Ending the year is a challenge at our school because our students come from 20 local districts who have their own schedules of exams and end on different days. So this past week we have sporadic attendance due to lack of busing and some of the students starting summer vacation early. We try to plan fun events to get students to attend. On Tuesday we visited a local college and Wednesday we had Hobby Day. Each teacher brought in stuff for something that they like to do in their spare time. If you know me then of course I brought in concrete supplies and had students mix and make their own concrete candle holders with tea light candles embedded into the concrete. Other things students did included jewelry, scrap booking, Frisbee golf, making ginger ale, and wood turning. My students think my obsession with concrete is hilarious and this is important. I am weird and it matters. My weirdness about concrete communicates to students that it is ok to be their weird selves about their passions. We are a community of weirdness that respects the different weirdnesses of each other. Yesterday was the last day of school for students. In a twist I wasn’t there because I took a personal day to attend my son’s 5th grade graduation. But we had a potluck last night where all students and their families are invited. It is fun to hang out and say goodbye to them all. Especially powerful was talking to a couple of students who I dragged to the passing side of my class so they can avoid summer school. Before the night ended a group of students forced my co-teacher and I to give them "speeches" where we individually said something about each of them. It was fun and felt like giving each of them encouragement and a blessing going forward. I have had most of these students for two years and it will definitely be "weird" not to have them in class next year. I definitely end the year with feelings of appreciating my students and the relationships that I have with them. I look forward to watching them continue to grow in the future.

I had the opportunity to lead a three day workshop with a colleague at a middle school this week. It was waaaaaaaaay better than doing a keynote speech at a conference. Actually I’ve never done a keynote so I can’t honestly say that, but it was way better than all of the presentations that I have done at my school for PD or at conferences. Photo Credit: Kalexanderson via Compfight cc The honest truth is that one hour sessions at a conference bring about very little, if any change in educator’s practice after attending. Sometimes they are an emotional pick-me-up which is needed but rarely do they lead to substantive change. The three day workshop format of this PD allowed for us to get deep into the PBL framework AND give teachers work time to actually develop their first project. Highlights for me included watching teachers transformed from fear and anxiety on the first day to excitement about implementing a PBL project by the end. Many teachers were struggling in an honest way with the challenges of giving up control of curriculum and content in their classroom. As they learned the complete process and how to gradually release students into it they became more comfortable. The other thing that was fascinating to be a part of was watching the principal give permission to his staff to make decisions. He was a true example of servant leadership. After an intense but healthy debate on grading practices, the principal asked people to move to two sides of the room based on what they supported. To everyone’s surprise, all of the teachers went to the same side of the room in consensus. It was a powerful, unifying moment for this staff. All in all we had a great week that I and the teachers enjoyed. I know that this school is on a great path of changing from traditional classrooms to a PBL framework. It was exciting to have a part in making a real difference in a school, rather than being a drive-by keynote. I definitely hope to have more opportunities to lead workshops in the future!

I finished Bruce Lesh’s Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answers a week or so ago and would recommend it. He does not use PBL per say in his classroom, but his method is very compatible with it. He does spend a bit too much time at the beginning and the end (to be honest I quit reading after Chapter 8) justifying his methods vs. traditional history class which I find unnecessary. If you need to be convinced that reading from a history book, listening to lectures, copying answers to the questions at the end of the chapter are not good teaching methods than I have little hope for you. His core method is to have students look at the text, context, and subtext of historical sources both primary and secondary. He presents historical questions (like DQ’s) to his students and then supplies them with historical artifacts to have them struggle with historical interpretation just like historians do. He really outlines some nice lessons in the meat of the book and even lists the primary sources that he uses. I thought it would be easy to locate them online since most are old and must be in the public domain, but I have struggled so far. So I want to ask fellow social studies teachers, have you found his resources? Do you have your own that you use? Do you have a go-to place to find resources? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. This also had me thinking that a good history book would simply be a list of driving questions for each part of history and then a bunch of student-friendly excerpts from primary and secondary sources.

