Mark Wagner, CEO, EdTechTeamYou may have noticed the slow introduction of EdTechTeam's new logo. We're very excited to be rolling it out more widely in the coming weeks and months. As a continued evolution of our earlier logos, it has many familiar elements that you may recognize. The green leaves still represent the organic nature of student growth (and student agency in schools), which has always been our focus. The circuits (or network nodes), which appear now as the veins in the leaf, still represent the important role that technology (and networks of all kinds) play in the learning and development of today's students. Each of the five nodes also stands for one of the key elements of school change that now drive so much of our work: Courageous Leaders, Empowered Teachers, Engaged Community, Inspiring Spaces, and Robust Infrastructure. We believe the cleaner, simpler, and more modern look of the new leaf will be more useful (and more appealing) in a variety of media, including app icons, swag (think backpacks), and smaller printed formats such as the spine of a physical book.This new logo is also part of a logo system that will clearly and visually bring together all of EdTechTeam's services and products, including our conference-style summits, our custom professional development programs, our online courses, our regional subsidiaries, our forthcoming books, our free community engagements, and much more. We hope this will make it easier for educators around the world to recognize which events and resources are provided by EdTechTeam - so you'll know when you can expect the inspiring and empowering (often fun) experiences EdTechTeam is known for. (We are also proud to produce Breakout EDU, but that brand remains independent as we believe it also has a great deal of potential beyond the usual bounds of EdTechTeam.) We'd love to hear your thoughts about the new logo - and we hope you'll use it to share what we have to offer with your friends and colleagues. Thank you for being a part of EdTechTeam's evolution over the past 10 years. We hope we'll be learning with you, and serving your students, for many more. This is only the beginning.

Learning Commons Technology Mini-MOOC The purposes of a Library Learning Commons are inherent in the 5 Standards of the Canadian Library Association. They can be found in the Leading Learning Document. They are as follows: Facilitating collaborative engagement to cultivate and empower a community of learners. Advancing the learning community to achieve school goals. Cultivating […]

Check out this website for innovative knowledge building with virtual book clubs!  Innovating Knowledge by Deborah McCallum

Holistic Tech Integration in the Library Learning Commons

Many books provide a good read and then go on the shelf, where they stay. The latest publication from the 70:20:10 Institute, 702010 towards 100% performance, is not that type of book. It should stay on the desk of any learning & development professional and be used as a constant resource. The book is big, in number of pages, size, and content. I was amazed at how much practical information the authors were able to put into it, and how accessible it is. The book consists of 100 practitioner-focused  articles, many of which provide checklists and examples. It is focused on helping people to implement the reference model. Five roles are identified (not all for traditional L&D professionals) with sections focused on each: Performance Detective Performance Architect Performance Master Builder Performance Game Changer Performance Tracker The reference model integrates training, performance improvement, and social learning. This book fills a gap in the professional literature on workplace learning and provides a much-needed integrated perspective. The golden age of training is over, and it’s time to "pop the training bubble". "The twentieth century was the golden age of training. Organisational learning achieved worldwide growth, with more L&D professionals, trainees, theories, research, conferences, instructional design models and professional associations as well as bigger budgets. It made sense to separate work from learning, replicate the schooling process and and provide formal solutions in classrooms or conference rooms away from the workplace. This was the beginning of the training bubble … The training bubble was the logical consequence of twentieth-century Taylorism, with its emphasis on standards and efficiency. As it expanded, so learning and working became separated, and L&D produced and delivered training, and later eLearning, on a larger scale. The bubble was an effective response to the twentieth century view of organisational development, with its strong need to provide formal, standardised learning and even to track the amount of time employees spent on it." I highly recommend this book, and it is not one I will be giving away anytime soon. I look forward to the pending release of the 70:20:10 app and the launch of the online community. In the meantime, you can dip into the model with the moving to social workshop.

