Twenty-First Century Schools Committee

Coincidentally, I just discovered that a principal from Saskatchewan whose blog I read is wanting to start an online book group for the book Whole New Mind. 

If you’d like to be part of the “online” book discussion, you can post a comment on his blog and let him know you’d like to be a part of it.   They are figuring out what type of website or tools to use to communicate online about the book, as it is a brainstorm he had and he hasn’t done one before.  So…if you want to be in on the ground level of this experiment, let him know!

http://kwhobbes.edublogs.org/2007/02/19/literacy-the-book-club-way/

After our Vision Committee meeting today, I was reading a blog, think:lab, that I frequently check out, and ran across something I had to share.

Christian Long, who writes Think Lab, is preparing to interview Daniel Pink tomorrow and was soliciting questions on his blog to ask during the interview.  

One of his responses came from a 17 year old blogger, who had this excellent list of questions for Daniel Pink.  His questions resonate with so much of we have been talking about and are explained so beautifully by this high school student who has obviously put a great deal of thought into what schools of the future would be like.

It was one of those moments online when I just get chills thinking about the opportunities that web tools like blogs provide all of us in terms of sharing ideas across space and place.

If you haven’t seen Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know ” (or his 2020 Vision presentation), I have posted the links to them on my library blog here.  They both pose much to think about.

On her blog, Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis challenges businesses and educators to work together to “be the textbook”.  

She encourages teachers, CEO’s, visionaries in business or in education to make those connections, and explores using technology (like Skype) for connections outside the campus.

She throws out a fascinating challenge to businesses and to educators to think about the opportunities involved.

Any ideas for how we could spearhead a project like that here?  Should it come from the classroom teacher’s own connections?  Is there anything the campus can do to support an effort like this or are personal connections(which she suggests) better?   What university connections could we develop?

What do we need in terms of technology support to try something like this?

Food for thought….

Another interesting article in Edutopia profiles project-based learning, and gives examples of how schools are using it to teach 21st century skills.   It has several specific examples of schools using interdisciplinary projects, internships, and thematic projects.

Mentoring new teachers isn’t something we’ve talked about much yet on our committee, but as we invest more time in developing a vision for the school, retaining teachers will be important.

Edutopia has an interesting feature article on the importance of mentoring programs for new staff.