If I learned anything at the TCEA 2016 State Conference, it was overshadowed by a powerful app shared off-hand in a T-TESS presentation by Dr. Bruce Ellis. I had so much fun with the app I didn't pay as much attention as I needed to the presentation! As such, I must share it with you, as well as add one of my own.Life-Changing App #1 - Office Lens (No Cost)In spite of the fact that it was a Microsoft created app--it was difficult to overcome my reluctance but I succeeded, thank goodness--I quickly pulled it down to my iPhone, which was my default note-taking app at the Conference (you know, taking pictures).Amazingly, the Office Lens app works on both Android and iOS, making it a great choice. I shared this app with an iPad Pro user, who was hastily scribbling notes onto a full-size iPad Pro...and he immediately started using it, exclaiming at how wonderful it was. In fact, everyone I've shared it with has loved it! Why aren't you using it yet?Life-Changing App #2 - Centrallo.com ($4.99 monthly/$44.99 annually)Although I've already written about it, this Evernote replacement is worth mentioning again! Be sure to check out the Centrallo app for both Android and iOS, but also accessible via the Web. It's easy to use and reminds me of a "fast and light" Evernote without the kitchen sink!Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Over the last 2 days, you may have noticed a problem with the mguhlin.org domain. That's because I was moving my domain registration from GoDaddy to Tierra.net, where I also store my mguhlin.net account. After knocking my head against the screen, it finally is working.The official address for Around the Corner is www.mguhlin.org.:-)Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Image Source: VEX RoboticsThis past weekend, I had the opportunity to help out--admittedly for a little under 2 hours, so not much!--at the VEX Robotics Competion hosted by the East Central ISD's Legacy Middle School. While there, I picked up a few balls, recorded a podcast and took pictures of the event. This blog entry is the result! The event involved a packed room of kids--see pictures below--geeking out over VEX robots.  These were quite a different event than one I'd been involved in many years ago with Lego Robotics.A Special Thank YouBefore going much further, I'd like to thank Dawn Drisdale (@msdris30) and Marguerite Lowak (@mlowak) for organizing the event as part of the STEAM initiative launched by the EC Technology Department this year.  East Central ISD was able to participate because we met last year to allocate funding and Dawn/Marguerite began doing research at the TCEA 2015 State Conference as to what robots to invest in! I'd also like to do a quick shout to anyone who volunteered to help out at the event, including Virgil Kirk (@virgilkirk) and Sandra Lopez.Below, you will find some pictures and a podcast interview I recorded with the VEX Robotics laiason.  I love the characterization of robots as "shooters" or "gatherers."Listen to PodcastLeft to Right: Thomas Mead, Miguel GuhlinRobotics Education Web SiteWatch this Video Explaining the VEX Robotics' Nothing But Net! Competition   Pictures of Competition:The view into the Legacy MS Cafeteria...you can see the timer at zero. Although you can't see it, on either side of the timer, you will find two "fields" for the robots.This is what the "field" looks like. The balls have to be re-setup after each event. After doing a few of these, I must confess to getting pains in some muscles I hadn't used often! Fortunately, there were high school students as volunteers helping re-stack the balls appropriately. Pictured to the right above, you'll see the judges for this event, and behind them, a team of student waiting to deploy their robot.Amazingly, you could see and smell the hard work students were engaged in as they customized their robots. In one case, the man kneeling in the bottom left is actually performing surgery on a robot component with a cutting tool (hence, the "burning smell" some reported), albeit quite controlled.A robot close-up. Notice the green-rim wheels that allow the robot to move in a variety of directions.This scoreboard was setup by Michael McClane at the event, enabling student teams to see what was happening and where they placed.

