A Prezi to share

2012 - 13 Iowa Children's Choice Book Trailers on Prezi

Miranda Kral, the K-12 Teacher Librarian in our district created this great Prezi to share book trailers for this year's Children's Choice awards books.Prezi is a great tool to share your expertise with the world. Miranda tweeted this link and and it was retweeted by another teacher librarian. That is the power of social media!  Thanks for sharing, Miranda

Genius Board

An example of a "Genius Board" for technology

Collaboration - in a classroom and in the staff room

How do we help kids really understand what collaboration is?

That was the beginning question that Terra Huber, 7th grade science teacher, asked the Learning Design Coaches.   Terra's 7th students were working on a group project to create a container to keep an egg safe during an egg drop. She had provided video and print materials to teach the concepts and it was time for the groups to begin working together.  So it was time for COLLABORATION!

As a team, we (Terra, Frank and I) created our own list of skills necessary if collaboration is working.

* listening           * taking turns           * inclusion

*accepting new ideas          *sharing ideas freely  

From this list we made a plan - we decided to start with a role play of the good and the bad, then students would create T charts of what they saw and we would create a class list. Finally, the groups would begin working.

Our role play was a hit - Terra was the science brain and Frank and I were the lazy ones depending on her to do all the work in our first skit.  For the second one we included turn taking and building on each other's ideas to a final design concept.

Students then created their T-chart on their own and then shared ideas with elbow partners.  The picture on the left shows the list one of the classes created on the smart board.

Following this discussion the students moved to their Egg Drop groups and we watched to see if they were using the things from the list.

It certainly wasn't perfect, but students were engaged and sharing their ideas. We know that this is step 1.  But, I think it was a good step.  And we realized how important it was to break the concept down into finite skills for the students.

I can't help but reflect on the idea of collaboration for our staff members as well. I think that we forget why we collaborate sometimes. It can feel like just a task the superintendent (our 'teacher') says we have to do.  In reality, collaboration provides a chance to create something together that would never happen if we were working on our own.

I am not a science thinker - the marshmallow challenge and this egg drop activity make me shudder because I have no clue. But, by working in a group I was able to contribute my very limited ideas to the entire project. I cared much more about the outcome and had a hand in the process.  I doubt that I gave any ideas that were unique or pivotal - but I had a voice and it was honored in the process.

That is collaboration.

It's not easy or fast, but my goodness it can help us end up at a much better place.   So - maybe as adults you won't see us huddled around a group of desks - kneeling on the chairs with our heads together totally focused on an activity.  But, the process of focusing on a clearly defined problem and following the rules of collaboration will certainly benefit all of us.
_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*__*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
“No one can whistle a symphony.  It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” - H.E. Luccock

Mid-Prairie Blogs and Tweets

We asked the teachers to share their twitter hashtags and blog addresses with us. We want to promote these during the school year.
This is the beginning of the list - watch for additions as the year progresses.

Who	Twitter	Blog
Lori Simon		http://simonspenler.blogspot.com/
Lynda Wilson		http://wtfourthgrade.blogspot.com/
Alex Abbe	@mrabbe @MP7thSS #mp7thss
KE Title Blog		http://ketitle.blogspot.com/
Kerri Bell	@mrsbell2nd	http://2ndgradebellblog.blogspot.com/
Briana Goodenbour	Pre-Calc: mphsprecalc Algebra: mphsalgebra
Joyce Billups		www.kbillups.blogspot.com
Marc Pennington	Twitter - @GoldenHawkHoops
Ross Schumaker	@RossSchumaker	http://www.schumaker.weebly.com/
KE 4th Grade		http://kefourthgrade.blogspot.com/
Denise Busch	@WE4B	http://web4b.blogspot.com

Team Day

Teamwork.

What an important task!

Today was a day filled with teamwork.

This morning Frank, Lora, Phyllis and I met to talk tech.  It was a great time of brainstorming and planning.

