21st Century Collaborative

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe This post is inspired by the anger, jealousy, weariness and frustration from educators I have seen and heard lately as [...]

Have you heard of the Teaching Channel? Neither had I until a talented video producer gave me a call and asked if I would be willing to serve as a pedagogical expert in a short professional development video. My task: Coach a first-year social studies teacher through the process of integrating social media into her [...]

There is a transformation I believe must take place in teaching and learning practices if elementary and secondary schools are to remain relevant in an era when information and communication technologies will continue to expand exponentially. In this Education Week Teacher interview with education journalist John Norton, I describe the shift that needs to take [...]

Have you ever woke up and had something burning inside you that you know you are supposed to write or develop and yet you just do not have your mind around it yet? That’s me this morning. So I am being faithful to the urgency and seeing where my fingers are going to take me. [...]

John Merrow wrote on 20. Jan, 2011 at 12:04 am (in a comment to his own post here): We have to move beyond ‘regurgitation education.’ Our kids don’t live in that world anywhere else. Two of the three justifications for school no longer apply in anything resembling the traditional sense (and the way it was [...]

Dear Staff, I have been thinking of you today. Thinking about your various roles within Powerful Learning Practice. Thinking about how I can help you (us) be more passionate about what you (we) do and how I can provide vision, hope, trust and inspiration as the leader of our company. This is “our” company you [...]

Laura Varlas wrote an interesting piece in ASCD “Caught in the Middle” July 2010 | Volume 52 | Number 7 Called- Looking Within: Teachers Leading Their Own Learning She had me at her opening line, “The most powerful and ample resource for change in education is teachers’ own expertise. Yet, teachers are regularly overstepped when [...]

Alec Couros and I were talking the other day and I was reminded of a post I have been wanting to do about deep thinking, sharing and action. We originally connected to talk about a new project PLP is sponsoring, a virtual Institute for Higher Education, which Alec will lead, but it took us awhile [...]

Photo credit: http://thenewpostliterate.blogspot.com/2009/01/dr-john-m-bennetts-solo-and.html In the PLPNetbooks community (Australia work) this blog post surfaced after my interview with Steve Hargadon on The Future of Education The Title of the post is the same as mine.. Why Are We Here? It follows: Ok … Now I’ve got your attention I’ve just finished listening to the lastest episode [...]

I have been thinking a lot about how to manage the needed change process in education. Looks like a lot of folks have been playing with that idea as well. ISTE released their new NETS for ADMIN framing it as having the potential for – Transforming Education- Administrators play a pivotal role in determining how [...]