Note: The following is a re-post from LeaderTalk, and is a blog entry I wrote some time ago. Although the tools are dated, it's easy to imagine new ones that take their place. Amazing that while the ideas endure, the tools have changed dramatically!Embracing Citizen-Journalism in K-12 LeadershipJob misery, shares Patrick Lencioni, author of various educational leadership books, comes as a result of 3 reasons. Those reasons include the following: Anonymity - If others in authority are unaware of what you are doing, then you are unhappy. We cannot long work in obscurity.Irrelevance - If our work is irrelevant, means nothing to the organization, has no impact on the bottom line—teaching and learning—then why do it? Why get up and fight the good fight?Immeasurement - Failure to measure our success—or lack of it—means that we are unable to assess our progress. And, without that tangible measure of forward movement, of change, it is too easy to be lost in the midst of the change we are trying to facilitate. As an administrator, I see it as my role to clarify for staff how their work is relevant to the organization, to provide feedback on their rate of success, and to celebrate their hard work so that all know they are responsible. If we assume the mantle of citizen journalists, then we can tap into our own creativity and eradicate the 3 reasons misery finds its way into the hearts of our leadership teams.Power in CreativityWhen I do something—teach a class, create a product—I get a charge of energy. At the end of a day of meetings, I walk out drained, tired, and wishing I could take a nap before driving 45 minutes through bumper-to-bumper traffic. When I "do something," I walk out feeling awesome and I’m ready to go out for the evening, craft administrative procedure, or facilitate a workshop.The reason creativity is so powerful for me is that I am at heart, a teacher, a person who likes to share what he is learning with others. Citizen journalism is about reporting on what is going on around me, and enabling others to have access to experiences and ideas that are daily occurrences but that only a few see. Fight Job Misery with Read/Write Web ToolsPatrick Finn, author of Literacy with an Attitude, shares that powerful literacy involves creativity and reason—the ability to evaluate, analyze and synthesize what is read…it is also the ability to write one’s ideas so that another person can understand them. As leaders in public schools, we can take on the 3 factors of job misery that Lencioni identifies and minimize them in school settings. It is simply a matter of using technology to transform the negative, to be creative and create online value that others can come to better understand what our students and staff are doing.1- Recognize - "There is something that is much more scarce," shared Elbert Hubbard, "something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability." With easy access to publish at will tools, you can easily recognize educators, students and parents in your school community. Foster recognition by featuring the work you or your team does in blogs and video clips that show how they are working on behalf of their target audience or colleagues.  Some specific tools you can use to achieve this include: Blogs - Setup a blog you can easily contribute to. Blogs make it easy for people to subscribe to them, and you can add photos and videos to them. While initial setup can be challenging, there are now many educators who can provide assistance. Wikis - Moving to the next level, challenge teachers and others you trust to contribute content to a wiki, an editable web site. The ease of adding content should enable people to contribute content. Both of these mediums are essentially blank journals, or bulletin boards, that can hold sound (e.g. podcasts), video (e.g. vidcasts) and text media (e.g. narratives). If you are not comfortable with embedding media like video or audio, put it on a web site that simplifies the process (e.g. Edublogs.tv is a great site to host video or audio at no cost and without advertising).Once you have content online, you can also choose to create a narrated tour. Some tools you can use include the following: Diigo Web Slides - These allow you to create narrated slideshows of web sites. The web sites remain interactive and clickable even as you add your audio narration to them.Flowgram.com - This new tool enables you to combine audio narration with web sites, pictures, and a variety of content in one easy to use tool. You record directly from your computer (you’ll need a microphone) and just need to know the web address of the content you want to add. This makes it easy for you to highlight online work that your staff and students are creating and sharing via the Web.Jog the Web - Create a guided tour of web sites, adding your comments to each site. Lacks the audio component available in Diigo Web Slides and FlowGram.com. Other possibilities include using tools like MyPlick.com, VoiceThread.com to upload a slideshow document—such as one created in Powerpoint—and then adding audio to it. VoiceThread even enables your viewers to add audio, video and text of their own. What a fantastic way to recognize the work that is being done, and invite recognition of that work done by your staff by others!2- Engage - Engage your colleagues in conversations and work that makes a difference in the lives of others. As educators, we have opportunities to engage others every day. One Read/Write Web tool that we can use to engage others is to facilitate professional meetings and learning that is available using Moodle. Often, our meetings and workshops leave us disconnected, shuffling from one disjointed event to another. Creating a Moodle and empowering your staff to participate in it can provide opportunities for engagement, for enabling individuals to be heard and to exercise their voice. However, do not expect