Hello!
Imagine what you could create.
The all new
Intentional Talk
Bodies everywhere.
I don't know how it happened.
Simply tighten the bleeder valve, remove the apparatus, but what is the sequence?
I wanna fix up old houses
(10 seconds of sappy music)
Please! You call me "sir," I look around for my father!
Classic.
Wow
Look at it
This is nice
I wonder how she does it
She's my priestess I'm your priest. Yeah. Yeah.
Complexity
Nothing. It does nothing.
Then the sales numbers started coming in and they were, at best, half of what we were expecting.
Welcome to the real world.
Can we just go? Great.
Scott's Profile Pic
Scott Swindells
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Teachable Moments in Canada
While chaperoning the ski trip to Québec for the past five days, I was reminded of the value field trips have for our students. A virtual tour, a classroom lecture, the best-made documentary films -- all pale in comparison to actually going out in the world.
Travel to foreign countries provides exceptional educational value, but any trip to a new place with different scenery, culture or lifestyle makes a strong first-hand impact on students.
On our trip, we had the added benefit of a language barrier. Not an intimidating barrier, but the kind where our English-speaking students could try to get by in French, with the safety net of everyone there speaking English as a second language if the need arose. But the language barrier opened up a lot of experiences and opportunities for teachable moments for our students.
Some students struggled to pronounce French words and sentences, others continued to speak English. Some believed that attempting to speak the language showed respect, others believed that butchering it would show a lack of respect. None of our students was rude or a bad ambassador for our school or country, but we noticed frequently that we were louder than other people around us. We discussed in small groups how that might be perceived by the Québécois, to hear a group of people speaking loudly in a public place, using a different language. How would WE feel about that behavior in our hometown? The teachable moments were everywhere.
As I said, none of our students ever meant any disrespect, but it was easy to see how the "ugly American" stereotype takes root. If we were gathered in a hotel lobby, restaurant, ski lodge, or even an historic church, there were usually many of us. When many teenagers are having conversations at a regular volume, it easily sounds amplified with the size of the group. When that language is a foreign one, it must sound that much louder. I noticed our foreign-born and foreign-exchange students, as well as all the adult chaperones, would hang back from the large group in these cases. What made all of us notice the volume of our group, but most of our American students miss it?
The conversations we chaperones had with our students about the perceptions of others could ONLY have happened in earnest by actually being there in Québec City. The same goes for countless other teachable moments we encountered:
1) The (at a minimum!) one thousand questions the French teacher chaperone answered from students who wanted to know how to say words or phrases to communicate better
2) The questions about exchange rate, and how best to maximize the value of our money on the trip
3) The discussions about cultural differences
4) The architecture and design of Québec City
5) The procedures for crossing the border between countries
6) The similarities we found between our words, languages, cultures, and expressions,
and -- here's my personal favorite (and the technology tie-in, too) --
7) The "how much longer until we get there?" question, which plagues ski trip chaperones non-stop if they let it, but goes away quickly when it is answered with, "Figure it out for yourself; you have access to GPS, you know where we're going, you can see our rate of speed on the dashboard right there, and hey look, there's a sign out the window that tells you where we are right now. Figure it out!"
You know, teach a person to fish...
There were too many teachable moments to even recall half of them to write in this blog. The chaperones enjoyed the questions (*most of the time) because they provided opportunities to really teach in a lasting way, as the students were learning from their experience.
I write about this today because we all know what programs are the first to go when budgets get tight. Field trips, art, music, sports, and other programs that allow for this type of experiential learning -- basically, the best stuff for the real world.
We have to document our successes to remind ourselves how many great teachable moments can't happen without getting out there first hand and experiencing the world.
Travel to foreign countries provides exceptional educational value, but any trip to a new place with different scenery, culture or lifestyle makes a strong first-hand impact on students.
On our trip, we had the added benefit of a language barrier. Not an intimidating barrier, but the kind where our English-speaking students could try to get by in French, with the safety net of everyone there speaking English as a second language if the need arose. But the language barrier opened up a lot of experiences and opportunities for teachable moments for our students.
Some students struggled to pronounce French words and sentences, others continued to speak English. Some believed that attempting to speak the language showed respect, others believed that butchering it would show a lack of respect. None of our students was rude or a bad ambassador for our school or country, but we noticed frequently that we were louder than other people around us. We discussed in small groups how that might be perceived by the Québécois, to hear a group of people speaking loudly in a public place, using a different language. How would WE feel about that behavior in our hometown? The teachable moments were everywhere.
As I said, none of our students ever meant any disrespect, but it was easy to see how the "ugly American" stereotype takes root. If we were gathered in a hotel lobby, restaurant, ski lodge, or even an historic church, there were usually many of us. When many teenagers are having conversations at a regular volume, it easily sounds amplified with the size of the group. When that language is a foreign one, it must sound that much louder. I noticed our foreign-born and foreign-exchange students, as well as all the adult chaperones, would hang back from the large group in these cases. What made all of us notice the volume of our group, but most of our American students miss it?
