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Amidst Doug Johnson's post about cleaning out his office is an amazing gem about change. Doug excerpts a 1992 report with a foreward written by Michael G. Fullan called "Change: A Guide for the Perplexed," from his work, Doubts and Certainties, NEA National Center for Innovation (I googled the book and it was actually written by Portland State University professors Thomas G. Chenoweth and Robert B. Everhart). In Doug's Post, he lists what I call eight lessons of change. They are profound and deserve to be brought out to the forefront. The Eight Lessons of Change You can't mandate what matters. Change is a journey, not a blueprint. Problems are our friends. Vision and strategic planning come later in the process, not at the beginning. Individualism and collectivism must have equal power. Neither centralism nor decentralism works. Connect with the environment. Every person needs to be his or her own change agent We live in a discrete world that ...

If you're not participating in Edbloggernews , you're really missing out. I just found this gem that I'm going to look into more. It references an article posted yesterday from CNN about the new website www.teacherspayteachers.com . You upload all file types of ORIGINAL work and it can be purchased and downloaded by other teachers for use in their classroom. You get 85% of the proceeds. I'm probably going to sign up without paying the fee to see what I think. (There is a $29.95 fee annual fee to participate.) He has recruited several award winning teachers who are already submitting plans for sale. I have full PowerPoints, handouts, and resources for so many of my lessons. I've hesitated to share all of them because there seem to be pirates out there that like to snitch material and market it as their own. This is a way for me to market and share that material so it doesn't gather dust on my shelf. Much like ebay, buyers will rate the sellers on this mar...

I am passionate about educating adults about the New Internet as well as the children I teach on a daily basis. My little hometown of Camilla, Georgia has an incredible new community gathering spot called Camilla Java . Not only do they serve great coffee but they have a huge dance floor upstairs where they teach shag dancing on Friday nights. They have discussion groups that meet and I have started one entitled the "New Net Discussion Group." Our first meeting was today and next one will be on Wednesday, July 19th at noon, if you're around Camilla, join us! This is targeted to busy adults who want to learn more about these new things on the Internet . We have created a blog http://newnetgroup.blogspot.com and my participants have been invited to contribute. I blogged the notes about the meeting which include an explanation of RSS and how to set up a Net Vibes account. This is a great place to start for a beginner. I am welcoming people who are just beginning on...

A new wiki service in Seattle which boasts that it is the easiest of all wikis started this month. The new service entitled Wet paint has been used on the xbox to create cheat codes and other collaborative works. (Notice how the name wiki is left out of the company name.) Most people just knew they collaborated but didn't know the term wiki. I was most interested in the article posted by the MIT Technology Review which stated: "Surveys conducted by the Harris polling organization for Wetpaint show that only 5 percent of adults who go online can define the word "wiki," according to Elowitz. And it's not clear that Wetpaint or any other wiki-focused company has made the technology simple -- or useful -- enough to attract large numbers of users." This article also claims that although many people read Wikipedia , "only about 500 users are responsible for editing it." (I've edited, have you?) A wiki that isn't called a wiki used in college ...

I love reading the blogs of other teachers and Darren Kuropatwa is one of my all time favorites. He has blogged an incredible comparison of his teaching as it has evolved over the last year and a half using blogs. This is simply a must read. I think it is important for all of us to be reflective and share during the summer time. The day to day stuff is great but sometimes when we are in the midst of the day we cannot see the big picture. Such big picture introspection and class inspection is important if we are to take the day to day and turn it into best practices. We must be able to examine what we do and determine what works and share it. The world is full of good ideas but ideas that are unable to be implemented are just air. Take time to read Darren's incredible post ! I am going to work on a post modeling his style of comparison and hope others will as well. Tags: teaching , education , Darren Kuropatwa , blogging , edublogging , teacher , blog , web 2.0 , blog , blogs ...

I have been totally absorbed (8-10 hours a day for a week) in purchasing my new dream computer lab. I have learned so much that I simply must begin to share it with you so that you too can learn from all of this sweat and keystrokes. I'm so excited that I just can't stand it! How I've researched for this purchase Before I tell you what I learned, let me give you some history for how I did my research. I posted a blog entry about my hardware thoughts , software thoughts , and questions about open office versus Microsoft office . I took that information and created a wiki which several readers graciously helped me edit. What resulted were some incredible comments and great resources. Although I talked to some other companies, I have worked with Matt Robertson at CDW-G and have been so impressed with him. He is going out of town a couple of days to the Alabama Technology Conference and I hope some of you who read in Alabama will stop by and tell him that he is doing a g...

After following some fascinating posts at Kathy Sierra's blog , I came across some of the current research on the brain over at science daily, I came across a fascinating article entitled Scientists detect two decision making pathways in the human brain . The finding, published in the October 15, 2004, issue of Science has broad implications for predicting economic and behavioral health patterns, says Richard Suzman, Ph.D., Director of the NIA's Behavioral and Social Research Program. As the scientists studied the brain patterns of those who were faced with immediate reward versus delayed gratification, they found that the emotional portions of the brain were more activated in those who chose immediate gratification. The deliberative areas were strongly used when a person chose delayed rewards. The article says: When participants chose between incentives that included an immediate reward, fMRI scans indicated heightened activity in parts of the brain, such as the limbic sys...

