I was introduced to a new blog today Teach Paperless: Seeking Social Solutions to the Mysteries of 21st Century Teaching and Learning by Shelly Blake-Plock. She is challenging teachers to commit now to going paperless on Earth Day, April 22nd and so far she has over 825 teachers committed to not using any paper for [...]

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Our second day of collaboration was once again a great learning experience. The focus was on processes for meetings and conflict along with roles within a team.
We were able to watch a data team work through a five step process of looking at student data throughout the school year.
1. Collect and Chart Data
2. Analyze Strengths [...]

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Susan Sparks has been a great facilitator thus far for our Creating Collaborative Teams seminar. Today our goals were focus, structure and relationships.
Focus for team meetings, team expectations and team goals.
Structure: Identifying the differences between a group and a team from the start today. Many times in schools we look at teams and groups in [...]

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Paradox. We can’t avoid it—in the classroom or in life. If you’ve read any Parker Palmer, you know that he talks about the necessity of standing in the “tragic gap” of paradox, holding seeming contradictions with the patience to “live into the questions” rather than simply jump to a glib resolution of the tension. Too [...]

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Elizabeth Vogt, secondary English teacher at Riggs High School in Pierre, South Dakota, shared how she and her students use iGoogle.  She began with iGoogle start page, her beginning point on the internet. She’s added her bookmarks, Google Calendar, and her Google Docs just to name a few. Everything that she [...]

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