The conversations we chaperones had with our students about the perceptions of others could ONLY have happened in earnest by actually being there in Québec City. The same goes for countless other teachable moments we encountered:
1) The (at a minimum!) one thousand questions the French teacher chaperone answered from students who wanted to know how to say words or phrases to communicate better
2) The questions about exchange rate, and how best to maximize the value of our money on the trip
3) The discussions about cultural differences
4) The architecture and design of Québec City
5) The procedures for crossing the border between countries
6) The similarities we found between our words, languages, cultures, and expressions,
and -- here's my personal favorite (and the technology tie-in, too) --
7) The "how much longer until we get there?" question, which plagues ski trip chaperones non-stop if they let it, but goes away quickly when it is answered with, "Figure it out for yourself; you have access to GPS, you know where we're going, you can see our rate of speed on the dashboard right there, and hey look, there's a sign out the window that tells you where we are right now. Figure it out!"
You know, teach a person to fish...
There were too many teachable moments to even recall half of them to write in this blog. The chaperones enjoyed the questions (*most of the time) because they provided opportunities to really teach in a lasting way, as the students were learning from their experience.
I write about this today because we all know what programs are the first to go when budgets get tight. Field trips, art, music, sports, and other programs that allow for this type of experiential learning -- basically, the best stuff for the real world.
We have to document our successes to remind ourselves how many great teachable moments can't happen without getting out there first hand and experiencing the world.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Valentine's Day Post
Here it is, the Valentine's Day post.
I woke up with the Outkast song "Happy Valentine's Day" in my head, as I do every year, and since it is Tuesday, a desire to make a connection between Valentine's Day and the usual subject of my blog, technology integration.
But do you know how hard it is to make a connection between technology and Valentine's Day?
Sure, there are those online dating sites. After all, one in five relationships now begins online, according to research commissioned by Match.com. But I have no expertise in that field. My wife, Sarah, and I met in 1997, only a year or two after online dating was invented, and years before anyone would have dreamed it would be as popular as it apparently is today, so I can't really relate to any of that.
That was back in the days before Words With Friends. When we played Scrabble. With actual friends.
There are some interesting facts about love and technology. For example, the tweets and posts about Valentine's Day are overwhelmingly written by women. This is interesting, but as Sarah said, "not at all surprising."
According to an LA Times article, 9% of those posts by men were about disliking the holiday. So I guess I am in the minority as a man posting online about Valentine's Day.
What else? Well, Google marked the holiday with the posting of a new doodle. Big deal. Google celebrates practically every day with a doodle these days. Didn't they have a doodle for Arbor Day? For every full moon? Maybe even one for the third Tuesday of every month?
There are tons of Valentine's Apps, and even more Valentine's Day sales... but money can't buy love, according to the Beatles.
Maybe I'm forcing a square peg into a round hole here. Maybe there isn't a connection between Valentine's Day and technology, at least not one I'm going to buy into. This should probably be a day to unplug the computers, power down the tablets and Smart phones, stop checking email and social networking sites, and tune out from texting.
That's it! There's my connection. Unplug from the technology today. And if I could just think of a strong closing sentence, I could take my own advice, but I'm still here typing, thinking of an ending.
Or I could just
I woke up with the Outkast song "Happy Valentine's Day" in my head, as I do every year, and since it is Tuesday, a desire to make a connection between Valentine's Day and the usual subject of my blog, technology integration.
But do you know how hard it is to make a connection between technology and Valentine's Day?
Sure, there are those online dating sites. After all, one in five relationships now begins online, according to research commissioned by Match.com. But I have no expertise in that field. My wife, Sarah, and I met in 1997, only a year or two after online dating was invented, and years before anyone would have dreamed it would be as popular as it apparently is today, so I can't really relate to any of that.
That was back in the days before Words With Friends. When we played Scrabble. With actual friends.
There are some interesting facts about love and technology. For example, the tweets and posts about Valentine's Day are overwhelmingly written by women. This is interesting, but as Sarah said, "not at all surprising."
According to an LA Times article, 9% of those posts by men were about disliking the holiday. So I guess I am in the minority as a man posting online about Valentine's Day.
What else? Well, Google marked the holiday with the posting of a new doodle. Big deal. Google celebrates practically every day with a doodle these days. Didn't they have a doodle for Arbor Day? For every full moon? Maybe even one for the third Tuesday of every month?
There are tons of Valentine's Apps, and even more Valentine's Day sales... but money can't buy love, according to the Beatles.
Maybe I'm forcing a square peg into a round hole here. Maybe there isn't a connection between Valentine's Day and technology, at least not one I'm going to buy into. This should probably be a day to unplug the computers, power down the tablets and Smart phones, stop checking email and social networking sites, and tune out from texting.
That's it! There's my connection. Unplug from the technology today. And if I could just think of a strong closing sentence, I could take my own advice, but I'm still here typing, thinking of an ending.
