Friday 4 – April 12

First, I must apologize for not posting a Friday 4 last week. The week was a busy one with Admission revisit days, several interviews of teaching candidates and the first week of the JV baseball season. By the time I even contemplated crafting a Friday 4, it was Saturday morning and I was still facing a 2 hour bus ride to our first game of the season. I have been archiving a bunch of interesting articles, blog posts and such to include in Friday 4 posts, so here are a few of the ones that I have saved in my Diigo folder. (If you do not know what Diigo is, you should definitely check it out here.)

• Lorri Carrol (@lcarroll94) is a fellow independent school teacher at The Hamden Hall School who moderates the weekly #isedchat on Twitter. She shared some thoughts and reflections from the the recent NAIS conference on her blog. An intersting read if you want to get a sense for what other educators are talking about these days.
• Peter Gow (@pgow) has recently started blogging on the Education Week website about issues specific to independent schools and has “penned” several thought provoking pieces. He recently wrote about Professional Development and Defining the Public Purpose of Independent Schools that I found thought provoking.
• Grant Lichtman (@GrantLichtman) wrote a blog post recently about his foray into the world of Twitter and how incredibly powerful and valuable he has found the medium to be for free professional development.

As a side note, you have probably noticed that most of the pieces I include in the Friday 4 include the twitter handle, ex. @smacclintic, for the author. The fact is that many of the pieces I run across or conversations I have about the various topics occur over twitter. I have found twitter to be the single best professional development resource out there. In the stroke of a few keys, you can connect with like-minded educators from around the globe, engage in meaningful conversations and share resources and ideas with some of the best educators around. Not sure how to get started? Try this link as a starting point.

• A colleague recently passed along this link to a recent Ted talk by Dan Ariely titled “What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work” that is worth 20 minutes of your time. While the talk is about what motivates us at work, the insights are directly transferrable to teaching and learning.
• Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) asked his blog readers the following question “What makes sports practice satisfying and how is sports practice different from math practice?” after hearing Sal Khan answer the same question in an interview. For anybody who teaches and/or coaches, the answer to this question can lead to some interesting discussions and comparisons. How would you answer the question?
• In the spirit of sharing, I would encourage you to read “Share and Share Alike!” by Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby).
• At the risk of beating my twitter drum one too many times, I would encourage you to check out another post from Tom Whitby titled “If Twitter Is Not PD, What Is It?“

Hopefully, these items from my Diigo library will give you a few things to think about and will encourage a few conversations with colleagues. Enjoy!