success immediately. It may very well take a year of hard work, including consolidating resources in one place, to see results. You can find Moodle.org online, and there are ample examples of Moodles being used to enhance work and professional learning settings.3 - Set Clear Parameters for Success - If the team needs to be able to measure it’s own success, it’s own progress separate from me as the boss, then I need to set clear definition of what constitutes success. This is often difficult with changing expectations from above, "scope creep," as projects do take on a life of their own. I always come back in those projects to whether the end user has learned how to use the technology proposed, and whether they are using it at a maximal level that optimizes their work. While some administrators have access to project management tools (e.g. MS Projects), there are now ample tools that enable collaboration. Wikis and Moodles are two powerful tools you can use that do not involve adding yet another tool. However, data collection can sometimes be a challenge. Why not use a tools like GoogleDocs Spreadsheets and Forms (login as guest) to collect information on the progress of an initiative? Or, install the Questionnaire module in Moodle (view example)? While these simple tools cannot replace more sophisticated project management tools, they do provide ways for educators to collaboratively design the parameters for success and to report progress on those. ConclusionAs education administrators who have access to a variety of Read/Write Web techologies, it is possible for our teams to experience anonymity, irrelevance and immeasurement. Yet, it is a possibility well within our control as leaders. Take a moment and learn how to use simple Read/Write Web tools to become a citizen journalist rather than continue as merely an administrator who waits for a Communications Department to decide what is newsworthy and what isn’t.Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

One of my favorite aspects of the #GrowthMindset is the idea you can add "...yet" to the end of something you haven't accomplished yet. For example...."I haven't signed up for the TCEA TEC-SIG SPRING MEETING...yet.""I haven't looked at the agenda...yet.""I'm not committed to learning from great people like Doug Johnson...yet.""My district is worried that I won't learn anything at an unconference scheduled at the TECSIG Spring Meeting. I haven't told them how wrong they are...yet.""I'm broke, I need to stop buying Starbuck's coffees so I can afford the low-cost of TECSIG membership and meeting registration. I haven't stopped...yet."You get the idea, right?"I haven't signed up for TECSIG Spring Meeting...yet. But I plan to ASAP!"Register for the TECSIG Spring Meeting Taking Place in Austin, Texas at TCEA Headquarters on April 14-15, 2016!Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Note: I wrote this blog entry in 2005, or maybe, 2006 for Technology & Learning. It's amazing how many different ways we can have conversations in digital spaces, but the idea of a conversation remains...because we are human beings. My ideas have certainly evolved since then! You'll want to read the original and compare it to the article below, from which I've removed some of the pieces I disagree with!"It's as if there's a layer of conversation lying on top of the regular web," shared David Warlick at a conference. At the same time, he introduced the concept of a Personal Learning Network, or PLN. Facilitated by blogs and RSS Feeds, the purpose of the PLN is professional development within an area of interest. This idea of building your own professional development network - where you find the people from whom you can learn, ask questions of them, comment on their thoughts and links, and have them do the same for you - is one of the major benefits of blogging and podcasting. It is the art of conversation captured in digital format. This article shares how blogs enable both adult learners and students to create their own Personal Learning Networks, sometimes with unintended consequences - both positive and negative. It also examines possible solutions to address unintended consequences among student blog use. Blogs as Digital ConversationsDigital conversations are taking place in the blogosphere...but are you a participant? I recently asked a group of technology directors via their email list if they were having the types of conversations that others were having. I was struggling with the use of blogs in education, and I wanted other directors to discuss it with me. That is when I discovered that email lists are no longer part of the "inner circle" where the best conversations take place. Instead, those conversations are taking place in spaces like Twitter, Blab.im, Voxer, Blogger.com, and the millions of virtual spaces available on the Web. The concept is becoming international, as the masses of India and China find their own voices online and begin to build their own PLNs, drawing upon many more people than we have access to in the United States. This means that isolationism just will not work, neither for you, for your own children, nor for your students. If you're not a part of the conversations, you aren't aware of the issues until they hit home, such as the problems with YikYak, Kik, etc. and the use of adult online spaces by students at schools across the country. By now, the inappropriate use of digital spaces has been discussed across blogs and social media, but if you aren't connected, and you did not "catch the news," then you missed the opportunity to learn. However, if you are a part of the conversation, you can learn, contribute and perhaps, learn as others learn.Learning with others makes the difference, since learning is a social process...and has now gone online with social media. Learning with others means you take control of the flood of information and data coming into your life. There are three aspects to using modern digital tools that tap into this conversation, and consequently three incentives for building virtual personal learning networks. These are explored briefly below. 