This week is the ISTE conference in San Antonio. It is the largest ed tech conference in the country (or the world?). It has thousands of people attending, big names, great sessions, huge vendor hall (someone has to pay for it) and everything else an event of that size can offer. I will not be attending but this is not a bitter post about that. ISTE is great I’m sure and would enjoy being there. But today I want to talk about my school’s conference, NovaNow. It is the opposite of ISTE in many ways. It will be small, intimate, vendor free, conversational, and actually located in a school. NovaNow is about conversations with great educational minds in the MidWest. There will be no "sage on the stage" (we don’t have a stage actually). Attendees are a vital part of the conference because they ARE the conversations. I want to highlight a couple of conversation leaders coming from outside of Michigan to join our conversations that you will get the opportunity to hang out with:   Shelly Blake-Plock is a former social studies teacher who started the blog TeachPaperless. He is currently building @AnEstuary, a new way of professional development for teachers. He also helped launch @DHFBaltimore, an after school tech program for inner city Baltimore students. Shelly is interested in merging digital/physical space, human-centered tech, and poetry.     John Spencer is a middle school teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. He actively blogs and sketches at Education Rethink about education and life. John has authored five books, including: Pencil Me In, an allegory for educational technology; Teaching Unmasked, about the impact of paradox; Sages and Lunatics, a memoir and critique on factory education; and A Sustainable Start, a realistic look at the first year of teaching.     Theresa Shafer is the Online Community Manager for New Tech Network. If you have ever interacted with New Tech Network online you were talking to her! She is the energy behind all of the social media resources and an expert on connecting people. Theresa also started and hosts #PBLchat weekly. Theresa blogs at ThereresaShafer.blogspot.com.       Brian Bennett is Customer Solutions for Education for TechSmith. He is a former high school science teacher who "flipped" his classroom. Brian created the #flipped chat and is passionate about student learning. He blogs at brianbennett.org.     The full lineup can be found on the Conversation page of the NovaNow website. I hope you will join us! This will be a weekend that you won’t want to miss!

  Crescent City Connection, New Orleans taken from my hotel window The theme for NTAC this year was "Building Bridges." My bridge that I have been building this week has been connections to other educators. My favorite part of NTAC was meeting friends old and new. Some of you I have "known" on Twitter, sometimes for years. Others of you I just happened to sit by you in a session or in the hall. I spent all of my time looking for folks to talk to and to hear their stories.   My favorite connections are those that lead to future collaborations with each other and with my students. In a session about collaboration I listened as teachers proposed network projects around inventions, water, and an online magazine showcasing student writing, poetry, art, and videos. I am so excited to see these connections happen and grow because I know it will lead to students getting excited about collaboration. At the table starting from the left: @cfanch, @Beejee71, @me, @suzieboss, Ed Briceño. Photo by @rmjohnson45 Next time you are at a conference don’t just hang out with the people you came with. Introduce yourself to some new people, strike up a conversation with someone about their work, and learn from each other. Connect with someone and grow YOUR network. Better yet continue the relationships through blogging, Twitter, Skype, or other places. You and your students will never be the same.

I am proud to share this inspiring Ignite talk by my social studies colleague, Trevor Muir. I am blessed to work with great people like Trevor who inspire students daily.

We started our first project this week. Our entry event went very well. Rather than explain it I will show it to you and let you see if you can figure it out for yourself. The students were given these instructions: Here are the objects in the center of the room. We also played "Panama" by Van Halen while they checked out the items. Next students made guesses about what each thing sybolized. Many of them were stumped. When a student made a correct guess we threw them a popsicle.  After letting them guess for a few minutes we shared a slideshow of primary source resources with them. See how you many you can guess before checking out the slides (adapted from Bruce Lesh). Students figured out everything except for the concrete paver. This activity was a great start for our project. Students were engaged in the inquiry and very motivated to figure out what everything stood for. We followed this up with revealing our Driving Question: " ‘Murica…cuz MD?" Students now had to figure out what that meant. The next day the first thing that happened was two students came up to me to guess what the concrete paver stood for. Good attempts but still not correct. One of them said, "I thought about it all night." That was music to my ears. I highly recommend using objects related to a project as an entry event. It is great way to start inquiry, build curiosity, and creates conversations between students. How could you use objects as an entry event for a project? PS: Make a guess and check the answers in the comments.

