Hope the post is useful to you. As always, please stay in touch as I can be of support to your instructional redesign, technology integration, and leadership/innovation needs.
I do a basic introductory workshop on Monday. Gina and Robbi have created a fabulous workshop and I can’t wait to see their session in action on Tuesday. Then I will try and extend all of this work even further during my Wednesday workshop. Descriptions are below…
Many schools have created future-ready vision statements and college- and career-ready profiles of a graduate. But most schools still are struggling to transition their day-to-day classroom instruction to include more critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and other ‘future-ready’ student competencies in ways that are substantive, meaningful, and aligned to those vision statements and graduate profiles.
This workshop focuses on how to redesign classroom instruction for future-ready learning. We will use the free 4 Shifts Protocol to redesign lessons, units, and other instructional activities together for deeper learning, greater student agency, more authentic work, and rich technology infusion. The protocol contains concrete, specific ‘look fors’ and ‘think abouts’ that allow educators, coaches, and instructional leaders to shift students’ instructional work in deeper, more robust directions. The protocol is a useful complement to SAMR, TPACK, Triple E, and other frameworks that schools may be using, and also is an excellent capacity-building bridge to more complex inquiry and PBL projects.
This active, hands-on workshop is intended for teachers, instructional / technology coaches, and school leaders who are prepared to roll up their sleeves and dive into this important instructional redesign work!
This session incorporates Dr. Scott McLeod’s 4 Shifts Protocol and is designed to introduce teachers to practical skills to (re)design lessons focusing on deeper learning, greater student agency, more authentic work, and rich technology infusion. Teachers will learn to recognize the four shifts, evaluate ways to personalize the four shifts, (re)design a lesson, and use the four shifts to permanently pivot to incorporating the shifts into future.
This session is targeted for teachers PK-12, special education, literacy programs, gifted and talented classrooms, instructional coaches, and administrators.
New technologies give us new possibilities. In this workshop we will identify several different blended learning structures and how they might be used to facilitate students’ deeper learning, greater student agency, and more authentic, real world work. Station rotations, genius hours, flipped classrooms, flex models, and other blended learning strategies can create powerful pathways for our children. Bring a computer and come prepared to roll up your sleeves and engage in some active (re)design discussions!
This active, hands-on workshop is intended for teachers, instructional / technology coaches, and school leaders who are prepared to roll up their sleeves and dive into this important instructional redesign work!
Hope you’ll join us for one or all of these sessions!
Over 500 students at Flagler-Palm Coast High Schoolprotested the state’s anti-LGBTQ ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill yesterday by walking out of school for 20 minutes or so. The main organizer of the event was suspended ‘until further notice’ (which is illegal under U.S. Supreme Court precedent) by the high school principal for bringing and distributing pride flags to students. The principal told the student that he was ‘disrespectful and openly advocating against staff.’ Before the protest, the principal pulled the student aside and ‘voiced his opposition’ to the pride flags.
As the article in the Daytona Beach News-Journal notes, “students who showed up to the stadium with flags and other pride-related merchandise were blocked by administrators attempting to confiscate them.” Additionally, “students at the event said administrators circled protesters in the stadium, threatening them with discipline if they didn’t turn in their pride and LGBTQ+ flags.”
The school district spokesperson said that student leaders were told no flags prior to and at the beginning of the event “so as to avoid undue safety concerns and campus disruptions.” Here are the flags in question that apparently were a disruptive safety concern:
The school district superintendent also has banned the book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, from school libraries so there appear to be ongoing issues in the community regarding equity, acceptance, and inclusion.
As student bodies continue to become more diverse – and as LGBTQIA+ students and their families continue to advocate for greater acceptance of their human rights and dignity – it is imperative that school administrators figure out ways to move their school systems forward, not backward.
When the always-marvelous Catlin Tucker invited me to be a guest on her podcast, The Balance,I accepted immediately. I think the world of Catlin’s work.
[I decided to make some new investments in my own learning this semester. One of the ways that I’m doing that is to try and become ISTE-certified. I’ve had a longtime relationship with ISTE. When we created the nation’s first graduate program designed to prepare a technology-savvy school administrator at the University of Minnesota (way back in 2003!), ISTE was one of our most important partners in that work. I served on the initial advisory board for ISTE’s Standards for Education Leaders (back then, they were the NETS-A) and in 2016 I received ISTE’s global Award for Outstanding Leadership. I have worked with ISTE in a number of other service and professional learning roles and currently am serving as one of ISTE’s Community Leaders. All that said, I never have worked toward ISTE certification until now. I’ll be sharing my thoughts and experiences as I go through the certification program this year…]
I’m part of an awesome cohort. We represent a variety of job roles and responsibilities across multiple states and several countries, including both P-12 and postsecondary. I already can tell that I’m going to learn a lot from the other members of my cohort. We meet face-to-face every few weeks and also engage together in a number of asynchronous learning activities. So far we’ve met once and have been assigned to some small groups.
