Scot Graden's Blog

This is an interesting video from Alan November.  Several staff and I were fortunate to hear him speak this past year at the MACUL Conference in Detroit.  He brings an interesting perspective, focused on student centered learning that embraces technology.  One of the aspects I like about his perspective is that he acknowledges that simply using technology in education is not going to improve results – we need to think critically about how we use it.  The video is about 13 minutes long – please post your thoughts in the comment section.

Click here to view the video.

If you have not had a chance yet – I encourage you to read the Thomas Friedman Op-Ed piece in the New York Times today.  He argues that for the American economy to truly turn around, we need to “build” a well-educated population.  While I may be a bit biased, I could not agree more.

States like Michigan and communities like Saline must invest in education and hold high standards for achievement.  This means ALL students are prepared for an increasingly complex society with a focus on lifelong learning.

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Jack Bidlack, the Director of “The B Side” at Eastern Michigan University.  For those of you who have not heard of it – and I assume that is true for the vast majority of the people who read this blog – it is a program that connects young entrepreneurs to the business skills, local mentors, and donors necessary to turn ideas into successful small businesses.

I liked what I heard about the program.  For example, the program is totally voluntary.  The students, not the parents, make the contact.  If a participant doesn’t come, fine… they are out of the program after a few misses.  The idea is that for entrepreneurs to be successful, they need to be driven – so if you can’t seem to make it to training that often – the program is likely not for you anyway.  Another key aspect that I saw was the reality it provided through the mini-grant process.  Students who develop a business plan can actually get a micro-loan up to $2,500.

Last year we had one Saline High School student participate.  I would love to see that grow – click here to download the application or email Mr. Bidlac at jbidlac1@emich.edu.

Some of you may have heard the term Project-based learning over the last few years and wondered what exactly does it mean?  Project-based learning is defined as a comprehensive instructional approach to engage students in sustained, cooperative investigation.

The project starts with a driving question or problem that serves to organize and drive activities, which taken as a whole, amount to a meaningful project. Within this framework students collaborate, working together as a team, to pursue the solution to a problem or an answer to a question. This is a student-centered approach that allows each student to build his or her own body of knowledge.

Typically, students pursue solutions to nontrivial problems by:

* Asking and refining questions
* Debating ideas
* Making predictions
* Designing plans and/or experiments
* Collecting and analyzing data
* Drawing conclusions
* Communicating their ideas and findings to others
* Asking new questions
* Creating artifacts

Recently, we posted a quick article about a project that Mr. Sartori coordinated for his Problems in Technology class. This is an example of a project-based learning environment in Saline High School.  Our staff has become more tech savvy and more cognizant of the ways technology best helps instruction.  As we march steadily into the 21st century, our ability to embrace technology and project-based learning will be key.

Yesterday, along with our High School and Middle School faculty, I had the opportunity to listen to presentation from Dr. Punya Mishra, the Director of the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. Dr. Mishra discussed a variety of topics related to embracing technology as a tool to engage 21st Century learners and provided a framework for us to consider as it relates to the skills needed for teachers today.  He calls this framework TPACK, which stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge – as he stated…. they “bought a vowel” to get the A in there…

Effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter requires developing sensitivity to the dynamic, transactional relationship between all three components. A teacher capable of negotiating these relationships represents a form of expertise different from, and greater than, the knowledge of a disciplinary expert (say a mathematician or a historian), a technology expert (a computer scientist) and a pedagogical expert (an experienced educator).

In more basic terms, the master teacher of tomorrow must possess not only a deep understanding of their subject area and strong teaching strategies, but also high level of technological proficiency.  It was a nice presentation to lead into summer – we were able to frame our own areas of strength and the areas we need to work on within the TPACK model.

According to noted creativity expert Peter Facione, “Creative or innovative thinking is the kind of thinking that leads to new insights, novel approaches, fresh perspectives, whole new ways of understanding and conceiving of things”.

But…. how do you teach creativity?