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/yovenice/5353326350/ At our school we have an orientation week and run a round robin schedule where we have a group of students for the whole morning. I like to introduce students to myself and class with some research. So I had students look at the site http://www.martinlutherking.org/ I had them answer some questions about it on a Google Form. Some groups took it serious and studiously read it and answered the questions (you know a teacher asked them to do this so they comply mindlessly). Other groups were pretty quick to question the validity of the information. I asked those groups to find evidence that it was "fake." Eventually in all classes we used http://www.radcab.com/ to talk about how to evaluate sources. Students looked more carefully and discovered the site was created by StormFront, a white supremacist group. They also looked up one of the "experts" David Duke and found out that he was formerly Grand Wizard of the KKK. This led to an excellent discussion about bias. We also dispelled the myth that a site is "good" if it is .org or .gov. I had one student who bought the whole thing as legit who was really surprised that he was tricked. When he found out it made a huge impression on him and he will not fall for something like this again. Another student told our secretary it was one of her best learning experiences at our school. I left them with the thought that they should doubt and test everything. I told them, "If your mother says she loves you, ask for her sources." I love setting a tone for our class of critical thinking and questioning to start the year. I want students to expect the unexpected in our class and to look critically at everything.

Only picture I can find of both of us Our students (Andrew Holly is my team teacher) were preparing to debate the motive of the United States during our period of expansion in the Spanish American War. A couple of days before the actual debate we had a practice debate with silly topics for practice. We wanted students to get used to the format, see how much research they needed to do in preparation, and practice public speaking with no pressure. We condensed the time limits by a third to fit all of them in one day. We used such topics as vampires vs. zombies, hotdogs vs. hamburgs, red vs. blue, Michigan vs. Michigan State, and our favorite Kaechele vs. Holly. Groups randomly drew their topics and had twenty minutes to research and prepare. For the groups that had us we gave each side five minutes to interview us and ask us anything they wanted. We can’t take credit for this idea as we did a debate last year and the students didn’t like the lame topic we gave them and requested Kaechele vs. Holly. It was a blast. Students this year didn’t know us as well since it is the beginning of the year whereas last year we did our debate at the end of the year. We feel like allowing students to debate us is a great experience for the whole class. It lets the class get to know us better, but most importantly it shows them that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. It helps us build relationships with our students as being approachable and a culture of fun and weirdness in our room. Being vulnerable in front of your students is always a win.

Photo Credit: Patrick Q via Compfight cc We add some geography assessments to our American History curriculum because it is important to understanding the events. We currently are in a project on American Imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. We ask students to locate places like Hawaii, Guam, and Philippines so that they can see how they were "stepping stones" to China, another place that they need to locate. We also ask them to find Cuba, Puerto Rico, Columbia, and Panama to see the places of the Spanish American War and to understand the need and placement of a canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific. We could just have them label a paper map for the places. Instead we give them the list of places and ask them to find them, study them, and then come show them to us of Google Earth. I find using Google Earth to be valuable because first of all they "drive" and have to find their bearings. Next they get to see relationships better. For example many students are surprised about how far away Hawaii is from the mainland of the U.S. This re-enforces how important it was for trade and military. Google Earth is like using a globe instead of a flat map. I think it just shows the relationships more accurately than flat maps. The geography also leads to important questions such as why did we care about Guam and Puerto Rico when they are so tiny? Why were we negotiating with Columbia for the Panama Canal Zone? Visually students see why we needed a canal because it was so far around South America.    