I was done posting for the day but have spent my daily five minutes perusing Edbloggernews and came across this article: Pentagon sets its sights on Social Networking sites . As the Pentagon funds harvesting information from social networking sites, we have more important work to do than ever. Our children are oblivious! We are planning a parent and teacher meeting about myspace and the information students post online and this will be an article that I share. We have GOT to educate NOT insulate our students on this important issue. Students often post things tongue in cheek that they don't mean. Now, a joke with a friend may turn into an inquisition. This makes me nervous as profiles of how each of us think could possibly be built off of our online material. I am not ashamed of how I think, but who determines whether what I think is "acceptable" and how will it be used. Big brother is watching, but we are opening the drapes. (Who is going to teach children about t...

As I prepare to travel again for the weekend, I have been perusing some great top 10 eduposts! ( Read my top 10 eduposts for the last school year ) Here are those that have been tagged or linked to my blog so I could find them: David Warlick - The former classroom teacher, turned edu-motivational/instructional speaker who I credit with lighting my fire for the new Internet and changing my life has posted his top 10 list from the past school year. I particularly like his Act Like a Native and Flat Classrooms posts. I really think it is wise to read all of his top 10 to get some of the best in current transitional educational thinking. A teacher's life by Lucy Gray Lucy is a Middle School Computer Science teacher and Apple Distinguished Educator. I particularly like her post on how she used Google Earth to create a graphing activity in Excel. She also did a riff on the idea and posted h er top ten eduposts from other blogs , great idea! Extra Recess - Video Tape yourse...

I love to pull in non educational industry bloggers in my A list reading because they inspire me and move me in directions I would not have gone. It helps me avoid "group thinkitis" in my teaching and get past just what the educational industry is saying. I've been reading Garr Reynold 's Presentation Zen for a while and have learned a lot about visual communications. (His quotes are inspiring too.) I often blog about the importance of body language, voice, and enthusiasm in the classroom . In my blog posting, the Overlooked Lethal Weapon of Teaching , I quote Rose Polchin , a communications consultant, who says that the actual words we say are only 7% of communications! As I teach my students presentation skills, I really emphasize this point! (In fact, one of my pet peeves is monotone teachers who drone on while seemingly oblivious to the fact that their students are asleep!) The new blog posting, The power of the visual , over at Presentation Zen is another ...

The old adage says to think "outside the box." My question is, where did the box come from? Who made the box? Who decided to get in THE box? Talking about a box, Erma Bombeck said: There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. How sad! Keep the dreams out of the box Teachers and administrators need dreams. When we lose our dreams of making a difference in the lives of children, we lose the power to make a difference! We cannot put ourselves or our children in a box and hope them to be everything we want them to be! Don't leave technology in the box Before teaching in my current setting, I used to train public school teachers on how to implement technology in the classroom. I will never forget showing up an hour early for such a class and open...

Back from my vacation I hope all of you will take time this summer to sit on a mountain or a beach or just your back porch. I've found a beautiful post with some great quotations on Presentation Zen . If you're feeling uninspired, maybe a little time off is what you need! Automobiles are not made to run all of the time, they need their tires rotated and their engines tuned up. You do too! If you go full tilt all of the time, you are shortening your life and asking for a heart attack! Take some time to breathe. As I read blogs, I read things that tell me "you must post every day" or "you have to have short posts," or a miscelleny of other recommendations. I honestly say I haven't followed many of them. I didn't post for a week while on vacation and had about 40 more people to subscribe to my blog. Last Friday was the heaviest day of traffic I've had since I began blogging and I hadn't posted for a week! Lighten up, your blog will be...

While perusing Will Richardson 's new project, I came across a great resource that is worth his effort of setting up his EdBloggerNews project: The School Computing Wiki by Fred Bartels . This is a great resource on many different topics. It has a review style format with many opinions. If you are evaluating what you are doing in the classroom right now, this is a great place to look. If you are full of opinions and have a story to tell, also a great place for you to share. Get over there and participate and collaborate! You can teach others while your classroom is empty over the summer! This is about teaching the world! This is about sharing the story with others and coming out of our virtual holes in the ground to work together! It is about learning from one another in the hopes that we can spur innovation on in an accelerating pace as we work more efficiently. It is about encouragement that when we do our best and use best practices that we can turn good intentions into...

Will Richardson asks a thought provoking question: "This [creation of aggregation of edunews] is all stemming from a bigger burr in my brain of late that has to do with the seeming randomness of all of the really great work that people in this community are starting to create. It’s just feeling like it’s all over the place, and that if we could in some way get our collective act together, we could start creating an incredibly valuable resource. I know it’s all about small pieces loosely joined, but wouldn’t it be great to point the newcomers to one spot that was a clearinghouse for all of this work? Not to mention the value it would have to us old timers in terms of bringing people in. I mean all of a sudden, it seems like everyone has a wiki, and most all of them have great intent and good content. But there’s also a lot of duplication of effort, and more importantly, dis-connection, at least that what it feels like to me." If you are a speed reader and type 100 words per m...

Post your Top Ten Posts Attention edubloggers "on vacation" this summer, I would like to ask you to post your top ten posts from the last school year! I have been amazed at how many hits are coming from college classrooms and educators this summer. (See my post on statcounter on how to track yours.) Some of them have bemoaned the fact that I do not have enough "how to's" on my website or classroom experiences Well, that's just it, the how to's are buried back in May and before. It is June and I'm not in class right now. I hope that professors teaching such classes will instruct students on how to search and go back in the archives to find "classroom" experiences. Tag your Top Ten: mytop10eduposts Consequently, I was thinking it would be a good, reflective practices for edubloggers to post a "top ten" David Letterman style post every so often to highlight the posts that they think are the "most important reads...