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 [...]

Dear Will, You know better than anyone that I am an optimist. I truly do see possibilities more than problems. Well, I woke up this morning feeling empty. I woke up grieving for children. I blame it on a dream I had. A dream about unhappy students, hundreds of them, shuffling through halls with broken [...]

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 [...]

While I am becoming more and more dissatisfied with Delta as my preferred airline because of treatment by most (not all) gate folks and flight attendants, I am finding that I am enjoying the networking opportunities with the folks I meet there more and more. I travel. A lot. Because of that I often get [...]

I am a big fan of my adult kids. I really am. If I wasn’t their parent I would surely want to be their friend as they turned out to be really fun, creative, decent people. (on a side note– I am really glad too since my mother constantly told me I would reap what [...]

I had an epiphany today. For most of you who lead change, run a company or ministry this is probably obvious. But for me– not so much. I was listening to John Maxwell on TV today and he shared something I had never considered. My mission, my purpose in all the work I do, whether [...]

What do you think of when you try and define the concept leadership? I surveyed my Twitter community recently and was struck with the diversity represented as they grappled with the idea. Most of the definitions spoke to leadership belonging to a group broader than individual leaders.  Which is a shift from the dictionary definition: [...]

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 [...]