Photo Credit: Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via Compfight cc My students and I are still getting to know each other. Last week I had to make a new classroom rule because their behavior was driving me crazy. They kept coming up and politely asking me to use the bathroom or get a drink. I told them this had to stop because I don’t like it. They are no longer allowed to ask permission to go to the bathroom or get a drink! From now on if they have to go to the bathroom or get a drink, they just go do it. I feel like it is demeaning to them every time they ask me to go do a normal body function. Trust, Respect, Responsibility-that is the creed of our school. I think high schoolers can handle going to the bathroom with out any notice from me!

A parent shared this video about a local artist who made his own "car" designed for "what the car wants for itself." I think this is a great example of the maker movement. My favorite quotes: It is a lot easier in our culture just to buy things. The things that we find valuable to ourselves aren’t things that we bought at some lame store. It’s things that we created or either passed down or we found them. Or there’s something funny about them. Those have value to us.  I feel like we’re losing that sort of passion. We just buy things now. A lot of people have excuses for not doing things. And they’re discouraging whenever I hear them because they are all false senses of their own abilities to explore and create. …For some people it’s enough to just to think about it, or talk about it, or watch it on TV, or read about it in a book. My advice is to get your hands dirty, and wonder, and not be afraid to ask questions like ‘Why is that this way?’ …In everything we do there’s parameters. To ignore those is the key. (Emphasis mine).   Reboot Buggy from Baas Creative on Vimeo.

My school, Kent Innovation High, is hosting NovaNow, a conversation based conference this February 7-8, 2014. Here is a testimonial from Kit Hard, one of our conversation leaders: Why NovaNow is Going to Blow Your Mind! Let me tell you why I’m super excited about NovaNow - a unique educational event February 7-8, 2014 hosted at Kent Innovation High and Kent ISD in Grand Rapids, MI. It is a  new and engaging conference model is based on the Educon conference hosted each year in Philadelphia, PA at the Science and Leadership Academy. Last January I had the privilege of attending Educon 2.5 in Philadelphia, PA and it was one of the best professional learning experiences of my career. Now you’ll be able to experience that same dynamic facilitated conversation format right here in our own backyard. It’s an opportunity you won’t want to miss. One of the more transformative elements of NovaNow is the opportunity to spend the first morning embedded in Kent Innovation High with student tour guides escorting you through a student-centered, Project Based Learning environment in action. You’ll be blown away by the self-directed learning, innovative teaching practices, and enjoy engaging in meaningful conversations with students, staff, and other educators. In the afternoon and on the second day, be prepared to have your pre-conceptions about educational conferences blown-up. This will not be a sit-n-git, sage on the stage style conference. One of the defining elements will be the emphasis on facilitated conversations with interactive activities that will expose you to design thinking and an innovation mindset. And that’s just the "formal" stuff. The real action happens in the hallways, cafes, and evening meetups around town. And it keeps on happening through the long-term connections you’ll make with amazing educators from around the mid-west! Thanks Kit! We appreciate the endorsement and look forward to everyone joining us. Register before December 6th and save $25.  Check out the website or this flyer for more details! Also follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Nova Now Flyer

It’s tough. We want so badly for our students to be successful that sometimes we forget what the road to success looks like. Hint: it’s filled with stuff that’s not very rewatchable. Russ Goerend We finished our Choose Your Own Adventure YouTube video project a couple of weeks ago and I have been putting off this post. I was disappointed and a bit embarrassed by how it turned out. Russ summarizes my feelings nicely. It was the culmination of a project studying WWI and WWII from the American perspective. We had each class of 40+ students working on creating these videos stores as a group. Yup, forty students working together on one final product. It was a bit like…   It was a challenge organizing this endeavor but we left as much as possible up to the students. Students did a nice job of storyboarding and dividing up into roles such as writers, actors, directors, props, and editors. The breakdowns started when the directors did not get files to the editors immediately. Clips that had poor audio, bad lighting, and mistakes did not get previewed until days after shooting them. Video files were contaminated and some of them were lost. In the end one class ended up with no final product and the other class’ video was incomplete and only partly uploaded to YouTube with very poor editing. I wanted to brag about how good this project was and show off an amazing final product. It didn’t happen this time. Yet the students worked hard. They brought in props and costumes and wrote a decent script. They tried to do everything right, but they are not professionals. The first scenes took a long time to film as they figured out set, props, and lighting. The majority of them had zero experience in any of their assigned roles. They were also under a tight time schedule as we had a field trip planned to launch our next, grade-wide project. There was no way that we could not give them more time. From my perspective I wished I had organized the editing part of the project better. In PBL we always say that "the process is more important than the product." In this case I feel that is true. The final product may not have turned out to be anything that the students are proud of but the effort and the skills learned were. I also know that future video projects will be better due to this experience. You don’t win an Oscar in your first movie. So though I was disappointed at first due to unrealistic expectations on my part, upon reflection I am proud of what students did and how they grew from the experience.

