Friday 4 – TABS tidbits

TABS Tidbits – November 29- December 1

I am currently on the way back from the TABS ( The Association of Boarding Schools) conference in Washington DC and thought it would be a good idea to share some of the wonderful things I came across during the conference for this week’s Friday 4. As with most conferences that I have attended over the years, the most valuable part is the networking and sharing of ideas that occurs in-between sessions and “after hours.” The chance to connect with new colleague or rekindle relationships with former students who are now colleagues is one of the best reasons to attend a conference. Regardless of how much of a pain in the neck it is to coordinate leaving school for a few days, the benefits always make it worth my time.

One of the highlights for me has certainly been the chance to reconnect with a former student of mine Hollis Brooks (@HollisBrooks) who is now the Dean of Students at the Hillside School (@Hillsideschool1). Hollis works with a former LC graduate Dan Marchetti (@MarchettiDan) who is currently the Assistant Headmaster at the Hillside School. The three of us spent many hours the past few days reminiscing about the past and talking about the work we currently do with young people and how important that work is. I cannot fully explain how inspiring and encouraging it is to talk with former students who share my passion for education. My conversations alone with them have made the 8 hour bus ride from Hartford to DC worth the time away from my work at LC.

So, what tidbits have I gleaned these past few days? Here are a few of the highlights from the conference.

  • Friday’s keynote speaker was Erik Wahl (@erikwahl) the “Picasso of Productivity” who is a nationally recognized artist, author and entrepreneur who inspires innovation and professional creativity through his original on-stage painting performances. Erik’s talk was in a word – AWESOME. You can check out a video about his talk here. His message is a good one for anybody who works with young people.
  • I attended several sessions on iPad programs at various schools and was quite impressed with what the South Kent School has done. You can check out what they are doing with respect to iPads and digital textbooks here.
  • I had a conversation with a fellow presenter Hans Mundahl (@hmundahl) from The New Hampton School about how we could continue the many great discussions that were occurring at the conference throughout the school year. We decided to try and hold a twitter chat on Wednesday evenings for anybody in the TABS “world” who wanted to continue to share ideas and thoughts about topics related to boarding school life. We are going to hold our first chat this coming Wednesday (12/5) at 8 PM ET. We will use the hashtag #TABSchat and would like to encourage anybody who is interested to participate. If you have a topic you would like to see discussed, you can submit it here. For those of you who are not Twitter users, you can still follow the conversation by going to tweetchat.com and entering the #TABSchat hashtag into the search field. A perfect opportunity for some free PD!
  • This last item did not actually come from TABS but it did cross my Twitter stream while I was there and resonated with me given the number of times I heard “21st Century skills” mentioned in sessions. This is a piece from Tim Quinn (@TimothyQuinn6) on group work and collaboration that appeared in the Kappan Magazine.
I hope you enjoy this week’s Friday 4 and that you will join me and others on Wednesday @ 8 PM for the #TABSchat.

 

Friday Four 1/20

 

 Friday Four, Jan 20, 2012

For those of you who may have missed last week’s Friday Four, I apologize. I was in the middle of a 12 day bout with a fever and was off the grid for a few days. I contemplated posting a mid-week Friday Four, but decided that I would would wait until Friday to get back on the horse. So, here are a few items I have run across that you might find interesting/intriguing. Enjoy!

  1. This week, Apple announced its release of iBooks 2 and a textbooks section of the store where you can purchase entire digital textbooks for $14.99. They already have a few of the major publishers on board and are looking to add others. I downloaded the biology book and have started playing with it; it is pretty cool. Who knows whether this will take off or not and be a game changer, but I would love to see the ability to have all of my textbooks on my iPad for a FRACTION of the cost of traditional textbooks. Here is an article about the release from the Washington Post. A quick search will pull up plenty of commentary on the announcement.
  2. Continuing the Apple/iPad theme, here is a blog post from one of the techie types I follow with his recommendation for the very first app you should download if you are a new iPad owner/user.
  3. Here is a great series of programs that appeared on American Radio Works that addressed the issue of lectures and how incredibly inefficient and pedagogically bad they are. While the addresses deal with the college level, the issues are certainly germane to the high school level. Worth a listen.
  4. Here is a link to part 1 of a series of blog posts by Grant Wiggins on the concept of “transfer” and how we can do a better job of helping students be able to transfer knowledge and skills better. This has been a part of many of the conversations we have been having recently about homework so I though it might be of interest to a few of you.
Bonus: Jan 30 is World Flipped Class Open House day. A colleague and I will be opening up our classroom for visitors and welcome anybody who would like to come by and see what we are doing.