A glimmer of PD hope. I hope.

It's easy to get bogged down by the "we can'ts", the "I can'ts", and the "ya buts" especially when you are trying to plan Professional Development. Helping others to feel empowered and inspired by education technology often reminds me of the Louis CK routine "Everything is amazing right now and nobody is happy."

Yesterday, in our PD planning session we started discussing the absence of students from our process. It was like a light bulb went off and our conversation went from "ya but's" to "oh ya's!" Here's a glimpse of what we proposed.

Goals for the day are to:

• Reconvene the TTDN group and representative students to identify strengths and challenges with  implementation and to continue support of blended and 21^st century learning
• Change the conversation by adding the student voice to our learning about what works
• Plan for future support and expansion

We are still working out the details, but I found myself excited and inspired by the prospects of including students in our PD.  Having students and teachers work alongside each other to learn new ways of integrating technology in the classroom makes sense to me. It's actually the way we integrated technology in my school most of the time.

Do you have experience bringing students into the conversation? Please share your comments below.

Live - from the skatepark! Using technology and "homework" to engage the brain.

One of my goals this year is to support learning tools and technology that fire up our students' brains (and hearts) after school. For argument's sake I'll call this "homework" -(boo!).

I wonder what would happen if students were asked to use their cell phones to explain relationships in an ecosystem by taking pictures of examples from hockey practice, the skate park, or the mall. They could submit the photos to a shared photo site online, and the next day the teacher could project these images for a discussion. Finding examples of geometric shapes, literary devices, or genetic traits might also work. And while they are shooting photos that night we might also send a text message quiz question to reinforce a specific concept. The same assignment could be completed with a digital camera and a web posted quiz question (no cell phone), or with hand drawn examples and a sealed envelope quiz question for students with minimal technology (ok, I'm reaching here). But perhaps the incentive of using a cell phone or having your photos used the next day for discussion would entice our "homework loving" students to learn while they live.

I think learning what we teach while engaged in their personal activities might help to cement the connections and concepts we are trying to teach. And if that doesn't work, I'd try playing the didgeridoo while stiltwalking.