Teaching Friends @ Suffield Academy

Contact information: Email Beth Krasemann w/questions and suggestions; we also have a First Class email folder called Teaching Friends.

Conferences that we have attended Articles Articles and Meeting Topics Inspirational Texts
21st century skills Links Mel Levine  

 

Links: http://search-institute.org/: Search Institute is an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities. To accomplish this mission, the institute generates and communicates new knowledge, and brings together community, state, and national leaders.

Resiliency in Action: http://resiliency.com/

The Resiliency Center: http://resiliencycenter.com/

Devlopmental Studies Center: http://devstu.org/home.html

Articles and Meeting Topics:

Time Magazine's December 2006 cover article on How to Build a Student for the 21st Century.

 


21st Century Skills:

* Sir Ken Robinson: Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.

* Click here for notes from our discussion groups after watching Ken Robinson's 20 min. video on Nov. 26th


* Pay Attention: This presentation, simply entitled Pay Attention, was created by Darren Draper in an effort to motivate teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching. Since most of today's students can appropriately be labeled as "Digital Learners", why do so many teachers refuse to enter the digital age with their teaching practices?

* Shift Happens: Originally started out as a PowerPoint presentation for a faculty meeting (August 2006) to prompt a discussion about 21st century skills needed for students at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, United States. The presentation "went viral" on the Web and, as of June 2007, had been seen by at least 5 million online viewers. Today the old and new versions of the online presentation have been seen by at least 10 million people, not including the countless others who saw it at conferences, workshops, training institutes, and other venues. Click on https://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/ for more info.

* Paul Bassett, President of NAIS: This PowerPoint presentation examines the change-resistant culture of schools, recommends strategies for effecting change, and presents examples of design issues in curriculum, program, schedule, and governance for creating 21st Century schools.

 


Inspirational Texts:

Marta's suggestions of May 2007:

Ignite Student Learning (by a neurologist and classroom teacher)
[Link]http://www.amazon.com/Research-Based-Strategies-Ignite-Student-Learning/dp/1416603700

The Adolosecent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy
[Link]http://www.amazon.com/Adolescent-Brain-Reaching-Autonomy/dp/1412926114

Bil's Rec: Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. I read it two winters ago and remember that the first two thirds of the text are very compelling; the pace of the last third drops a little.

Also, D. Pink will be the headline speaker at next year's NAIS Conf. in New York. See pasted text below: His web page: http://www.danpink.com/aboutwnm.php
The NAIS Annual Conference is a gathering of independent school leaders, administrators, and teachers. It provides opportunities for invaluable personal and professional networking, as well as professional development on critical leadership and educational issues of the times. In New York City, more than 5,000 attendees are expected to participate; they will attend the conference to gain both inspiration and practical knowledge about how to improve their school learning environments. NAIS also seeks to use its Annual Conference to spur breakthrough thinking.

The theme, “Schools of the Future: Embracing the Educational ReNAISsance,” aims to focuses the independent school community on its own future – both in the immediate years ahead and in the long term. Trends and research show that in order to succeed in our new “flat” and interconnected world, students need to gain different skills now. This will require “schools of the future” to embrace new teaching methods; new vehicles for teaching, including technology; and new ways of thinking about education as a whole. Independent schools are positioned to be leaders in creating schools of the future, reworking their curriculum to be “programmatically sustainable.”

Daniel Pink, headlining speaker at the annual conference, argues in his book “A Whole New Mind” that leaders in the 21st Century will need to be better trained in “right-brained” thinking, to be able see the big picture, come up with creative solutions to complex challenges, and view challenges and opportunities through multiple lenses and viewpoints. Pink and other speakers will provide inspiration for conference attendees to begin to picture and embrace their own schools of the future.

And as we look ahead, we have to look back. The word “renaissance” is French for “rebirth.”
Wikipedia -- the multilingual, Web-based, collaboratively written, free encyclopedia, which in itself exemplifies a new kind of thinking and a convergence of knowledge, technology, and access – summarizes the period of history known as The Renaissance, as “a movement or period of vigorous artistic and intellectual activity.” We believe that we are on the cusp of another renaissance, a rebirth in the way we look at creativity and education.

NAIS believes there are five dimensions of sustainability along which all schools should be building their own futures.

1. Demographic/cultural competencies: becoming more inclusive and representative of the school-age population and less unapproachable financially and socially
2. Environmental knowledge and advocacy: becoming more “green” and less wasteful
3. Financially Accessible: becoming more efficient and less costly
4. Globally knowledgeable and empathetic: becoming more networked internationally and less provincial in outlook.
5. Programmatically focused on developing skills for the 21st century workforce: becoming more focused on the skills and values the marketplace of the 21st century will seek and reward – and less narrowly isolated in a traditional disciplines approach to teaching and learning.

These dimensions are intertwined, and will impact all aspects of your school’s planning and decision making. While the conference theme focuses primarily on programmatic sustainability, conference workshops and speakers will also touch on all aspects of sustainability.

We are looking forward to hosting the 2008 Annual Conference in New York City -- a city of lights, aesthetic excitement, intellectual stimulation, and diversity of all kinds. There, NAIS will encourage its member schools to embrace the educational renaissance, and make steps towards building creative and exciting classrooms for the future.


 

Conferences:

 

College Board Forum Oct. 2007:

Click on this YouTube linlk for a very funny and informative 20 min. talk on how our current school systems strip away creativity; the talk also emphasizes the shift in the future of education as well as the need to invest in the arts (to foster creativity): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

September 2007: Four of us went to CAIS' October 2007 Fire and the Rose: Stress, Resiliency and Learning. Four of us went and discovered four links. We also enjoyed the main speaker, Ned Hallowell and recommend his book, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness.

NB: click here for upcoming CAIS events


CAIS: Technology Integration Conference, Nov. 2006

It was wonderful to have you all here at GFA on Tuesday! I have put together the resources from our presentations below. Please feel free to email if you have any questions.
Justine

SketchUp
www.sketchup.com
Take a look at the wonderful K-12 Gallery under Education.

www.klipfolio.com
RSS Aggregator (Feeder)  for Windows
Mac has a widget for this.

http://earth.google.com/
Google Earth!

www.skype.com
Skype

www.wikispaces.com
email help@wikispaces.com to make your Wiki private for free- currently open to educators.

From Ellie:
Here are the resources for social bookmarking:

del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/
del.icio.us help: http://del.icio.us/help/
what are tags? http://del.icio.us/help/tags

ma.gnolia: http://ma.gnolia.com/
ma.gnolia FAQ's about their site and social bookmarking in general:
http://ma.gnolia.com/faq

PBS article on social bookmarking and del.icio.us:
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/2006/05/tag_youre_delicious.html

Any questions? E.mail Ellie at ellie@suffieldacademy.org or Justine at jfellows@gfacademy.org

Justine Fellows
Coordinator of Academic Technology, Upper School
Greens Farms Academy
Greens Farms, CT 06838
203-256-7519


Mel Levine Web Page: http://www.allkindsofminds.org/