Thankfully, we have programs where students can experience opportunities to explore their creative side.  One of the places where students are encouraged to think creatively is in visual arts classes.  Here in Saline we are blessed with talented & eager art students, excellent visual arts teachers, and wonderful facilities. I know there is a strong societal push to focus on academic content.  However, I would like to suggest that families consider the role of visual arts in the 21st Century.  In a recent book called Studio Thinking, authors Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner studied five visual arts classrooms in the Boston area.  They found that, “While students in art classes learn techniques specific to art, such as how to draw, how to mix paint, or how to center a pot, they’re also taught a remarkable array of mental habits not emphasized elsewhere in schools.”

These habits include envisioning, innovating, observing and reflecting.  For those of you have been reading this blog, you know these are the skills that can help our students excel in the workplace of the 21st Century.  For parents, as you look over your child’s schedule – don’t forget to consider opportunities to develop the whole child.

As I think about my summer reading list – I want to be inspired.  For example, Michael Port’s book The Think Big Manifesto sounds pretty good.  Here is a quote:

The time has come. We cannot wait anymore. For years, we have hidden behind our own small thoughts or let ourselves be held back by other small thinking people who don’t believe in us. Worse still, we have been rejected as marginal, unrealistic, dreamers, idealists, maybe even delusional. Family, friends, colleagues, and others (not to mention our own selves) have tried to negate us, eliminate us, and silence us. We will not stand for it anymore. We say – bring it on. Our personal revolution from small thinking to big thinking is now. We will make public our aim to think big about our goals, our intentions, and, yes, our dreams.

There’s more. We will collaborate, cooperate, and join forces with other big thinkers to bring about the larger revolution our society needs if it is to survive.

You want to think big. I want to think big. Together, we will think even bigger. [The Think Big Manifesto, p. 34]

Any other “must read” books you think I should check out this summer?

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend and present at the Foundation for Saline Area Schools retreat.  The session kicked off with Bill Lavery providing a history of the organization.  The Foundation started in the late 80’s in response to the increasing needs of the district to maintain a high quality education for all students.  Some of their initial goals included development of teacher grants, establishing an endowment and training the community that financially supporting their district was a noble purpose.

Next, Michelle Lange from Silvertree Marketing shared the results of her study to establish benchmarks for K-12 Foundations. She  has determined what were “best practices” in education foundations.   Her study found that communication – frequent and using various methods – was the main key to success.  She noted that in the area of communication, a Foundation must be able to connect with their supporters and create awareness of their mission.  In addition, she noted the need to tap alumni for support and to focus funding efforts on high impact initiatives.

Lisa Slawson, our board president, and I wrapped up the presentations with a discussion that centered around our efforts to establish Saline Area Schools as a leader in preparing our students for the 21st Century.  We discussed our limitations (mostly funding) and our strengths (students, staff and community).  It was exciting to get feedback from the members of the foundation on their impressions of how students learn today.

The group discussed the impact that access to information has had on public education.  The above picture illustrates where many of our students are spending a great deal of time…. are they learning there too?  It was a lively discussion that ended with a shared understanding that there is a great deal of work ahead for the district and there are ways the foundation can support that work.

We all agreed that our students deserve the best education possible.  With the Foundation for Saline Area Schools as a partner – I know we can meet that goal.

Many of you are aware that we have some of the finest facilities in the Midwest.  This includes the athletic facilities on our High School campus.  Over our 5 years at the new campus, many have asked about adding a scoreboard at the north end of the stadium to complement the one on the south end and provide for easier viewing. This has always been an excellent idea and an improvement we wanted to address – but funding was an issue.

Well, it will be here soon.  We are working with a company that provides and installs a scoreboard for free.  In return, they seek support of local business to purchase advertisements to offset the cost of project.  I am pleased to report that many local companies have supported this project (Thank You!) and the board is beginning to be installed.  It will be operational for our fall sports.

I apologize that the last couple months I have not been posting much here on this blog.  I have been able to continue to post information (much of which is provided to me) on the News and Notes blog, but I have not made the time to post here.  I will work to make June a better month for posting information about what is happening here at Saline Area Schools.

As always, I encourage you to comment on posts both here and my two other blogs – News and Notes & the Budget Blog.  In addition, I am always interested in topics you would be interested in seeing here in the blog.

Don’t forget to follow Saline Area Schools on Twitter.