Over the years we have done quite a few projects where the final product is a video of some sort. We usually end up a bit disappointed by the quality of student work compared to the time given/spent working on them. Students either have great content in a very boring video or a great concept that lacks execution. For example I had some great women’s rights videos in concept last year but one had terrible audio and the other had numerous spelling errors. But by the time we saw them it was presentation day and too late to fix them. So as we got ready to have students make PSA’s (public service announcements) to answer our grade-wide driving question of "How does nuclear technology affect POWER?" we brainstormed ways to get students to produce higher quality. My co-teacher Andy Holly came up with a great idea. We would give them a short time limit before the videos were "due." (How many teachers know that the more time that you give students the more time they need without actually improving their work?) So we gave them three full days in all of their core classes to come up with a concept, storyboard, film, and edit their PSA. The short time limit kept students from wasting time. On the fourth day we watched them together as a class with a twist. We had an emcee and three judges behind a table, American Idol style. One judge was Andy, another was an upper class men, and the last an instructional technology coach. The "judges" ripped on the videos and critiqued them in good natured fun. Things that happened were judges falling asleep, playing tic tac toe, and a game of Frisbee broke out during an especially boring one. The judges also gave out serious critiques and suggestions to either make them more interesting or higher quality. The best part about this is that the judges were able to be hyper critical of the videos but not offend the students either. The final twist came at the end when we announced that these videos were their rough drafts and they had two days to go and re-shoot and fix their videos. The students immediately and excitedly started planning all the ways they wanted to fix them. It was a fun day and the best part was seeing the excitement students’ had toward making their final products better!

I hate the paperwork part of my job, but I try to do it right. One task that we all have to do is attendance. My second class is energetic and is slow to find their seats. I take attendance visually and with 45 of them it is difficult when they are wandering. So I end up calling out names over the microphone for them to find their seats. I tend to get annoyed and irritated at how long this seemingly simple task can take. Photo Credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton via Compfight cc I found a simple solution last week. Instead of just calling out the same few kids names to find their seats I started announcing: Who is going to be last to find their seat today? There goes Bill to find his seat. It won’t be him. Sue is going fast to her seat. Looks like it will be between Mary and Martha. Mary takes the lead, but Martha finishes strong and beats her! It is extremely silly, but it works. Kids that ignored me before run to their seats and everyone cheers people on and claps for the winners/losers. It is fun and actually faster than before. The most important thing is that it makes me laugh instead of making me ornery to start class. How do you use fun ways to "manage" (I really don’t like that word) your class?

