Leading the way
Greetings, friends. It’s the second Friday of 2023. I hope you’re off to a great year. It’s also Friday the 13th, so be careful out there and watch out for hockey masks…
Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week, focusing on the theme of leadership:
10 Cool Things Worth Sharing
Monday here in the US, we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. Here are 4 lessons from his leadership that apply in every organization I can think of but doubly so in education.
If there was ever a time for leadership amidst whirlwinds of change in the world of education, it’s now. AI isn’t going away, and the applications using it will only increase in number. Heck, Microsoft is exploring integrating ChatGPT into Word & Outlook. So, do we stick our heads in the sand and block tools like ChatGPT (I’m looking at you, NYC schools), or do we step up and act like leaders and find ways to use these tools?
Yes, what we do in the classroom will need to change. But most of us already knew that. It’s time to lead that change. John Spencer has an interesting take in his post In a World of AI, Our Students Need Project-Based Learning
Speaking of things changing in the classroom, we’re still dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly three years on. During the times of emergency remote learning, many questions were raised about why we did the things we did in schools pre-COVID, and we didn’t have many good answers.
Things aren’t the same in many industries since 2020. The question is: what are we going to do about it? Here are some thoughts from Arnold Kling on The Great Re-Evaluation
My primary job focus is providing ongoing professional development to educators, whether they be classroom teachers, assistants, paraeducators, administrators, etc. And I do focus on technology integration.
However, I have a new lens to look through as I prepare PD sessions:
All Instructional leaders, if they are to be successful as EDTECH leaders, need to:
Understand the tools that are already available to them in their district or on their campus.
Understand how the tools can be used inside of existing curricula
Understand what prevents teachers from using edtech
Understand what successful edtech integration looks like at your campus
More thoughts on leading conversations around AI in education, “What If We Create a Culture of Transparent Assessment (AI & AI)”
I’ve been blogging for a long time now. The process of getting thoughts out of my head and on “paper” has absolutely been responsible for much of the success in my professional career. It feels like we are seeing a return to more reflective blogging, especially in the education space.
It’s no secret that leaders are readers, but I believe they are also writers. What form that writing takes, whether you share it publicly or keep it private in a journal, is irrelevant. It’s the process that matters. The reflection, the shaping of thoughts to bring clarity. That’s the good stuff. Clive Thompson (whose work you really should read) talks about how blogging changes the way you think.
For funsies (because we all like lists and the ranking of things), here is the 2023 Edu-Scholar rankings from EducationNext. Many of these names are likely familiar to you, but you may find some new follows.
Leadership books - I plan on re-reading Leadership for Deeper Learning (written by some friends of mine) during Q1 of this year. Also on my TBR list this year is Taylor Branch’s “America in the King Years” trilogy (a three-volume history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement) that has been on my list for some time and finally picked up over the holidays.
RIP Jeff Beck. A leader in music for decades.
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With 50 to the left and 50 to the right, he didn’t think it too many…
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