1) New Digital Tools Enable Professional Development NetworksAnne, a teacher, describes the benefits of a blog-based personal learning network. This type of network allows us to tap into people with whom we would not otherwise have contact. On "EduBlog Insights." Anne writes about how a librarian's blog—"The Shifted Librarian"—allows her to learn about a conference she could not attend. She writes, "Those learnings led me to even more learning on the blogs of those who had presented. Talk about professional development." And, many of us now follow hashtags on Twitter to learn more about a particular subject (e.g. #tcea16 for the most recent TCEA State Conference, #digcit for Digital Citizenship).As Dr. David Tobin, Ph.D., notes in "Building Your Personal Learning Network," PLNs give us access to varied information sources, and, more importantly, to people of whom we can ask questions, who can provide us with coaching and mentoring, and who can challenge or extend our thinking. In the connected world in which we now live, NOT creating your own personal learning network cuts you off from what you need to survive and thrive in the "flattened world" that Thomas Friedman describes in The World is Flat). With content curation tools, we are able to process a greater amount of information than was previously possible by surfing to different Web pages. In a moment, we can get the pulse of conversations, then dig as deep as we need so as to discover what is of merit. 2) Digital Tools Enable Human ConnectionsAt David Warlick's TechForum presentation, one of his slides showed how he was making connections between blogs, building his own PLN. For example, he started reading Steve Dembo's "Teach42.com", and something mentioned in that blog made him explore another.Like David, I started out in the same way. I began simply with one or two education-related blogs such as "Bud the Teacher" and "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" (http://www.speedofcreativity.org/) and then added blogs as I went. But adding blog feeds my RSS Aggregator is not what digital conversations are about. It's not enough to read, it's also important to write, speak, share video, as Wes Fryer points out:To accomplish that, I started leaving comments relevant to the blog entries posted on others’ blogs. As I posted each comment, I included a link back to my own blog "Around the Corner". On my blog, I would expand on the conversation in a way that I only hinted at in the comment. In this way, I invited other bloggers to visit my blog and, in turn, leave comments on my site. And the nature of the comments left on my site has been very helpful, primarily because they give me information and advice that I wouldn't have had if I had depended on my "traditional" PLN, comprised of the people with whom I interact every day at work and in my personal life. Thus, in a way that Email lists could never accomplish — because not everyone can be subscribed to every Email list on which I work — blogs enable me to learn from strangers. 3) Digital Tools Foster TransparencyDigital tools enable us to see others’ thinking — or lack of thinking — as they build a web of connected learning.The art of digital conversation, of building personal learning networks, is more about knowing when we need information, as well as knowing how to identify, locate and evaluate it. And, then, as if that weren't enough, real life forces us to effectively use that information to solve real life problems.Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Note: Another oldy but goody from LeaderTalk.org, a blog entry I wrote when my son was nine years old (he's 16 now). Again, amazing how the ideas have endured!Check Yourself in the Mirror"Check yourself in the mirror," my Dad would call out each morning before we left for the drive to school. That last minute look in the mirror would often reveal a hair out of place, or that my shirt buttons and belt buckle weren't lined up right. Worse, it might show a bit of stubble--when in high school--that I hadn't shaved, or crud in the corner of my eye.Now, every morning, I offer my sixteen year old the same advice. It's not about vanity but knowing how you will appear to others. And, if you're sending the message you want to send, then that's fine. But if you're not, that last check in the mirror can provide a crucial moment of insight. While some prefer to never look in the mirror when it comes to their organization, it's absolutely necessary. Our role today in schools is about building Global Communications Center for our campus or district. It is NOT the job of the Communications Department...it's YOUR job as an educational leader.WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING ABOUT YOU?Dave Fleet shares some suggestions for online monitoring of your organization's image, or the buzz around it. He says it's important that before you do anything--such as set up a blog, whatever--that you find out how to track what's going on out there. I see his suggestions as part and parcel of establishing your own Global Communications Center for your school or District. Fleet writes: Before your organization launches a blog, before you start playing with Facebook, before you even think about Twitter, you should be listening to what people are saying about you. "Google is managing your identity unless you are," as quoted by Dean Shareski in his Going Global, Going Public. "What digital footprints are existing for you right now? It's not an ego search but to find what others are saying about you." This goes for each of us, but also, for organizations like schools. But it's important we go, as Dean and others share, beyond just tracking our digital