Powerful Learning Practice Blog

Is Your School or Classroom a Comfortable Place to Learn?

Prakash Nair asked the audience if THEY’d tried out a student chair lately and wondered if any adult would be willing to sit in such a seat for eight hours at a time? Most in the audience laughed at his question, but it was the laughter of recognition. No way. Why, asked Nair, do the adults get the comfortable chairs, but the kids don’t? Adult chairs are padded. Adult chairs roll. Adult chairs might even have the cool mesh that keeps backs and legs from getting all sweaty. But the learners? Unyielding polypropylene.

School Leaders: Meet the Wiki

The professional development programs that are essential today need to focus not so much on the hardware and software — what “cool tools” we can use — but on changing how teachers view themselves as educators. It’s not just about teaching the three “r’s” and the content packaged in textbooks. It’s about preparing our students with the skills that they need for the future within a new learning ecology. In a connected world, educators have to think and teach differently. This book adopts that attitude.

5 Reasons Why Our Students Are Writing Blogs and Creating ePortfolios

I work in an Independent School in Melbourne, Australia, and this year we have made a commitment to help our students (grades 7-12) create ePortfolios, using an Edublogs campus as the platform. Here are 5 reasons why we are making student blogging and portfolio development a high priority. The first: These kids need to establish a positive digital footprint.

PLP's Voices from the Learning Revolution: Our Easy Reference Index (Posts 30-65)

We launched our PLP group blog Voices from the Learning Revolution just six months ago, and we’ve now shared 65 wide-ranging articles and essays about the future of learning, written by teachers, librarians, IT specialists, principals, district leaders and consultants who are allied with our Powerful Learning Practice communities. Here’s a brief guide to our most recent 36 posts, and a link to our first guide published last May.

It's Time to Learn

We know you want more, and budgets are tight. So we want to give you something.  For free. PLP continues to provide long-term learning communities for schools and divisions, but we want to reach out to you--as an individual. Check this out! We are offering a series of...

From the Canadian UnPlug'd Conference: 'Why Social Justice in Education Matters'

I recently had the privilege of convening for three days with 37 educators who are passionate about education. We forfeited technology for the company of fellow teachers, consultants, administrators, university professors and school trustees. No cell phone reception. No Internet connection. Unplug’d. We were wholly engaged and attentive to the discussions at hand, as we considered what matters and why. This is my contribution.

Bud Hunt: Thoughts for New Teachers

Try very hard not to work all the time. I suck at this, at turning off my work brain and focusing on being a dad or a husband or “just a dude reading the paper at the corner coffee shop,” but I recognize the value of being at rest and at play, of knowing that it’s better to let small work things go in the name of preserving long term relationships. You CAN be that hero teacher that everyone loves and is in awe of, but only for a little while. Then, you burn out and fade away and don’t do anyone any good at all.

Out with professional development, in with professional learning.

In their revised national standards, Learning Forward (formerly known as the National Staff Development Council) has undergone an important shift in focus and message: from one of development to one of learning. The new standards focus on teachers as learners. Teachers are not to be treated as vehicles through which schools deliver programs and policies. This has been the focus of traditional professional development frameworks for way too long. The goal for administrators should be how to foster the learning spirit in every one of our teachers through a system of learning opportunities that cater to their individual needs.

My First Year of Teaching Dangerously

“Our kids are beginning to hate school and, to be quite honest, so are the teachers,” writes guest blogger Becky Bair, an upper elementary teacher in Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown School District. “It was time to change my teaching, no matter how scary the prospect might be.” After Bair shifted her teaching strategies, “it was terrifying each time I had to review our required assessments.” But in the end, the results caused her to “jump up and cheer.”

Knowing your neighbors – a school multicultural day

St. Anne School Team Members: Chris Kennedy, Jan Molchany, Karen Henry, Bill Traphagen, Erin Boley, Nicole Augustine, Maria D'Isabella Community: IU-13 Year 1, 2010-2011 In 1962, Marshall McLuhan used the term "Global Village" in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The...