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/ppmsc/00200/00234r.jpg I have been tweeting out some of my thoughts about the Great Depression as that will be our next project. I think it is a very interesting and important time period to analyze. The causes, attempted "fixes", and how it ended are debated among historians and economists. The viewpoints usually reflect the political bias of the historian/economist of conservative, liberal, or libertarian. The other fact that has increased its importance was the bursting of the stock market from the internet bubble and housing bubble in recent years. How to keep the economy running and the role of government in both the economy and regulation of business are very current topics that the Great Depression should shed light on. The controversial nature of these topics make them perfect for PBL. I imagine essential questions such as: What was the primary cause of the Great Depression? Defend it against other other lesser causes. Why was the Great Depression global? Were Hoover’s or Roosevelt’s policies effective? Did their policies shorten or extend the length of the Great Depression? Defend with specific examples and compare and contrast the presidents. Was Hoover really laissez faire? Is deficit government spending an effective policy during depressions and recessions? How should we define Depression vs. Recession? How should we define when GD ended? by GNP? unemployment rates? financial levels of families? income gaps and disparities? Is war "good" for an economy? When did the Great Depression end and why? New Deal vs. start of WWII vs. end of WWII vs. other? But now let me share my struggles. First of all in order to give fair answers to most of these questions or even consider them one needs a background in economics. My students have not taken that class yet making many of these concepts very challenging for most of them. Also due to the challenge of the economics, many students also find them boring. On a personal note, although I have a solid math background and understand basic economics, I think I need a much deeper level of economics to give these topics justice. I mean these topics are so debated by experts that I feel it is difficult to answer these questions for myself. That leads to my biggest problem with students. I am not afraid to teach or admit to students that I do not have it all figured out yet, but what I really need are high school level resources from the various viewpoints. A mixture of primary and secondary sources that explain the major economic theories, their biases, strengths, and weaknesses would be great. Of course textbooks (which we don’t have anyway) are not much help in this. I envision comparison charts that summarize the major viewpoints along with primary sources including data, political cartoons, quotes, etc. Then I could give the essential questions and resources to students and turn them loose to come up with their own opinions. So anyone have suggestions on student friendly resources particularly defining the major economic views?

Before break we finished the last of our wars/foreign policy projects. We looked at the time period of post-Cold War to present with the defining event being 9/11. The driving question was "Why did 9/11 happen and how should we respond to terrorism?" We also read Ender’s Game.  For our entry event we read an article to students about China capturing and torturing Tibetan citizens including some shockingly crude details. Students were disturbed by this, but then we revealed that we had doctored the article. Actually it was about what the United States did at Abu Ghraib to Iraqis, not about China at all. This set up part of what we wanted students to do for this project, look at events from the viewpoint of outside of America. We then jigsawed looking at American interventions post Cold War. We did go back into the 1970′s for American actions in the Middle East to give students the perspective of how involved we have been in that part of the world. We also used the graphic novel version of the 9/11 Commission report to review the causes, events, and immediate after effects of 9/11. Flags of countries with the years that America "intervened" in leading up to 9/11. For the final phase of the project we applied Ender’s Game to the events (warning the next paragraphs contains spoilers for the book and the movie).  In the book Ender unknowingly destroys the Bugger’s home world in a genocide. But unknown to anyone else, Ender finds an egg containing a queen Bugger for a future colony. More importantly, the Buggers communicate telepathically to Ender and he learns their whole history. Ender feels terrible that he destroyed them and part of his healing is that he anonymously writes their complete history as "Speaker for the Dead." This book becomes popular through out the universe leading to a sort of religion. People become Speakers for the Dead and travel around and give eulogies at funerals where they explain people’s lives in totality, the good, bad and the ugly. People find the truth very liberating. The final product was for students to create a monument design for 9/11 as "Speaker for the Dead." We wanted students to create a design that was complex representing the totality of the events, including causes and U.S. actions afterward in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spent a few days looking at existing monuments and the symbolism behind them. Many students struggled with interpreting symbolism at first, but by the time they designed their own monument it was making sense to them. Students created some great designs, some of them drawings or physical models and other in Mine craft or Sketchup (some examples on our Face Book page).  Not all of them "look" great as far as the models go, but their explanations of the symbolism behind them demonstrated that they understand both the social studies and ELA content and applied it deeply. Most important to me is that we had some good conversations about how America can look to solve future problems with out being a bully, over bearing mother, or supercop of the world.

