Dangerously Irrelevant

Sometimes I read things like this post from George Couros and am uplifted that some educators are working hard to transition their schools into a digital, global era:

Take a twenty minute period in my life as evidenced below.

I read a blog post found in my Reader feed, which leads me to a link on YouTube, that leads me to a quote, which leads me to the person who stated the quote, to find a link on their Twitter profile, only to find another article on something that I would have never found myself.

I could go on from there, and I eventually will, but it is just amazing how one item, leads to another, and another, and so on.

That is how learning should be: continuous, connected, and meaningful.

And then I have exchanges like the one I had yesterday (excerpts are below) and am reminded about how far we still have to go.

No recognition that our knowledge environment is completely technology-suffused… No recognition that at what is apparently a great school, students could do amazing and powerful things with technology…

Got an administrator in your school or district who’s interested in Twitter but doesn’t know whom to follow? Interested in connecting online with more administrators yourself? Get started with these 1,133 educational leaders on Twitter! [UPDATE: Now up to over 1,600 leaders!]

• Educational Leadership 1 Twitter list
• Educational Leadership 2 Twitter list
• Educational Leadership 3 Twitter list
• Educational Leadership 4 Twitter list

I’ll keep adding to this collection. Special thanks to Patrick Larkin, George Couros, Lyn Hilt, Chris Lehmann, Dan Frazier, and others for helping me expand my existing list. If you’re maintaining a Twitter list of P-12 educational administrators that I should know about, or would like to chat about creative ways to use these lists, get in touch!

[Continuing what I hope will be a months-long wave of resources for school leaders and the programs that prepare them…]

If you can crack the problem of engagement – not just ‘are you paying attention?’, but ‘are you fascinated by this?’ – if you can crack engagement in deep learning then you’ve cracked 21st century schooling.

Mike Berrill via http://gcouros.com/are-you-fascinated. [yes, it's a George Couros doubleheader today!]

Also check out the incredible resources to help you create ‘engaging schools’ over at Innovation Unit.