Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Because we are so limited by time constraints at my school, I decided to invite teachers to "conversations" every Thursday and Friday during lunch.
I envisioned a time to discuss broad topics such as: how do we learn? what role does technology play? what can we do to prepare our students for the future?
Thursday’s group seemed to go well. Because the network was down, I couldn’t show the video I wanted. Instead, we chatted about middle-schoolers who can’t seem to focus for more than 5 minutes. On Friday, I had prepared an article and the network was back up, so I wanted to show the video, too. Instead of leading into the discussion, I tried to force a discussion about the article,which no one had had time to read. And then, I played the vid (Michael Wesch’s latest). With barely 3 minutes, left, I tried to get feedback.
Arrrgghhh. Why do I feel the need to control? I want this to be a relaxing time, a few moments in the day for teachers to just talk, share ideas, learn something new.
Thanks to my friend Jennifer, who reminded me of my original intent for the group, I realized what had happened.
We’ll start again next week.

I learn so much from the blogs I read. One of my favorites is written by Jennifer Dorman. She posts regularly about teaching and technology, and she finds the best links to research. This morning I found myself reading about the brain and then discovering all kinds of teaching resources here. Go visit and spend some time at New York’s PBS website. Please.

Chris Lehmann, principal of the Science Leadership Academy, writes about Understanding By Design. See what he has to say about "covering" and "uncovering" the material.

"Americans recognize the importance of technology
in reforming the nation’s schools and making them relevant for the 21st
century, a new survey suggests–but they disagree on how schools should
impart key 21st-century skills to their students."

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryRSS.cfm?ArticleID=7268

Chris Lehman, a principal of the Science Leadership Academy, responded on his blog  Practical Theory  to some thoughts on another blog, and I thought they were worth repeating here:

But there also has to be a recognition that the stuff that was going on
in 1996 and 1997 was small and grew far too slowly. We are now seeing a
revolution because the ideas are spreading so much more quickly. Does
that discount what has come before? No, absolutely not, but it doesn’t
change the power of now. After all, Marx was nowhere without the ideas
of Hegel, right?

In the end, I do worry about the hype-factor with a lot of these
tools… and that’s why I do think it is incredibly important to keep
asking "What’s good" instead of "What’s new?" It’s also why it’s so
important to talk in terms of what we want to do, rather than the tools
we want to use. Steve Dembo talked about this recently in his post: Shiny Happy Tools when he wrote:

So what does this mean for educators? Simply this: Don’t
get married to the tools in your toolbox. A hammer is a hammer is a
hammer. So what if you really like the steel one with the yellow
handle? At some point that one might disappear and you better be ready
to pick up a new one. Need to cut a board but can’t find a saw? Time to
get creative my friend. If you are willing to concentrate on what your
actual needs are, you’ll find plenty of tools at hand for about every
project.

We have incredible tools at our disposal. They are fun to use, but what
we need to now do is start asking ourselves the harder question —
"What is that we want our students to do and be and what are the tools
— Web 2.0 and traditional — that we need to help our students achieve
their and our goals?"
And if you still have time, go visit the original blog–David Warlick’s–for an interesting discussion about what Web 2.0 means to all of us and if the label really matters.