Ever have a deep conversation with a group of colleagues about learning and pedagogy? NovaNow is like that. Ever use social media to connect with educational experts? NovaNow is like that. Ever wish a conference was small, intimate, vendor free, conversational, and actually located in a school? NovaNow is like that. Ever wish students themselves were part of professional development? NovaNow is like that. Ever wish that you could chat with the "expert presenter" at a coffee shop instead of watching her powerpoint in a large auditorium? NovaNow is like that. Ever participate in a Twitter chat and learn great teaching ideas? NovaNow is like that. Ever talked to someone in the hallway at a conference and realized that it impacted your teaching more than the presentation in the "big room"? NovaNow is like that. Ever wish that you could see student centered PBL in action? NovaNow is like that. Ever wish that professional development involved critical thinking instead of following the latest fads? NovaNow is like that. Ever wish PD was less "sage on the stage" and more "guide by the side"? NovaNow is like that. Ever connect with educators and develop friendships that last for years? NovaNow is like that. Ever wish a conference was the beginning of professional development relationships instead of the climax? NovaNow is like that. Join us February 7-8 for NovaNow at Kent Innovation High, a New Tech Network school located in Grand Rapids, MI.

Just a short post to say thanks to some of the core people of NovaNow. But not the people that you may be thinking. Of course we are thankful for the parents, students, staff, and especially our principal, Kym Kimber (she deserves a separate post at another time) for making this happen. But we set the table; others cooked the food. We created a time and space, but everyone else brought the stories that made up the conversations. So we are very thankful for all of you that led a conversation this weekend. Some were large; some were small; some were dialogues; some had us creating; all were inspiring. Finally a special thanks to #Miched. I definitely feel like the people of the #Miched community were the heart of this conference both as conversation leaders and participants. I want to give special props to Ben Rimes and our school’s own Jeff Bush. I remember when they dreamed up the concept at edcampGR a few years ago. But I have heard many good ideas without follow through. These guys made it happen with the hashtag, weekly chat, blogposts, and later Brad Wilson’s podcasts. I can’t verify this but I feel like #Miched was one of the first, if not the first state hashtag/weekly chat. Other states have jumped in, but I feel like #Miched is the most active and really become a community. I am proud to be a "member" of the #Miched community. NovaNow will always be a separate entity but I feel like ultimately it was a celebration of the people of #Miched to get together face to face and grow. I look forward to watching the future of education in our state because of this community!

From http://guyism.com/sports/gregg-popovich-reaction-gifs.html "Sometimes in timeouts I’ll say, ‘I’ve got nothing for you. What do you want me to do? We just turned it over six times. Everybody’s holding the ball. What else do you want me to do here? Figure it out,’ " Gregg Popovich, head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, shared these words of wisdom today on what he says to his team during a timeout. Another quote: "I think competitive character people don’t want to be manipulated constantly to do what one individual wants them to do," Popovich said, "It’s a great feeling when players get together and do things as a group. Whatever can be done to empower those people." I think teachers need to take this mindset. Sometimes we need to empower by getting out of the way and letting students figure things out. It is important to note that he does not always do this. He still runs practices, calls plays, and teaches the game. He has relationships with his players including their respect. He also doesn’t do this the first day of training camp, but after hours and weeks of working with the team and preparing them for what they need to do. But then when they are ready he has to get out of the way and let players play. He is not being negligent but empowering instead of manipulating. Once students have the skills, and sometimes even before we need to get out of the way and let students figure out how they want to learn and demonstrate their learning. They will rise to the occasion if you let them. Having an authentic purpose and an audience to share their learning with helps out too. It raises the ante just like a game does over practice.

