ITS FOOTBALL SEASON

Random thoughts and few will be about education today so I hope you enjoy.

Congress bringing anyone up on lying charges is a joke, let alone a baseball player. Two problems with this, why would they care about steroid usage in baseball, oh I forgot thats the most pressing problem in America, and if a congressman's mouth is moving he/she is lying. Try to run our country, have you checked the approval ratings lately?

I have great admiration for strength and conditioning coaches, however, when I watch commercials I can't figure out why everyone doesn't use the Shake Weight? Why spend hours working on barbells, dumbells, or machines when you can look like that guy in 6 minutes. Our school will never purchase any more weight equipment, thanks Shake Weight for saving our district money.

The Pleasanton Blu-Jays open their season tonight against the Dexter Cardinals, I know the battle of the birds. We didn't have a great year last year, but are entering this season with high expectations and optimism. I'll be taking my mom to the game since Dexter is on the way, looking forward to that. Can't wait for kickoff, and by the way will be tweeting updates on the game.

College football opened last night and I channel hopped until my fingers got tired, no better time of year. My beloved Sooners open Saturday against Utah State, the biggest concerns are the offensive line and defensive tackles, if those two hold up then I think OU will have a good year. Next week they have Florida State really looking forward to that game. Remember to OU creed: We are trying to build a university our football team can be proud of! I for one am glad they have their priorities straight. Remember the four seasons in Oklahoma-football season, recruiting season, off season, and spring football, gosh I love this time of year.

The NFL enough said-I hope they strike next year so we can play college football on Sunday instead of trying to cram it all in one day. I do watch it because it is football and what else is on on Sunday afternoon.

Have a great Labor Day weekend.

Slide and Shuffle

Today started our school year and wouldn't you know it hasn't rained in six weeks (which is good for mowing) and we have a monsoon, the kids looked like drowned rats coming in, but parents and kids were in good moods.

Our elementary principal is having quite a battle with an illness and was physically unable to be here. Our high school principal's son is having hip surgery so he is not here either. There is an old saying in coaching "don't worry about the mice when the elephants are stampeding". Its not a big deal, all of our teachers are experienced and we'll get through the day in good shape. I will miss the principals until tomorrow but now I'll get to be in the buildings more.

Sometimes we have to slide and shuffle but we get it taken care because thats what educators do, I am so proud of my profession.

Convictions

Just got done with my meeting with our staff to kick off the new school year and had to start by apologizing to them for not having the guts to follow through with my convictions.

Two years ago I told our Commissioner of Education at a conference that we needed to scrape our state assessment testing and go with the ACT or something else where we can compare apples to apples outside of Kansas. Well McPherson, Kansas, has had enough guts to tell the state they are no longer giving the state assessments since they don't have relevance. The state school board has given their blessing to doing this, McPherson is now seeing how it will effect their federal funding. They will MAPP test lower elementary, give the ACT Explore to the upper elementary, ACT Plan to junior high, and ACT to high school.

Bully for them and I guarantee I will not sit back any longer and do nothing, the subject we are talking about is to important: young people's education. We are in the student learning business, not the the teaching business and I am going to let my feelings known.

A Whole New World

As I wrote in my last post I have made connections with a Principal in Canada that write blogs that are much more widely followed than mine. One of the first things he wanted to know is if I was on Twitter, I immediately responded no. The reason being was I could care less about who was going to Starbucks or WalMart and would never care about that. He agreed wholeheartedly, he didn't care about that either but he did care about kids and educational technology as do I.

I am trying to get our teachers and administrators to try new things and what type of leadership would I be displayed if I didn't give Twitter a shot? So George walked me through the sign in process and I waited. After a couple of days George asked me how things were going, and I told him if I had one more follower I'd have one, he said he do a "shout out" to get people to follow me. My goodness I thought my cell phone would vibrate off the table from people now following me.

What an educational resource this has become and I'm just getting started, the information available by people is astounding. Imagine you get a magazine once a month, read the articles of interest and then wait 25 days for the next issue. This is like getting magazines, newspapers, and blogs of the nation that educators find of interest to other educators. I used to copy articles to give to our administrative team that I thought would be of interest to them, it didn't take long to realize that would be impossible, now I just have have to remember who tweeted what. So far I really like and wish I hadn't been so narrow minded for so long. Thanks George for being persistent.

TAKING THE NEXT STEP

I have written before about the blogs I read and I throughly enjoy them and think they keep me current with the happenings in the education world. With the help of the internet we can now provide our students with all the benefits and resources that every other student in this state and nation have.

One of the blogs I read, Principals of Change, is written by a principal in Edmonton, Canada, he also hosts another blog, Connected Principals, which I read. He is very insightful and I decided to try to get ahold of him through Skype. We made contact last Sunday night and talked about education, technology, practices, the differences of our countries and a variety of other topics. We visited for approximately 50 minutes and I felt I had gained professionally.

Then the thought struck me that we could connect our students through the same medium. George is an elementary principal and is ahead of the curve in what his school is doing with the available technology. I offered an invitation for our grades 3, 4, and 5 to skype each other and learn about the others country. George was also excited about this and we are going to give it a shot, I am excited about this and for our students to experience this.

WHICH CLASSROOM IS BEST FOR KIDS

Teacher-Directed Learner Directed

Direct Instruction Interactive Exchange

Knowledge Skills

Content Process

Basic Skills Applied Skills

Facts and Principles Questions and Problems

Theory Practice

Curriculum Projects

Time-slotted On-demand

One-size-fits-all Personalized/customized

Competitive Collaborative

Classroom Global Community

Text-based Web-based

Summative Scores Formative Evaluations

Learning for School Learning for Life

I believe I would want my child in the class that was working on the skills to the right. Why we don't allow student collaboration I'm not sure, since they will collaborate the remainder of their adult life. We make all their decisions and then wonder why they make poor decisions on occasion, we have to let them experience in school what they will experience when they aren't in school for them to be responsible citizens.

MY FAVORITE BLOGS

I am an early riser, and enjoy the quiet time to watch the morning news and drink coffee. I also enjoy reading blogs about education, teaching, and technology used in education and what people are doing with the current technology available. Blogs I read on a daily basis are:

Freetech4teachers.com-a new list daily of technologies that can be used in the classroom or to enhance learning.

davidwarlick.com/2cents/-Education reformer that has some interesting viewpoints.

Leadertalk.com-A blog by school administrators for school administrators.

Blog.learningtoday.com-Latest information on new technologies available for education.

educationaltechnologyguy-Updated list of tools to use to enhance learning and make a teacher's life and job easier.

educationinnovation.typepad.org-Blog used to mainly build a professional learning community.

georgecouros.ca-A principal in Canada that is full of energy and ideas on how to connect with kids and make learning relevant.

joebower.org-Another Canadian that has some different ideas in regard to education-you can also find that he is a disciple of Alfie Kohn.

makeuseof.com-another site that deals with what people are doing with technology.

teachpaperless.com-This is about teachers that are cutting down on the usage of paper in their classes.

weblogg-ed.com-Another education reformer.

There are another 15 or so that I check on a weekly basis, several of them are magazines and since they release monthly, one really doesn't need to check on them daily. The amazing thing about reading blogs is they always lead you to another blog. If you don't read blogs in your particular area of interest you are really missing out on becoming better informed, and we are lifelong learners.