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These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things


Chance are slim to none that you’ve been reading this blog as long as I’ve been writing it (though I’d love to be proven wrong!).  With that in mind, I thought I’d kick off October with some reruns a look back at some of my personal favorite posts from the past four-plus years I’ve been at this.

Also, welcome to any new folks who are just discovering some new blogs for the new school year.  I hope you stick around and share your thoughts in the comments!

Schools: Your Friendly Neighborhood ISP? (Aug 2007)

If we are going to commit to instructing not only students, but administrators and parents, too (as folks have suggested elsewhere in the edublogosphere recently), should schools commit to providing community Internet access and education, especially in communities where folks may not even own computers?

Individual Accountability in Group Work (Jan 2008)

It’s not perfect, but it’s by far the most objective, data-driven approach to grading participation I’ve ever taken. I can’t take full credit for this, as I distinctly remember getting the basis for this from someone in the Twitterverse (sorry, can’t remember who), but I did flesh it out to suit my needs.

Open Letter to a New Teacher (Jun 2009)

It turns out that an aspiring teacher came across my resume via Google and decided to call me to ask for some advice on resources she could look to in order to prepare for her first year of teaching.

Leadership Day 2009 (Jul 2009)

Whenever I have spoken about these experiences, formally or informally, I make it a point to credit Mr. X as integral to whatever degree of success my students experienced via these projects, not because he had any hand in implementing them with me, but because he did four things that I think any supervisor would do well to emulate:

Does Gender Matter? (Aug 2009)

My wife was the first to point out the gender differences in the administrative teams, and I’m wondering if she’s on to something.  This piece from Inside Higher Ed (May 2007) posits that the differences between male and female leadership styles in education are becoming less pronounced (based on a study of community college administrators), but I wonder if that can be generalized to the K-12 sector.

Text Messaging and Executive Functioning (Mar 2010)

While I’ve been utilizing SMS & email reminder systems in my personal & professional lives for years now, I’m certainly not the only one. In fact, multiple studies have shown SMS reminders to have mostly high (but admittedly varying) degrees of efficacy in increasing desired behaviors, including:

  • adherence to medical treatment schedules (Jacobson & Szilagyi, 2005; Kollmann, Riedl, Kastner, Schreier, & Ludvik, 2007; Liu, Abba, Alejandria, Balanag, Berba, & Lansang, 2008; Strandbygaard, Thomsen, & Backer, 2009;  Hanauer, Wentzell, Laffell, & Laffel, 2009)
  • attendance at doctor & specialist appointments (Downer, Meara, Da Costa, & Sethuraman, 2006; Koshy, Car, & Majeed, 2008; Chen, Fang, Chen, Dai, 2008; Foley & O’Neill, 2009; Kruse, Hansen, & Olesen, 2009)
  • participation in exercise regiments (Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2009; Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2010)

If none of these do it for you, please feel free to peruse the category of blog posts I have labeled Damian’s Favorites.  I’ve found this is a good way to keep an easily-accessed portfolio of what I feel is my best stuff, and if you blog, I encourage you to do the same as well!

Posted 01 October 2011 † damian § Fun Stuff § Portfolio § Reflection ‡ Comments (2) °

Blogging the Habits of Mind


This past spring, I ran a workshop at the same conference at which Heidi Hayes Jacobs gave the keynote.  As part of my presenter’s “swag bag”, I received a copy of Dr. Jacobs’ Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, a collection of essays about teaching and learning in the 21st century.

One essay by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick, “It Takes Some Getting Used To: Rethinking Curriculum for the 21st Century”, references 16 “Habits of Mind” that the authors believe are “dispositions or attitudes that reflect the necessary skillful behaviors that students will need to practice as they become more thoughtful in their learning and in their lives… [they] are necessary for success in school, work, and life” (Costa & Kallick, 2000, 2009, as cited in Costa & Kallick, 2010, p. 212).

I’m all for success in school, work, and life – particularly my own – so I thought it might be fun to blog about my own learning, both at my new job and in my new doctoral program, within this framework (see, this is what passes for fun when you get old).  I plan to do this periodically between Sept-Oct 2011 and June 2012, so stay tuned.