Kids Discover Online is home to over 1000 articles covering an enormous variety of science and social studies topics.  For those familiar with the Kids Discover publication, the organization has now made some impressive moves into digital content.  For those not familiar, stick around, because Kids Discover Online has some excellent content for 3rd - 8th grade students.  See more on our Reviews Page

How passionate are you about the career you have chosen for yourself?  Does it seem like maybe you should be doing something different… ALL THE TIME?  My brain is itching and I think its time to find something new to do… am I normal? Check this Ted Talk out:

Throughout the year, I have had opportunities to work directly in classrooms on digital learning initiatives. Each of those moments seemed to inform a new reality that we needed to face from 5th graders not having the foundational skills needed to simply use a computer beyond online testing tools or kids not having access to any form of learning in a connected world. Then…there was the realization that our wifi access needed a major boost on every campus because as a district that fully supports BYOD, making sure that every person could connect at least one device should be a priority. Today, I talked to two young men on our robotics team. One of them stated that he actually started writing code when he realized that in order to make the game that he downloaded from "STEAM", collaborative, he needed to create a server. Youtube was his teacher. He is not enrolled in Computer Science and as of now, his schedule doesn’t even permit it until junior year. On our robotics team, he decided to program because he wanted to learn more about computer languages. Six days per week…after school and all day Saturday, he does. The other student chimed in that he has never had a computer in his home. They have wifi for their mobile devices, but he didn’t have a laptop…until he was given one as a student in our High School STEM program. Having that computer enabled him to access not only his school work, but the programs and videos needed to continue learning about writing code for the team’s robots. Having that computer meant that he was no longer limited by learning what he needed when mobile browsers aren’t enough. As of now, we do not give every student a laptop. I hope that we can revisit this soon. Like many districts, we collected Brightbytes data at the beginning of the year. It allowed us to see a snapshot of the access that our students had and did not have. I love brightbytes because it informed quite a few decisions on what we needed to provide for our teachers and students but the realities often fail to become real until you are actively experiencing them. Earlier today I shared a video on Periscope of a student, Elie, designing an SD card holder for SLR cameras to be printed on the 3D printer. Elie works with Lockheed Martin as a student intern through a partnership with our CTE program. Last week, I spent some time talking to him about some of his projects and learning that he was passionate about providing computers for families in need. He is so passionate that his eagle scout project is to refurbish and build computers for single mothers and families in need in one of our housing projects. To him, everyone should have access to a computer and I imagine that he came to understand it even more as a student surrounded by those that did not have such a luxury. (Stay tuned in the coming weeks to learn how you can help his project) To those that scream that kids can write entire essays on their mobile phones, I would like to point you to the student that I mentioned earlier who only had a phone, until his school gave him a computer. I saw his phone and let me just say that typing an entire essay on that phone would have been completely impossible. Not every "smart phone" is as smart as an iphone or the latest android. He did, however, play minecraft on that phone…so there’s that. This evening, a student mentioned to me that he had never seen as many black students as there are on this year’s robotics team and he was excited that they were there. One of our black students, a senior, joined the team for the first time this year. When I asked him what took him so long, he responded that he had no idea that it existed until he was placed in a class taught by their robotics coach. He wishes that he knew about it sooner. His teacher, fully aware, said…"We’re working on it". And she is. Personally, I am deeply happy that he has her as his teacher. Her presence means the world to all of her students, especially those of the Lufkin HS Pantherbots. One more thing… If you are in a role in school where you are charged with making decisions for kids, especially on technology and digital learning, please do so only after getting involved with your schools at the core and having some conversations with kids…specifically those whose decisions you make will impact the most. Also, read the National Edtech Plan (NETP16) Aside from talking to kids, it’s a start.

According to the Klout score and the Top Influencers web page I rank like this at the moment:GENERAL LIST:Bizkaia, Basque Country, Spain: #23http://topinfluencers.net/?state_id=16TEACHERS LIST:Spain #37http://topinfluencers.net/?activity_id=23

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