nov97/toolkit.html
11. When we change from "solve" to "involve" we transform learning. 

• Learn more by following @mrsjcavines on Twitter

You can visit my blog on Sunday, July 17th to see his talk and also discover the lessons I learned about livestreaming a talk.  

Share Tips & Best Practices for Summer Learning During Tonight's #NYCSchoolsTechChat

I hope you'll join us for our fourth monthly #NYCSchoolsTechChat taking place today, Wednesday, July 13th at 4 pm. The topic is "Summer Learning." It will be led by Twitter Chat Queen, @eileen_lennon (@NYCSchools) with me, @InnovativeEdu  (@NYCSchools) and @TaliCSM (@CommonSenseEd) serving as trusted co-hosts.

The chat will serve as an opportunity to share how you learn best, where you learn best, and some great links for where to learn more this summer.

You can prepare for the chat by thinking about answers to these five questions:

• Q1 What topics are you most interested in exploring this summer, now that you have time?
• Q2 How are you learning this summer? (eg: via social med, books, PDs) & what do you like most about learning this way?
• Q3 How do you plan to extend this learning into the school year? #NYCSchoolsTechChat
• Q4 Give a shout out & share what you’ve learned from a past, present, or future #NYCSchoolsTechChat participant
• Q5  Share links to your favorite books, sites, spaces, resources for learning & connecting

Remember to respond using the hashtag and question you are responding to.

Here's an example:

A1: This summer I am learning abt #Virtual Reality. #NYCSchoolsTechChat

I hope you'll join the conversation tonight at 4 pm est to give and get ideas about learning this summer.

It’s Not That Easy

I started my day reading a post from Pernille Ripp entitled If Not Now where she explains that change will only come if we all speak up. She says she is not sure how she got to be someone others sometimes listen to but she advises that even if we may not think of our voices as are nothing special and we have no business speaking up, if we see injustice and believe in our own self worth, we must speak.

As someone who has spent the majority of my career speaking up, I want to shed light on why Pernille and others who speak up are sometimes listened to and why it’s not that easy.

Why it’s not that easy

When you speak up, you put yourself out there and you are vulnerable to attack. This is not easy to endure. For example, I have helped many parents opt their children out of standardized testing when the testing was harming their children. These parents and I were berated by other parents who believed parents had no right to speak up for their children’s education. You can see examples of those posts here and here. In each case, despite the fact that their children could suffer health risks if taking the tests other parents lashed out at these parents and me for standing up for their children.

The Hottest Post Ever That Everybody's Commenting On: Should Teachers Sell or Share?

I recently shared the hottest post ever that everyone was reading on The Innovative Educator which garnered more than 17,000 views in one week.  That post shared secrets to success for getting your principal to say yes from former @NYCSchools Principal Jason Levy (@Levy_Jason).

This week's hottest post, makes it to the top for the number of comments generated in a week. The post asks the question which served as a hot topic at the recent #ISTE2016 conference:

"Should teachers sell to teachers or share freely?"

I share the views on both sides from prominent educators then asked readers to decide. Of the 90+ comments, most were from those who engaged in thoughtful discourse. Some decided to attack the author rather than the issue. Ultimately it was a strong conversation. Even a member of the United States Office of Ed Tech chimed in on Twitter, though he jumped out of the conversation when pushed for some hard answers on his viewpoint.

You can see that conversation here and below:

When I wrote the piece, I was not sure how I felt about the topic.

After the thoughtful and lively discourse on my face off question: "Should teachers share or sell?"
the conclusion I came to was this:

If I am creating material as part of my job, a speaking engagement, or event that I am compensated for, I share the materials I create freely. If I am doing something outside the hours of my job or paid activity, I may create something (such as a book or curriculum materials) for which I request compensation. Ideally, that compensation would not come from fellow teachers but rather from a school, district, grant, or corporation. In the best case scenario, that material would then be provided free to teachers. An example of that is a project I managed where teachers came together after work hours to create social media guidelines, activity books, infographics, and curricular materials. The teachers were compensated from grant funding. The materials are available for free to educators, students, and families at Schools.nyc.gov/socialmedia.

You can check out the post and comments here. If you want to share your thoughts on the issue please jump in on that post or start fresh here.

This Trick Will Make You Twitter Famous & Why It Matters

Innovative educators who use Twitter know that it is one of the most powerful tools for learning and building your professional network. People come together from across the globe who are passionate about a variety of topics.  My favorite topics are student voice, the innovative educators I work with in New York City, bring your own device, education technology, mobile learning and homeschooling.

On Twitter such topics come with hashtags. Mine look like this:

#NYCSchoolsTech

#NYCSchoolsTechChat

#StuVoice

#BYOD

#EdTech

These are the tags I use often in my Tweets. They are also the tags that allow me to become famous on Twitter and can help you too.  

Here’s the trick.

3 Easy Web Accessibility Guidelines

If you're an innovative educator, chances are you publish work on the web. If you publish work on the web, chances are you want others to read that work. If you want others to read that work, then you need to make it accessible. While that "sounds" good, it may "seem" hard. There are sites you can refer to like Web Aim and you can look at these 5 infographics for details. If you want to know three easy guidelines to always keep in mind, a colleague of mine, shared the following with me and I'm sharing with the innovative educators who read this blog.  

Three easy guidelines for web accessibility:

1. Text:  For text, stick to contrast that is close to that of black on white and fonts that are at least 12 point. (Headlines can be a little less crisp).
• I generally use the blog's default here, which I believe takes this into consideration. 
2. Images: Don’t put text in images (.jpegs, .bmps, video) that isn’t on the page itself. It can’t be machine translated or read by devices used by the visually impaired.
• This is a mistake I make often.  I will go back through my recent posts and update to meet this guideline.
3. Colors: A significant portion of the population is red/green colorblind to some degree—so using red and green to “code” meaning (stop and go, good and bad) will not work for those people.
• Interesting. Something I likely have done, but will stop doing in future posts.

If you prefer infographics, here is one from http://WebAim.org 

What do you think?  Are these guidelines you generally follow? Any surprises?