Our early work has been focused on grounding ourselves in course expectations, assignments and deadlines, and introducing ourselves to each other and the ISTE Standards for Educators. ISTE also has invited us to reflect on what it means to be part of an online professional learning network.
One of our first activities asked us to reflect on some of our understandings, strengths, and challenges related to the ISTE Standards for Educators. Here’s some of what I wrote:
I orient toward design thinking so am probably most confident with Standards 5a, 5b, 5c, and 6c because they emphasize the (re)design process. I spend a lot of time redesigning lessons and units with P-12 teachers, instructional coaches, and principals. I also have done a great deal of program design work at the university level, including recently redesigning our principal licensure program at CU Denver. I’m also confident in Standards 2a and 2b because I’m a school leadership professor who works with school leaders all around the world on designing and implementing new visions for learning and implementation structures for deeper learning, greater student agency, more authentic work, and rich technology infusion. As a university faculty member who tries hard to integrate technology into my teaching, I think I’m doing a decent job with Standards 6a, 6c, and 7a. My students tell me that they appreciate my efforts in this area. Finally, I’m a strong user of social media tools and online platforms and have a large global professional learning network (so Standard 1b!).
As a university school leadership professor, I don’t deal too much with data, data privacy, copyright, coding, computational thinking, and other more IT-oriented and/or media literacy concerns. Accordingly, Standards 3c, 3d, and 6b aren’t really in my day-to-day domain. Standard 7c is hard for me simply because I have seen technology systems used too often to reinforce low-level factual recall, procedural regurgitation, and assessment and I am adamantly opposed to those traditional practices dominating the deeper learning practices that we should be implementing instead.
…
I’ve been using ed tech since the mid-1990s. I’ve seen a number of learning and productivity technologies come and go, so I think I’m a pretty savvy consumer of new tools and their affordances (or their lack thereof) and the mindsets that underlie them. I’m familiar with and am a regular user of a larger number of digital tools, including some old standbys like RSS and blogs that I think still have value in today’s social media-oriented world. I’m an unafraid and unapologetic learner and am looking forward to living in community with – and being stretched by – the other folks in this certification cohort.
My primary implementation struggle is time. As a research university faculty member who also happens to care deeply about my teaching, those often conflict with each other in regard to institutional expectations and reward systems. Now that I’ve been promoted to Full Professor, I’m hoping that I can spend more time on what I want, not what the university wants!
I’m looking forward to my continued learning and growth in this certification process as I work to strengthen my understandings of learning technologies and meaningful classroom integration. I’m also interested in the logistics of how ISTE structures and facilitates this course and am hoping to pick up some good tips for my own blended instruction.
More reflections from me in the weeks and months to come!
I recently had a chance to keynote Big Blue Button’s first-ever Global Conference. Afterward, I sat down (virtually) with Robert Hocking and we chatted about some deeper learning concepts that I had mentioned in my talk.
Some faculty members are like race horses out of the gate. They’re focused Assistant Professors, they’re publishing immediately in ‘top tier’ journals, they’re presenting at conferences, they’re connecting strategically with grant funders and research colleagues, and they slide right into the tenure track slipstream and travel quickly through the Assistant Professor / Associate Professor With Tenure / Full Professor pathway.
Other faculty members start ABD (all but dissertation) in 1999, get off to a really slow start at University 1 because they need to complete their dissertation and are overwhelmed by department-level service commitments, switch universities in 2001 because of a gracious offer to start over, get ‘distracted’ at University 2 with exciting new opportunities that aren’t valued that much by the institution, extend their slow start even further because their focus is in non-rewarded areas, switch universities in 2007 because of a miraculous tenure offer, finally start to find their way a little bit at University 3, switch universities in 2011 because of a miraculous offer to do some really interesting work elsewhere with some amazing colleagues, find out that University 4 is an extremely poor fit and leave in 2012 after one year, drop out of higher education completely for four years, switch universities in 2016 because of a miraculous offer to return to higher education, successfully receive tenure again at University 5 despite the long absence from academe, and finally find a place that feels like the right balance between research, teaching, and service to the field. These faculty members also may struggle to juggle the demands of the professorship with family commitments, raising children, service to practitioners, a growing social media presence, and innovation in realms that most postsecondary institutions fail to value.