Here is the list of Costa & Kallick’s 16 Habits of Mind:

  1. Persisting: Stick to it!  Persevering in a task through to completion; remaining focused.
  2. Managing impulsivity: Take your time!  Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful, and deliberative.
  3. Listening with understanding and empathy:  Understand others!  Devoting mental energy to another person’s thoughts and ideas; holding in abeyance one’s own thoughts in order to perceive another’s point of view and emotions.
  4. Thinking flexibly: Look at it another way!  Being able to change perspectives, generate alternatives, consider options.
  5. Thinking about your thinking (metacognition): Know your knowing!  Being aware of one’s own thoughts, strategies, feelings, and actions and their effects on others.
  6. Striving for accuracy and precision: Check it again!  A desire for exactness, fidelity, craftsmanship, and truthfulness.
  7. Questioning and problem posing: How do you know?  Having a questioning attitude; knowing what data are needed and developing questioning strategies to generate information.
  8. Applying past knowledge to novel situations: Use what you learn!  Accessing prior knowledge; transferring knowledge beyond the situation in which it was learned.
  9. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision: Be clear!  Striving for accurate communication in both written and oral form; avoiding overgeneralizations, distortions, and deletions.
  10. Gathering data through all senses: Use your natural pathways!  Gathering data through all the sensory pathways – gustatory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual.
  11. Creating, imagining, and innovating: Try a different way!  Generating new and novel ideas, fluency, originality.
  12. Responding with wonderment and awe: Have fun figuring it out!  Finding the world awesome and mysterious, and being intrigued with phenomena and beauty.
  13. Taking responsible risks: Venture out!  Being adventuresome; living on the edge of one’s competence.
  14. Finding humor: Laugh a little!  Finding the whimsical, incongruous, and unexpected.  Being able to laugh at oneself.
  15. Thinking interdependently: Work together!  Being able to work with and learn from others in reciprocal situations.
  16. Remaining open to continuous learning: Learn from experiences!  Having humility and pride when admitting we don’t know; resisting complacency.
(Costa & Kallick, 2010, pp. 212-213)

What do you think of this list?  Are there any glaring omissions?  Anything you would add?  Any ideas you feel need emphasis over others?

 

Reference

Costa, A.L. & Kallick, B.  (2010).   It takes some getting used to: rethinking curriculum for the 21st century.  In H. H. Jacobs (Ed.), Curriculum 21: essential education for a changing world (pp. 210-226).  Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Posted 14 September 2011 † damian § Habits of Mind § Reflection ‡ Comments (2) °

Get Your #Chat On


It was a little over a year ago when I wrote about the weekly Twitter-based chat on special ed issues founded by Deven Black and originally moderated by me, #spedchat.

While I can take or leave the real-time chat format on Twitter (it can be maddeningly difficult to keep up with if too many people are on at once, and the 140 character limit is, well… limiting), I’ve found that hashtags are a great way to toss resources or questions out into the ether and ensure that interested parties (i.e., the people who regularly search for the hashtag) will see them.  It becomes a public archive of both discussion and links to resources, and I find that use of hashtags more valuable than the live chat in many cases.

With that in mind, I’ve started following two more education-based Twitter chats I thought I’d share with you:

  • #psychat: Moderated by high school Social Studies teacher @mrpotter, this chat focuses on issues pertinent to teaching psychology.  While I no longer teach (high school, anyway), I hope to be able to contribute from my current perspective as a school psych.  Live chat takes place Wednesdays from 8-9pm Eastern.
  • #1stchat: Moderated by @CYarzy, this chat is primarily for teachers of first grade (see their archival wiki here).  I don’t work with students this young, but I am following the chat because I’ve got a slightly more personal stake in it: my son started first grade earlier this week!  Live chat takes place Sundays from 8-9pm Eastern.  (And yes, there’s also a #2ndchat, #3rdchat, #4thchat… I stopped searching after #7thchat).

Of course, the #spedchat live chat continues to run Tuesdays from 8:30-9:30pm Eastern.  The torch has been passed to the next generation of moderators & organizers, and judging by the enthusiasm and participation of recent chats, they’re doing a fantastic job.

