The Connected Educator’s Full House: 8 “Ace” Resources

As legend and history relates, the “Dead Man’s Hand”, 2 pairs – Aces and Eights, was Wild Bill Hickok’s final deal.  He was killed at the poker table in Deadwood in the Dakota Territory at the Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon in 1876.  His murderer, Jack McCall shot him through the head from behind.  Despite some “authoritative” claims to what the fifth card was in Hickok’s star crossed hand, it remains a mystery. One poker website notes:

 “The transcript of McCall’s trial, for having shot Hickok, has a witness claiming that the fifth card was the jack of diamonds. The card used in the

Hickok’s final hand. How will educator’s play their hand?

 

re-creation of the shooting in Deadwood, as well as the card supposedly suggested by other eyewitnesses is the nine of diamonds.” And finally, the Deadwood museum uses a five of diamonds that is on display in Deadwood. “I suppose nobody will ever know, considering the town of Deadwood, and alot of its records, burnt to the ground in 1879”

I like to imagine, at least for this blog post, that the mystery card was actually an Ace or an 8.  Bill’s hand would have been better, at least.

 

So, what hand has been dealt to contemporary educators?  In March, the Huffington Post reported  their findings from a teacher satisfaction survey.  The findings are not optimistic; and maybe not too surprising.  “As school districts continued to cut budgets, increase class sizes, and implement teacher performance evaluations, teachers’ job satisfaction plummeted in 2012, reaching an all-time low…Teachers’ job satisfaction has declined 23 percentage points in the five years since 2008, according to the long-running survey of educators and principals. Only 39 percent of teachers reported they were very satisfied, the least since 1987, the survey showed. The percentage of teachers who said they were very satisfied dropped five percentage points in 2012.”

No quick fixes here. However,  I have found that there are benefits when educators are networked.  I believe it increases morale, innovation, collaboration, inspiration, and general support.  Overall, a sense of professionalism increases.  I have created two categories network benefits below.  Have fun exploring them, getting involved, sharing and using them.

I wonder if any cards were wild in Wild Bill’s last hand.  Regardless, all of the resources below have wild benefits for you and your students. No bluff. Your deal!

 

 

4 Ace Online Professional Development/Networking Opportunities

 

1- The Connected Educator Month Archives:  Funded by the US Department of Education.  The Connected Educator Month 2012 Archives have been officially released, with nearly one hundred recordings, transcripts, and other professional development resources to date from CEM 2012, searchable by format, audience, and topic.  http://bit.ly/cemarchives  Be sure to check out the session “Professional Learning and the Learning Profession” which addresses such questions like

  • What and where are the best (social) opportunities for educators to work on and learn for their practice in the coming year?
  • What steps should every educator consider taking to become more connected, and what are the key resources that can help?
  • In what kinds of learning do teachers (and other educators) need to be engaged in the 21st century, and how will technology help?
  • What are the key methodological and content trends in the classroom (e.g., flipped classrooms, core standards) with which technology (in general) and communities or networks (specifically) can impact and help?

 

 

 

2- The School Leadership Summit: Thursday, March 28th, is the inaugural, online, and free School Leadership Summit.   http://www.SchoolLeadershipSummit.com

It is a unique chance to participate in a virtual and collaborative global conversation on school leadership with presentations by practitioners.  Conference strands are aligned to the internationally-recognized ISTE National Education Technology Standards for Administrators and include the leadership topics of: Vision in a Changing World, Teaching and Learning in a Changing World, Professional Learning in a Changing World, Data-driven Reform in a Changing World, and Ethical and Responsible Use in a Changing World.  TICAL (the Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership) is the founding partner of the conference.

 The Summit is held online using Blackboard Collaborate and open to anyone to attend.  The conference schedule is kept current at  http://admin20.org/page/schedule and during the conference will be viewable by specific world time zones. Visit my session at 7:00 pm.
3 –ASCD Webinars:  ASCD’s free webinar series brings experts in the field of education to a computer near you. Their webinars address timely and relevant topics like the Common Core State Standards, 21st century learning strategies, and closing the achievement gap.  Bonus hand, they archive each webinar, so you will never have to miss your deal.  Also, ASCD takes suggestions. Be sure to fill out their request feature.
4- The Educators PLN: This is a ning site dedicated to the support of a Personal Learning Network for Educators. Resources, blogs, other websites, discussion forums and more make this a hyper active community. Browse the “Leader Board” to get an idea of who is doing what and who is most active. So, sign up, create your profile page and let the networking begin.

4 Ace Online/Classroom Resources:

1-Show World: The website creates a map morph based on the criteria you select. All you do is select a subject from the top menu and watch the countries on the map change their size. Instead of land mass, the size of each country will represent the data for that subject –both its share of the total and absolute value. The main topics “People, Planet, Politics, Business, and Living” have a multitude of sub categories to choose from. Also, the site allows you to explore data for the World, the US, and Japan.  Data sources are cited, there are zoom options, a table that ranks the category leader and much more. The search for the  screen shot is based on the number of McDonald’s restaurants in the world.  Eat up…

 

2- Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square: The Global Public Square is where you can make sense of the world every day with insights and explanations from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria leading journalists at TIME and CNN, and other international thinkers.Record his show and watch a segment in class. Features include

 

3- TED Ed: TED-Ed is a website for teachers and learners. Lessons worth sharing allows you use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch.  You can also get involved or recommend someone: “The most meaningful TED-Ed videos are collaborations between the TED-Ed team and at least one of the following: a curious learner, an exceptional educator, or a talented visualization artist. If you are one of these types of people, or if you know someone who is, please help guide our effort to create a library of lessons worth sharing…”  Check this out!

 

4- Open Culture: Formed in 2006, Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free online courses, free movies, free language lessons, free ebooks and other enriching content — it’s all there!  I just watched Waiting for Godot.

 

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