In the afternoon I met with Stacy Behmer at Grantwood to pick her brain about several projects we are working on.

And the day ended with a class at Grantwood - The Teacher Leadership Academy. This is the first class after our 3-day June training. The training was amazing and I'm looking forward to applying some of the concepts to a project in the district. Something to look forward to.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

None of us is as smart as all of us ~ Ken Blanchard

The Perpetual To-Do List

I am a list maker.  Mostly because I love to check things off these lists!

When I left the classroom I struggled with how to keep track of the varied tasks I needed to do.  I tried a couple of different tools - both digital and old-school. And, I finally landed on a notebook that I keep with me at all times. I make a daily list - and sometimes I just add additional dates to the top of the list - and check off tasks as I go.  I usually only use the right side page and add additional note to the left page.  I also add sticky bookmarks on pages that contain info I will need to revisit.

So this is a picture of the things I was hoping to accomplish on Wednesday at Keota.  Each of those boxes should have a checkmark inside...as you can see, they don't.

But, there were more check marks at the end of the day than at the beginning!  It seems like I can never quite run out of things to do! :)

Wednesday was the first day with students at Keota.  The year has truly started!

The After Shot

This is what a cart looks like after it is happily filled with new laptops.  Because I am not in blogging mode yet, I didn't get a picture of the chaos that came before.  So, this is only the after shot.

Frank and I worked at Keota all day yesterday.  We shared our mission at the all district meeting and then spent the rest of the day finishing a whole list of things I didn't quite get done over the summer.

It is a wonderful feeling to be ready for students to walk through the doors this morning!

Looking forward to a great year!


A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry B Adams

Tom Many - PLC Professional Development

Professional Learning Communities -
PLCs

I really didn't know much about PLCs and the parts I did know were pretty fuzzy - at least that's how I felt Monday morning. But by the end of the day my understanding had increased. Tom Many's experience as superintendent of a large Illinois school moving along the path of PLCs was a great help in that understanding.  I appreciated his mix of stories and facts - it created a picture of what the possibilities of this are.

I think Mid-Prairie also made an impression on Tom.  We had asked if it was ok to have a Twitter feed on the side screen during the morning and if the staff could have digital copies of his presentations.  This was the first a school had made either of these requests, and he agreed.
At the close of the morning's session we posed a twitter challenge to the entire staff - tweet out remaining questions about PLCs.

This turned out to be a great way to close a large group session and transition into our smaller planning group in the afternoon.  Rather than work from the prepared slide deck of powerpoint slides, Tom worked from the tweeted questions.  It was a practical and focused conversation with the Instructional Leadership Team.  And this was Tom's tweet at the end of the day!

Have to say it was a great day all the way around!!

The 1st Day Back

Frank and I had a chance to share with the district what our vision of Learning Design was all about at the back to school in-service day Thursday, August 16.

We have spent quite a bit of time together this summer. The first was a week hosting our district's conference 'Learning for the 21st Century.'

Then in July we spent a week in Boston at the 'Building Learning Communities' conference. It was a week of 'brain-rattling' ideas and conversations - that is the way a past attendee described the week to me during our first session.

Each of our conversations this summer centered on what we heard from these conferences and ways to build communities of learners working together to create the best environment possible for our students.  That sounds like a pretty lofty goal and from there we had to break down what that actually meant and what it could look like.  That brought us to this mission - now there was discussion whether it was a vision or a mission statement or a list of goals. We decided that was all semantics and what we really wanted was to focus on the task.

Our mission is to bring focus to learning by equipping teachers to create an environment where students own their learning.  We will work with teachers to create lessons that promote student collaboration, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, research skills and contributions to the global community. We will do "Whatever It Takes" to meet the needs of our teachers and students.

And now it's time to move on to the next step.
We have to put feet on this thing...and that bring it to the classrooms. I am excited and a little nervous. Sounds like the beginning of the year doesn't it!!!
STay tuned!