For more education-related hashtag chats on Twitter, see this Google Calendar by Sarah Kaiser.

Posted 01 September 2011 † damian § Social Network § Twitter § Web 2.0 ‡ Comments (0) °

Online Learning: My Pre-Test


I recently took an online professional development course offered by the Massachussetts School Psychologists Association entitled Ethics 102: The Ethical Practitioner.  It provided me with ten hours of NASP-approved PD, plus helped me satisfy my National Certification in School Psychology requirement of three hours of ethics training per three-year renewal cycle (my new cycle just started at the end of July).

Beyond the immediate benefits, however, I thought it would be a good “dry run” of online learning for me, as my upcoming doctoral program is a hybrid online/F2F format.  Having been through graduate school once before, I’m familiar with the F2F part, but I’m curious as to what the online part will look like.  With my first online learning experience now behind me, I thought I’d write down some of my initial reflections on the process.  Please note that what follows is not a critique or endorsement of the content of this program, but rather the online format.

Benefits

My biggest takeaway from this experience was how much I liked setting my own pace and focus.  This course covered a broad array of topics under the “ethics” umbrella, and as I expected, I was more knowledgeable in some areas than others.  The fact that this course was available online meant that I didn’t have to sit in a lecture hall or hotel conference room and be spoken to (or worse, read a PowerPoint).  I was able to wear what was comfortable and sit where I wanted (I completed most of this course horizontal on my living room sofa).  I was able to skim over some parts, and spend more time focusing on others, both in reading more closely and in utilizing external resources to learn more.  While the course provides the same content for anyone who takes it, the asynchronous nature of the delivery allows for greater differentiation than the standard lecture hall setting.

Limitations

That said, I acknowledge that reading text is far and away my preferred method of receiving information.  I’d sooner sit and read than watch a video or listen to a recording, at least for academic purposes.  As such, this particular course was right up my alley (about 200 pages or so of reading), but I can see how folks with preferences for audio or video might find this format limiting or off-putting.  Also, while the course did allow for self-reflection with some case study-style exercises, the drawback to self-study is that you’ve only got yourself to work with.  Here is where having someone else in the room to bounce ideas off of or discuss options with would come in handy.

Final Thoughts

As part of the course evaluation, I left this comment for the folks at MSPA:

I would be very likely to take another online-only course for NASP-approved hours.  I am not always able to attend NASP-approved events in my area due to my own professional and personal scheduling constraints, and I applaud the MSPA and NASP for promoting online learning opportunities for their members.  I wish more state associations would follow suit.

My own state school psychologists association usually has two conferences a year, but I have only been able to attend one or two in the last six due to demands at work.  The national association convention is in a different city every year, and long-distance travel hasn’t been in my budget for some time (although I do hope to attend the 2012 NASP Convention right here in Philadelphia!).  That leaves me very few options for obtaining those necessary NASP-approved hours, but this course really fit the bill.

Although doctoral study will obviously be much more in-depth than a single PD course, I thought the experience would be a nice teaser of what’s to come.  I’m happy to say that I enjoyed my first major formal online learning experience, and I’m looking forward even more to starting the hybrid online/F2F format in a few weeks.

Posted 19 August 2011 † damian § Professional Development § Reflection § School Psychology ‡ Comments (2) °

Research Opportunity: Writing and AAC


Normally unsolicited emails about products, guest posts, or “special opportunities” get deleted with barely a cursory skim, but I received one recently that I felt warranted a closer look, and eventually a blog post (guess there’s a first time for everything).

Samuel Sennott is a doctoral student at Penn State and the co-creator of the Proloquo2Go app for iOS.  I have seen firsthand how nonverbal students can use this software to communicate, and I can’t overstate how phenomenal an impact it has made on their confidence and independence, let alone their communication skills.

Although Sennott is no longer with Proloquo2Go, he is continuing his work in the field of AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) with a research study focusing on the writing experience for middle school students who use AAC.

Further details (including how students and teachers can participate in the study) can be found on Sennott’s blog.

 

Posted 08 August 2011 † damian § Doctoral Studies § Language § Research ‡ Comments (0) °