You Tube can be Useful

In November, I was preparing for a conference presentation.  I wanted the people in the audience to make paper airplanes (believe me, this was important).  I am embarrassed to admit that I could not remember how to make a paper airplane.  So I went to You Tube, where there are thousands of videos about how to make all kinds of paper airplanes.

Tufts University is now accepting You Tube videos as part of a student's college application.

In this blog post, we see how young people use You Tube in meaningful ways: How many educators / parents / policymakers see the implications of this?

Chris Anderson, curator at TED, talks about video in this TEDTalk and in this Wired article.

What are your school district's policies?  Do you allow teachers and students to use You Tube and other social networking tools in the classroom?

REFLECTION TIME

Is this your school board?

Leadership means you're supposed to lead

Continuous Improvement

One key component in the NSBA Key Work framework is continuous improvement.  Regular evaluation is part and parcel of a continuous improvement model.  I recently wrote a piece for the eboard solutions blog.

Check it out.

What was good enough for us is not good enough for them. Here's one reason why.

Kindles in the classroom get students excited to read

Kindles and other hand-held computer devices are making their way into classrooms in Wisconsin.  Click here to see how Altoona is using them.

http://www.wqow.com/Global/story.asp?S=13783650

This was good enough for me, it oughta be good enough for these kids

 I cannot tell you how often board members tell me about community members who hold this belief.  Even more distressing, how many board members believe it themselves.

School boards have been largely ignored in the educational reforms of the past thirty years.  Local control as we have understood it no longer exists.  Yet there is an opportunity for school boards to play a central role in transforming their schools, if they work on vision and engaging with both internal and external stakeholders.

School board members must scan the environment to understand how the world is changing. You cannot create a vision for the future if you do not have some familiarity with how the world is changing.

One way to quickly keep up is to subscribe to blogs and websites that are thinking and talking about change and education.  You can easily use google reader to keep up on what's happening.   It is time to get started.

Create a gmail account (if you don't already have one).   A gmail account is rapidly becoming the equivalent of  a social security number.  You will not be able to participate in the new world without one. 

Then, set up google reader.  You are now ready to subscribe to blogs and websites whose author's are thinking and talking about change in the world and education.  To add sites to your google reader:

Find a site you are interested in following.

Click on the RSS icon  found on the web page. 
Subscribe to feed using google
Click on google reader.

If you have an ipad, download the app flipboard, which formats your feeds in a magazine-style format, making it very easy and enjoyable to read.


 Here are a few websites to get you started.

TEDTalks-  Each year,  the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference hosts some of the world's most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. These podcasts (also available in audio format) capture the most extraordinary presentations delivered from the TED stage.

Yong Zhao
 - Keynote speaker at the 2011 WASB convention