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Innovators Unite: Closing Day at #SXSWEDU
“When we go to conferences like this one, we load up on ideas that are going to get us to progress. We have our little tote bag – we’re going to fill it up with ideas. We hear about a new strategy…a new tech tool…we hear about all these great programs other people are doing…
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Amplifiers Create a New Story: Day 3 at #SXSWEDU
…I may ramble in this post. It’s 1am. I’m tired! Have a head cold. But wanted to share my learnings… 🤪🤪 Do I really have to go home tomorrow? It’s going to be hard to walk away from the synergy of woke educators at this conference, but I know that I have much work to
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Connectors Connect: Day 2 at #SXSWEDU
Next time I decide to stay up and blog at 1am, I hope I remember how tired I am today and force myself to go to sleep! Seriously… what was I thinking?!? Today’s SXSWEDU experience was truly about connections. Yes, I attended some sessions, but a lot of the thought-provoking ideas came from conversations. Here’s
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My Community of Weavers: Day 1 at #SXSWEDU
David Brooks, Executive Director of the Aspen Project, kicked off SXSWEDU with a call to all educators to build a community of weavers, and not rippers. According to the program guide, Weave: The Social Fabric Project, operates with the premise that social fragmentation is the central problem of our time—isolation, alienation and division. Weave seeks
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The Overachievers and the Unengaged
The overwhelming majority of students today want learning to be active, not passive. They want to be challenged to think and to solve problems that do not have easy solutions. They want to know why they are being asked to learn something. They want learning to be an end in itself – rather than a
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Change Isn’t Glittery
When working on cultural shifts, it can be easy to get frustrated when change doesn’t come fast enough, bold enough, or loud enough. We want glitter and ticker tape parades to reassure us that we’re doing the right work. That we’re on the right path. But that’s not how change works – especially not when
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Embrace Your Inefficiency
Total efficiency constrains us. We become super invested in maintaining the status quo because that is where we excel. Innovation is a threat. Change is terrifying. Being perfect at something is dangerous if it’s the only thing you can do. “Getting Ahead by Being Inefficient” I stumbled across this interesting article today called “Getting Ahead
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Learn from Failure
One of the books I received from the Next Big Idea Book Club was Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive by Bradley R Staats. Reading it was more of an affirmation than a “ooh, I didn’t know that.” What I appreciated about Staats book was the reasoning he gave for the ideas
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There’s a Fly in My Soup!
How many times have you found yourself trying over and over again to explain a problem, only to have the other person jump to solutions without quite hearing you? Reminds me of this Sesame Street routine. What I love about Design Thinking is that the focus on empathy requires the designer to truly listen, observe,
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It’s All About the Soft Skills
Read an article today called, “Teens Rate Soft Skills More Vital Than Hard Skills.” The author, Dian Schaffhauser, opened by discussing how teens incorrectly rate the soft skills of self-confidence, communication, leadership and teamwork as more critical than hard skills: Could we be over-promoting the importance of soft skills to young people at the expense
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Book Read: Design for Strengths
“‘You can have all the right answers, but it doesn’t matter if you are answering the wrong question.’ The willingness to circle back and challenge the central question and continue to ask it in a better way – and potentially abandon the current exploration – that is the hallmark of Design Thinking.” – John K.
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Exploring Agency & Personalization
For the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside our county office’s Assessment, Accountability, and Evaluation Unit, as well as some of our teachers, to better understand the principles of agency and personalization. As these are key elements of our district’s vision and mission, it is important to be able to articulate
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Laura K Spencer, Ed.D. 