From Josip Kelava David Jakes at NovaNow challenged us to move beyond mission and vision statements which are just useless propaganda (my comment, not his) but instead have a manifesto about what matters to us in education. So here is my manifesto for learning:  When you stop learning, you’re dead. Whoever is doing is learning. Knowledge gained under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Plato Hold your opinions with an open hand. If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Caring about justice is more important than content. When you stop learning, you’re dead. Learning should be a lifetime experience. People who are no longer learning anything are figuratively dead, even if they are technically still breathing. Actually I think it is just about impossible to not be learning something if you are conscious. Learning of course encompasses so much more than what is taught in schools. Whoever is doing is learning. I believe in active learning. If students are just sitting in rows listening or taking notes that is not "doing." Learners need to be researching, questioning, experimenting, communicating, and tinkering. Learning is not always scripted but often looks more like young children playing. Knowledge gained under compulsion has no hold on the mind. -Plato We can not force anyone to learn anything. Students cram information that they don’t care about for a test and quickly forget it. Students who explore their passions remember what they learn. We need to make room for students to control their own learning. And yes it is their learning. Hold your opinion with an open hand. This is a hard one for students, but a mature person can see both sides of an issue and is willing to re-adjust their views based on new information. It also means being able to have a respectful discourse about a topic without getting hostile. If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Every source no matter what the form: text, audio, visual, etc. is biased. Every piece of information should be checked out by multiple sources. The bias of everything should be considered when evaluating information. Bias is in everything, but does not necessarily mean that a source is not credible. Be slow to trust and quick to check out information. Caring about justice is more important than content. There are two things that I really want my students to learn in my class. The first is part of the earlier points. I want my students to be critically thinking citizens. I want them to call BS and not just believe everything they hear but contemplate their own opinions deeply. The second thing I want them to learn is to care about people in this world and to make a difference in the world on an issue that matters to them. We have plenty of problems in this world to deal with and I hope that my students make a difference today and for the rest of their lives. This is my manifesto. If you have never written one I challenge you to try it. It will help you think about what really matters to you. And don’t use the education jargon generator either. 

If you don’t live in Michigan this post may not be for you. On the other hand yeah it is. Unsession that I "attended" So our big edtech conference MACUL was this past few days. I can’t really tell you much about the sessions I attended. There were some good ones, but I won’t remember them next year or even in a few weeks. What I will remember is all of the people I met. Conferences for me have become all about meeting great educators and learning from them in conversations in the hallways. Even one session that I did attend on setting up gaming in your classroom while interesting did not leave me feeling ready to try it in my classroom. But I "knew" the presenter virtually and met her this weekend. So I tweeted and set up a meeting to get some help from her. Admittedly during her session I zoned out a bit (it was the last one of the day so I was beat) because I knew that I would just talk to her later in person. I could go on and on about what I learned from conversations with people. I will keep it short by saying my main takeaway is that Michigan is full of great educators and many of them "live" under the hashtag #Miched. I have participated in the chat a few times and knew some of them but after this conference I am committed to being an active part of the #Miched community rather than a "driveby tweeter." If you are looking for community online I can not recommend a better group of people than #Miched! I love learning from people online, but it is so much more powerful when it is with people that you also get to know in face to face conversations.

From http://yinrenaissance.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/the-inverted-introvert/ First John and then Trevor wrote about introverts. So I thought I would weigh in also. We were joking at lunch the other day about the fact that we have a large number of introverts on our staff. My principal asked everyone who thinks that they are an introvert to raise their hand. A bunch of us did, including myself. I felt like some people were looking at me funny, like you are not an introvert. I feel like extrovert and introvert is a false dichotomy. The truth is that sometimes I like to be with others and am loud and opinionated. Other times I crave solitude and my own thoughts. How I act is much more dependent on mood and situation than my personality. I am a morning person, but I like it to be quiet. In college my roommate and I would get up at the same time, get ready, go to the cafeteria and eat breakfast together. The first words spoken were "See ya" when one of us left for class and that was perfect. Generally I get up and am out the door before my family gets up. On days when they are up I feel stressed by the noise. At parties or in unfamiliar situations I am silent and in a corner. I like to be around people, but don’t like small talk unless it is about sports. I would prefer to talk about deeper issues like justice, ethics, or philosophy, not exactly dinner party topics. But in my classroom or with friends and family I am very talkative and sometimes even dominating. I should probably step back and listen more. I feel like most people are like this. Rather than extroverted or introverted I think most people swing between the two depending on their mood and the situation. I agree with Trevor though that we need to make spaces in our classes and schools for both situations and realize that some students may need a different environment dependent on the day and what is going on in their lives more than their personality.