footprints, but that of others' footprints when they interact with our organizations. As an edublogger, this is something I learned while setting up my blog and finding ways to connect with others. However, the tools that are available now are much more comprehensive than what were available when I began. A quick look at Dave's suggestions, and I'm astonished that I'm using most of these approaches already. What I doubt is happening, though, is that school districts and schools are doing this...most of our organizations may very well have a less than active interaction with news and other people out there. Simply publishing your own television show isn't enough when most people thrive online, and most content endures online more than in a broadcast. I love this quote (Christian Grantham as cited in NewAssignment.net) about ending the "passive relationship with local news" in this blog entry. What catches my attention is that the same tribulations and troubles students, teachers and leaders are going through, well, that's what a lot of folks in the news industry are going through. You could tweak this paragraph easily to reflect the angst among educators: I love working with people who see the importance of the role the net will play in transforming the way the world gets and interacts with information. I also love working with veterans of news, and I will always remember the challenges they face with the changes that are happening. For some, that change is very difficult. But the fact is, we are no more in the television and newspaper business than Wal-Mart is in the trucking business. Our business is no longer the industry that surrounds distribution - the trucks, the printing press, the reams of paper, the broadcast towers, the satellite dishes, the lights, the huge cameras, the buildings, the "live trucks"…It’s the final product: information. The market in an on-demand world for news and information where people have to wait to receive a highly produced product is steadily shrinking. At the same time, the online audience for news and information is growing significantly. It’s an exciting time to be working in a new medium that is transforming the way we get information. How has our "business" in education changed? It's no longer about textbooks, that's for sure and canned ideas. It's about creativity, communication, collaboration. Even as the market shrinks in the news world, in the education world, I find this statement to be as true as it's ever been in education (BTW, the link below includes a Clay Shirky moment in video): If our information was made freely available and became the building blocks through which other work could be done - we would be the foundation upon which the news and information world is built upon.Source: DigiDave - Journalism is a Process, Not a Product: Changing the Legal Structure for Digital Journalism That education is still the foundation--albeit being switfly eroding--is because it is firmly entrenched in a "no market" environment. What's neat about becoming your own "global communications center" is that you can teach students these skills as you're setting up your classroom web site. Imagine what would have happened if model classroom teachers using blogs with students had set these tools up (if they'd been available) BEFORE they started blogging with their students. Wouldn't it have been awesome to capture the feedback flowing in from all over the world, including traditional and participatory reporting? GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CENTERYou know, I hadn't ever thought of myself--or the work the Communications Dept in a school district--does as Global Communications. But, that is exactly what we're doing with Read/Write Web tools. And, that is the challenge facing districts as well as journalists. We are caught up in a "citizen" journalism, teacher communicator. "Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work literacies such as social media and informal learning?" Good question. My answer: yes. Because everyone should be. Tucker writes, "my responsibility is to work on my own sphere of influence, starting with our online course development team leading by example for our facilitators." Christy Tucker, Experiencing E-LearningSource: As commented on and cited by Stephen Downes How are YOU setting up your Global Communications Center? How are YOU leading the charge? The answer to this question is a lot easier than taking this position: Al Gore said: "We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift." He was talking about global climate change but he might as well have been talking about our attempts to transition schools into the 21st century…Source: Our Policies have to Shift, Dr. Scott McLeod, Dangerously Irrelevant Compare that approach--abandoning the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve the crisis in education, or journalism--to this one from Pete Reilly (EdTech Journeys) with his tale of Gandhi's decision to not offer advice unless he was living by it himself. When you get up tomorrow morning, take a moment to check your school or district's virtual image in the mirror of public opinion. Begin now to build the resources you need to keep track of those, and make a difference.Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