Or I could just
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
"Choose Your Own Adventure" Professional Development
During my time as a coach over the past five years, I've presented hundreds of professional development sessions.
One model in particular seems to have worked better than any other, so I am interested to see if more coaches, teachers, staff developers and administrators would be able to adopt it for their own use.
I'm calling it "Choose Your Own Adventure" PD because the agenda for the training session is created or chosen by the participants.
In my experiences, here's how it worked:
The session description tells teachers that the session "will largely be directed by your individual questions. Those who sign up will receive an email a few weeks prior to the session asking for questions and topics they would most like to see covered."
The presenter(s) make a Google Form and send it to all enrolled participants two weeks prior to the class. The form asks participants to select from a list of potential topics the ones that would be most beneficial to them. The form also asks participants to list any questions they would like answered, and what they most wanted to learn when they signed up for the training.
Over the next two weeks, the presenter(s) research the individual questions and answer all of them in writing, often with step-by-step directions and screen captures. The agenda is created based on the most selected topics from the list of potential subjects, with the most frequently selected topics at the top of the agenda.
During the session, the presenter(s) move through the topics, but are mindful to answer individual questions throughout. A good portion of time is also left to answer every question from the pre-session form, but all these answers have been written out and posted, so they will be available for future reference if we don't get to every one. If we do cover every question, there is time for some practical application of what the participants learned.
It must also be made clear to participants that they may "tune in and out" as they see fit. If the discussion is focused on someone else's question, but it is an area they are already familiar or comfortable with, they can continue browsing the links on the agenda (posted online via a wiki) and reading the answers to other questions. At any point, participants may "stop" following along with the agenda, and use the time to apply what they have learned to their own classroom use, developing a lesson, unit, project or activity they can take away with them.
The session has been one of my most popular offerings each year, and I get very enthusiastic feedback every time I present it to teachers. If you'd like to see the wiki for one of these sessions, just click here. If you have a way to apply this approach for your own use, please leave a reply below. I'd love to hear about it!
One model in particular seems to have worked better than any other, so I am interested to see if more coaches, teachers, staff developers and administrators would be able to adopt it for their own use.
I'm calling it "Choose Your Own Adventure" PD because the agenda for the training session is created or chosen by the participants.
In my experiences, here's how it worked:
The session description tells teachers that the session "will largely be directed by your individual questions. Those who sign up will receive an email a few weeks prior to the session asking for questions and topics they would most like to see covered."
The presenter(s) make a Google Form and send it to all enrolled participants two weeks prior to the class. The form asks participants to select from a list of potential topics the ones that would be most beneficial to them. The form also asks participants to list any questions they would like answered, and what they most wanted to learn when they signed up for the training.
Over the next two weeks, the presenter(s) research the individual questions and answer all of them in writing, often with step-by-step directions and screen captures. The agenda is created based on the most selected topics from the list of potential subjects, with the most frequently selected topics at the top of the agenda.
During the session, the presenter(s) move through the topics, but are mindful to answer individual questions throughout. A good portion of time is also left to answer every question from the pre-session form, but all these answers have been written out and posted, so they will be available for future reference if we don't get to every one. If we do cover every question, there is time for some practical application of what the participants learned.
It must also be made clear to participants that they may "tune in and out" as they see fit. If the discussion is focused on someone else's question, but it is an area they are already familiar or comfortable with, they can continue browsing the links on the agenda (posted online via a wiki) and reading the answers to other questions. At any point, participants may "stop" following along with the agenda, and use the time to apply what they have learned to their own classroom use, developing a lesson, unit, project or activity they can take away with them.
The session has been one of my most popular offerings each year, and I get very enthusiastic feedback every time I present it to teachers. If you'd like to see the wiki for one of these sessions, just click here. If you have a way to apply this approach for your own use, please leave a reply below. I'd love to hear about it!
Thursday, February 2, 2012
NFL Picks ~ Superbowl XLVI
Hello and welcome to a Superbowl edition of Tuesdays. After going 2-8 in the playoffs so far, I find myself needing one more win just to tie my lowest number of wins in a decade of making NFL Picks against the spread. What's worse? I have to pick between two teams any Eagles fan would hate: the Patriots and Giants. Ugh. Just to get this season over with, I'm going to side with the Vegas favorite and go against almost every talking head I've heard making picks on TV and radio...
New England giving 3 to NY Giants
LOSS
NY Giants 21 - New England 17
SUPERBOWL RECORD: 0-1-0
2011 - 2012 Record: 129-127-11
2010 - 2011 Record: 130-130-7
2009 - 2010 Record: 138-125-4
2008 - 2009 Record: 139-120-8
New England giving 3 to NY Giants
LOSS
NY Giants 21 - New England 17
SUPERBOWL RECORD: 0-1-0
2011 - 2012 Record: 129-127-11
2010 - 2011 Record: 130-130-7
2009 - 2010 Record: 138-125-4
2008 - 2009 Record: 139-120-8
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