Tonight, I have the privilege of speaking to school librarians who are part of the Michigan Chapter of the Catholic Library Association. Slides are here. Some familiar slides, and a few new ones!
A friend wrote today asking for a book club title that she could use as a mentor to new teachers in math, social studies, special ed, and English language arts to promote inquiry learning.
Scanning my book shelves, I was reminded of Koechlin and Zwaan’s Q Tasks, which focuses extensively on the questioning end of the inquiry process. Full of graphic organizers and easy-to-comprehend-but-still-big-ideas content, the book shares many strategies for making student questions deeper and more meaningful. I’ve put the book in my to-be-read-again-this-summer pile. Hope you will, too.
Happy weekend!
Big news in education today. First, Joel Klein is resigning as chancellor of the New York City Public Schools and heading for NewsCorp. Meanwhile, Hearst chair Cathie Black, whose kids go to boarding school and who never attended public school herself, adn who has no experience in education, is taking over as chancellor.
Which is curious, of course, since print publishing is in its own state of flux these days.
But the big news that impacts school librarians is the official reveal of the National Educational Technology Plan. We’re pretty proud at Michigan that two of our faculty members, Dan Atkins and Barry Fishman, as well as one of our esteemed alums, John Seely Brown, were involved in creating the Plan.
Here’s how T.H.E. Journal reported it.
And Education Week’s take.
And here it is on the US Department of Education (USDOE) site:
The goal is LEARNING POWERED BY TECHNOLOGY. Not cutting out learning to make room for tech time. Not learning how to click and use technology. But how to use technology, Universal Design for Learning, and other strategies to propel students forward. How to engage more in formative than summative assesment. To employ best practices about teaching for learning. This is huge, folks. I haven’t read this since the draft several months ago, but there is some really bold thinking here — thinking that runs counter to much of the USDOE publicly advocates elsewhere. You won’t find much on standardized tests in this document. It’s so refreshing. I can’t wait to dig into this version.
Time to roll up our sleeves. There are some pretty amazing ideas in this document about the role of technology to link teachers to teachers.
Consider making this your November goal: as you peruse the document, look for ways in which you can leverage your work and your role to help administration and teachers move forward in meaningful ed tech work.
Then write a one-page proposal of how you’ll work with teachers and administrators to help move in this direction. You might propose a study club, a recommended reading list, offer to annotate and review the document for your principal, offer to lead a PLC or professional development session, offer to “take” a teacher’s students so he/she can read the document (side benefit: you get the students and can develop skills with them), etc.
Be proactive. Take the lead.
And keep us posted … we’d love to know what you’re up to!
