katie.christo.blog

I’ve been looking at a lot of lists out there and am working on getting my summer reading list going – the six below are the ones I want to read most!

• Beyond Discipline by Alfie Kohn
• Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen
• The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson
• Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
• Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Here are two lists I found helpful:

• NPR’s Summer Books 2009
• Read Like Your Hair’s on Fire: An Educator’s Summer Reading List

What is on your summer reading list?

If you haven’t seen Wolfram|Alpha yet it rocks!  Instead of trying to tell you every little thing about it go watch the video: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html Even if you only watch the first 3 minutes you will get a great idea of it’s power!  I think this is going to be a fabulous tool for schools.

Here are my thoughts:

• One of my favorite parts of Wolfram|Alpha is the ability to save a PDF of any data you find.  (Look at the bottom right of the screen when you get your results.)
• Instead of having to search for an answer to a question you get all of your information on one screen.  Even more importantly your results are vetted and are by acknowledged experts (overcoming the hurdle of sites like wikipedia).
• The compare and contrast functions will be amazingly useful in all different subjects.
• You can type a word and get definitions, synonyms, and even a synonym network (much more than just the define: function of google).
• The math and science functions are (obviously) off the charts.

I truly think there is probably a way this could be used in almost every subject.  What do you think?  How do you see it being used?

There are some very interesting posts going on over at ISTEConnects.  The first is a post by Wes Fryer Handouts at Educator PD Workshops.  This post is near and dear to my heart as I’ve been trying for the last couple of years to move away from printing whenever possible!

The second post I wanted to mention was by Joe Corbett – Share your Tips on How to be a Green Educator.  This post evolved from the responses to the one above and is collecting data on a Google Doc.  If you have a second please go over and add your thoughts!

Image Attribution
Image: ‘Soy distinto ¿y qué? / I’m different,+so+what?‘
www.flickr.com/photos/8991878@N08/1592903964

After I gave my Presentations 101 training to my staff I was amazed at the amount of interest and how truly transformative it was.  The next day I had two teachers show me presentations they had made that night, two more are in the middle of creating a presentation, and one had even put their presentation up on SlideShare.  See below!

I am part of a book club at my school and we are reading Mel Levine’s book A Mind at a Time.  In one of our meeting the conversation evolved to discussing how we can best highlight student’s individual strengths.  It was a great discussion. 

Afterwards I was talking to one of the participants and we were discussing creativity.  I mentioned to her the wonderful presentation Do School’s Kill Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson and suggested she watch it.  As I was searching for the video to send to her I also found this great interview from the Guardian with Sir Ken Robinson from February of this year:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/10/teaching-sats 

The entire interview is a great read.  In particular I found the following two quotes compelling:

Our approaches to education are "stifling some of the most important capacities that young people now need to make their way in the increasingly demanding world of the 21st century – the powers of creative thinking", he says.

He goes on to talk about the “element” (also the title of his new book The Element – which I can’t wait to read)

All of this prevents the next generation finding its "element". This is "the place where the things you love to do and the things you are good at come together". The "element" is essential to our wellbeing, our ultimate success and the effectiveness of our education system, he says.

I can only imagine what a school would be like where creativity and the ability for each student to find their “element” would be like… what a fabulous place.  This is where education needs to go – this is what we should be striving for. 

(Just in case you haven’t seen Do School’s Kill Creativity I’ve embedded the video below)