This second path would be me, of course. Which is why it was so gratifying to receive notice yesterday from the University of Colorado system that I was promoted to Full Professor (aka ‘Professor’). The (large p) Professor rank is ostensibly the highest level that a faculty member can achieve short of an endowed professorship or going into university administration. The label is intended to recognize a career’s worth of good work and to validate excellence across all areas of the professorship. I don’t know about all of that, but I am deeply grateful for the recognition.
In addition to my P-12 experiences, I now have been a (small p) professor at five major research universities. They’ve all taught me something, good or bad, and I’ve honed my institutional survival instincts over the years. So much of the tenure and promotion process is a hoop-jumping game (How many peer-reviewed articles do I need? We won’t tell you… In which journals should I publish? The very best, most selective ones, of course…) and/or a political arena (Keep your head down… Don’t make any waves… Watch out for that person if they’re on your review committee…). My journey is not the only long, twisty, bumpy one in higher education (and, unfortunately, we lose too many faculty along the way). And, as longtime readers know, I’ve struggled mightily with the lack of engagement, interaction, and visibility of writing for academic audiences versus what I can accomplish in practitioner outlets, on my blog, with multimedia, on other social media platforms, etc. Every time I publish in a walled-garden, paywalled, inaccessible-but-peer-reviewed academic journal, it feels like I’m burying my thinking and writing in a deep hole. I’d much rather be working with educators, creating new resources, or sharing and interacting with others.
But somehow I made it through and checked all of the boxes necessary for the final hoop jump. I’m incredibly grateful for my colleagues at CU Denver and for the opportunity to do good work here. The School of Education and Human Development is a very special place and I’ve experienced nothing but good will and deep, caring support. I’m also grateful for all of you. I started to blog back in 2006 because I was desperate to find ‘my people’: folks who cared about the same things that I did and who were trying to dramatically change things for P-12 students and educators. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being my people. I learn more from you monthly than I’ve learned from an entire academic career’s worth of journal articles and research conferences. Most of all, I’m thankful for my family and some key supportive colleagues (you know who you are) who have had my back the entire way. Everyone should be lucky enough to have the support networks that I’ve had. I’m beyond blessed.
As the gentleman says in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not dead yet!” This latest professional milestone is achieved and I’m looking forward to whatever lies ahead. I know you’ll be plotting and scheming right alongside me. I can’t wait.
The 4 Shifts Protocol is taking off in schools around the world. We’ve got tens of thousands of educators already using it for instructional redesign. Schools who are trying to focus on deeper learning, greater student agency, more authentic work, and rich technology infusion are finding the protocol to be helpful in their efforts. Our book, Harnessing Technology for Deeper Learning, introduces the protocol, has some lesson redesign examples, and includes some tips and strategies. However, some schools and educators are looking for more interactive professional development.
As we attempt to innovate out of the pandemic and create some new opportunities for students, let’s see if this will be of help:
2 hours… up to 200 people… for $1,200 (USD).
Online synchronous only. U.S. schools only (for now). Between the hours of 8:00am and 5:00pm Mountain time (currently GMT-6). No pricing per person and no travel costs! I will provide a quick overview of the protocol, we will redesign two or three lessons together in small groups, I will field questions and concerns, and we will conclude with some suggestions and strategies for usage in your local setting.
Interested? . We’ll find a date and time and I’ll send you the Zoom link. It’s that easy.
And of course we can customize this. For instance, we could do:
1 introductory session for teachers (got a group of innovators?)
1 introductory session for administrators
1 or 2 follow-up sessions to go deeper (e.g., with your own lessons and/or around instructional coaching)
Or we could do:
1 introductory session for elementary school(s)
1 introductory session for middle school(s)
1 introductory session for high school(s)
1 introductory session for instructional / technology coaches and principals
1 or 2 follow-up sessions to go deeper (e.g., with your own lessons and/or around instructional coaching)
Or we could do:
1 session on Section A, Deeper Thinking and Learning
1 session on Section B, Authentic Work
1 session on Section C, Student Agency and Personalization
1 session on Section D, Technology Infusion
1 session with examples of what this looks like in other schools
1 or 2 follow-up sessions to go deeper (e.g., with your own lessons and/or around instructional coaching)
This year there are not one… not two… but THREE 
When the always-marvelous 
[Trying something new here…]