"As immediacy moves from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have, from a distant frequency of leadership to a core dimension, the leader doesn’t have to know everything about it or even how to leverage it him or herself . . . but knowing that it is possible, and knowing how to ask questions around it or promote it – or pay for it – is a necessary instinct."
Steve recently published the interview we did with Shane Snow and Joe Lazauskas, the authors of The Storytelling Edge. When I first read the book I took lots of notes and I like to return to them from time to time. I also took notes during our interview. Explain Everything now has a Slack Files integration. This makes it easy to pull together various attachments that might be a in channel or private message group on a shared canvas. This can be especially helpful when needing to explain a report or give feedback on a design or just see the bigger picture which is not always easy in a linear, vertical chat. Combine this with the Explain Everything Slack App and you can really extend your communication, productivity, and collaboration across distance and time. Tomorrow evening, we'll be sharing and celebrating the work of students in my class, Managing Educational Technology resources, with each other and with guests from the area. Instead of assigning a typical paper or, worse, giving a final exam, we chose to spend the last few weeks of class synthesizing and working towards some meaningful application of what was learned and experienced during the entire semester. Below are some of the ideas that will be shared:
Learning Space Design A poorly designed physical school space hinders learning and communication of school’s brand. Based on research, a school’s physical space should stimulate learning, aid creativity, and reduce distraction. Besides being a supporting system for education, a school’s environment should also reflect its values. Our challenge is to redesign [a new school's] physical space based on its current learning space design problems. “Virtual Empathy - Real Solutions” It is a challenge to “teach” empathy and interpersonal skills, due to difficulties in delivering authentic social interactions in traditional secondary education classroom settings. How might we overcome the challenges in delivering opportunities for authentic social interactions, therefore allowing students to “practice” these skills? (i.e. interpersonal skills, social cues, empathy). We propose that virtual reality programs may be utilized to provide real-to-life opportunities to practice and develop these skills. TC Course Enrollment So many students are struggling every year to enroll in courses in CMLTD and some students also fail to register their favorite courses because of unfamiliarity. This website aims at providing information on courses, professors (including labs and centers they are leading), and program requirements for CMLTD students. matchEd matchEd is an online platform that connects education students with in-service teachers and helps facilitate observations, student-teaching, and feedback. Makeurspace Equipment and project outcomes can cause sensory and auditory distress. How might we adapt current Makerspaces so that they cater to a larger population of students with auditory and sensory processing challenges? Mobile Innovation Lab Mobile Innovation Lab is a traveling learning space that provides enriching 21st-century STEM learning experiences in a dynamic and interactive environment to underserved Native American students. "Increasingly, many of us live and work like this: utterly connected and increasingly fluid as a result. But we do not often slow down to describe how we work like this . . . or to tease out the implications.
If you are focused on certain outcomes, you can leverage the immediacy available to you as you travel, as you work in your office or home, and even as you play. Producing genuine, original product – of thought, of thinking, in writing, on stage, in classrooms – basically requires such a shift. In our increasingly networked world, interruptions in momentum, or a failure of context to generate the right resources at the right time, erode excellence. Immediacy, properly channeled, heightens it." To quote our most recent newsletter:
Like a movie’s opening weekend box office, a book’s launch window is critical to its success. If we can circulate enough books into the intellectual bloodstream, our ideas have a chance of spreading and making a difference. Here are some ways you can help:
Thanks for considering some of the above. Ideally, you will choose something that will benefit you or the people around you. The point here is to add some value and hopefully some delight to the world. As a gift for reading this message, here’s a snapshot of one of the key parts of the book: a thinking tool that ties together authenticity, immediacy, and delight. Sometimes a document that is going to be used for an activity or a reflection can use additional guidance which is not easy to put in written words. And sometimes, those written words are hard to follow at least the first time that they are presented. To address this, you can easily create a short whiteboard video of you showing and telling about the document and share it with the intended audience before, during, or after the related session or instructional delivery.
Steve and I had the privilege to be guests on Kelly Croy's Wired Educator Podcast, Episode 128.
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