One of my favorite aspects of the #GrowthMindset is the idea you can add "...yet" to the end of something you haven't accomplished yet. For example...."I haven't signed up for the TCEA TEC-SIG SPRING MEETING...yet.""I haven't looked at the agenda...yet.""I'm not committed to learning from great people like Doug Johnson...yet.""My district is worried that I won't learn anything at an unconference scheduled at the TECSIG Spring Meeting. I haven't told them how wrong they are...yet.""I'm broke, I need to stop buying Starbuck's coffees so I can afford the low-cost of TECSIG membership and meeting registration. I haven't stopped...yet."You get the idea, right?"I haven't signed up for TECSIG Spring Meeting...yet. But I plan to ASAP!"Register for the TECSIG Spring Meeting Taking Place in Austin, Texas at TCEA Headquarters on April 14-15, 2016!Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Note: Another oldy but goody from LeaderTalk.org blog entries I wrote.The Game Leaders Play Jonathan Becker asks us all in his LeaderTalk blog entry entitled, The Future of Educational Leadership, the following questions: 1) Are schools going to become increasingly virtual and distributed (as the authors suggest of businesses)?  2) Should school leaders be spreading around the leadership wealth so as to encourage experimentation? He cites a report that points out that if we want to see what business leadership will be in five years, we need to check out online games. I was grateful to Jonathan pointing this out, as well as highlighting the report.It reminds me of the Demos "Their Space" report I read a few years ago.In the article, the skills a World of Warcraft guildmaster needs are as follows: attracting, evaluating and recruiting new members;creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and managing disputes. Isn't it ironic that these are the tools that in 5 years--and if you wait that long to acquire the skills, you're out of business according to Don Tapscott and Anthony William's Wikinomics--business may find useful, necessary for communication in a flat world? Changes needed in schools include the following: a) Recognize/value learning that occurs outside the classroom; b) Support this outside learning, providing a space for reflection, enabling students to recognize and transfer those skills to new situations and contexts.This sentence makes me wonder at what potential goes untapped in schools today. The answer is staggering--our children. It is our children that are untapped. This led me to the next question: What needs to be unleashed in schools? Children's power for creativity and innovation. Slow to respond to change in schools, schools' failure to recognize and value the skills that young people are developing is a blind spot. Educational leaders, in neglecting to use mass collaboration tools like wikis, fail to model how students can interact with a changing world that expects global collaboration. A few months ago, I found myself walking my seventh grader through the halls of a local high school. She was there--ahead of her time--to take the SAT, that high stakes test that determines whether you will be successful. As I read more and more of the Demos' THEIR SPACE report, I started to wonder at the relevance of the SAT my daughter was taking. Wouldn't it have been better if they'd put her in a team of learners who had to solve a problem? And, solving that problem involved coordinating the work of others around the world (or in the next classroom) using technology tools, voice over IP? Wouldn't such approach to assessment do what the SAT was meant to do in the first place? SAT 2.0 would do the following: Challenge young adults to demonstrate how they can collaborate at a distance to develop creative solutions that involve mashing-up different technologies.Successful completion of the SAT 2.0 would mean using Web 2.0 tools to connect, collaborate, create and share ideas/solutions with each other.Successful completion would involve the team catalogue each team member's strengths and weaknesses, then assign jobs/tasks that build on strengths.Based on a team's weaknesses, staff people from outside their team--across the world but accessible via VOIP technologies (like Skype)--to buttress their weaknesses. What other ways could such a project be used to measure what students need to know in a Read/Write Web world? What skills and strategies that need to value the soft skills our children are developing for recreation, that are worth emulating, but aren't unleashed in schools today? THE ROLE OF EDUCATION LEADERSThe more important question for educational leaders isn't whether schools are going to be more distributed or virtual. Rather it is whether educators--including administrators, teachers, students in leadership roles, regardless of position or title--will be able to continue functioning in five years WITHOUT these skills. I fear that if the answer is YES, then we will have schools that serve as centers of static learning...and our "students" will have already found somewhere else to learn what they need to. The SAT will have become meaningless except as an out-dated rite of passage. Are you modelling online collaboration and enabling others in your district? If you're not, then you need to consider how you can accomplish that within the work you are expected to do every day.Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Did you know Doug "Blue Skunk" Johnson is keynoting at TECSIG Spring Meeting on April 14, 2016 and facilitating a whole host of workshops?One of my favorite aspects of the #GrowthMindset is the idea you can add "...yet" to the end of something you haven't accomplished yet. For example...."I haven't signed up for the TCEA TEC-SIG SPRING MEETING...yet.""I haven't looked at the agenda...yet.""I'm not committed to learning from great people like Doug Johnson...yet.""My district is worried that I won't learn anything at an unconference scheduled at the TECSIG Spring Meeting. I haven't told them how wrong they are...yet.""I'm broke, I need to stop buying Starbuck's coffees so I can afford the low-cost of TECSIG membership and meeting registration. I haven't stopped...yet."You get the idea, right?"I haven't signed up for TECSIG Spring Meeting...yet. But I plan to ASAP!"Register for the TECSIG Spring Meeting Taking Place in Austin, Texas at TCEA Headquarters on April 14-15, 2016!Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full DisclosureEverything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure