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Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture, offered some interesting advice regarding what the United States education reformers could learn from them in a recent article “Learning from Finland: How One of the World’s Top Educational Performers Turned Around.” According to Sahlberg, “Finland should interest...

Perhaps as we approach the New Year, it’s time to reflect on the progress during the past year the Obama administration has made on educational issues. We certainly can thank the Obama administration for putting education on the forefront of a national debate that is truly beginning to ask the question, “How do we make our education system more effective?”Where most of us disagree with this administration...

If I want an innovative staff, I can't just talk the talk; I have to be willing to innovate too. Sometimes that's hard. After being in public education so long, the temptation is to just go along with the protection inertia provides. Yet, true innovation will ask both teachers and administrators to take risks. Here’s some principles of innovation I consider to be important:1. Sometimes you have to...

Dr. Jim Taylor’s post “PISA Test Doomsayers May Have It Wrong” puts some perspective on how our students did in comparison to other countries. We are bombarded every day by those who have declared our educational system “unsalvageable” and in need of reform, but Taylor points out clearly what those who get hung up on the numbers fail to acknowledge. Perhaps is futile to compare US student performance...

For over a month now, I have been testing the capabilities of my iPad, and I have to admit, it has now become a seamless part of both my professional life and personal life. I would encourage all administrators to consider investing in an iPad for three reasons.1. The iPad increases my level of "connectedness" to my staff and to PLN. Let's face it, taking a laptop into a meeting is a bulky enterprise...

The 21st Century Principal blog is almost a year old, and it has been quite an adventure. I have learned a great deal about blogging do’s and don’t’s in the past year, but I won’t bore everyone with those yet. Instead, I would like to share my Top 5 Five Blog Posts for 2010. Looking at my statistics, these were the posts that have been accessed the most during the course of this past year. 1. Could...

Twitter is a powerful tool with which educators can engage in a global conversation about teaching and learning. Its power is in its ability to allow users to connect and to share. In the two or three years I have been using Twitter, I have been able to connect with some of the best minds in the education business.  It is central to my own professional learning network. Some Twitter Resources...

Learning to manage a classroom of students was the most difficult thing for me in my first years as a teacher.   For new teachers, managing that classroom of first graders or twelfth graders is often an baptism of fire. It seems no matter how much you learn about this topic, there is always room for improvement for all of us.One of the first big lessons for me as a classroom teacher was...

Does Facebook have any instructional value? That has been the question I have explored this week. What answer does this administrator arrive at? “Maybe.” If you set aside the issues of staff productivity concerns, legal concerns, student safety concerns, and potential data security concerns, I still come to the conclusion that maybe Facebook and like social media applications have classroom potential....

What should you consider if you are going to establish a Facebook page for your school or district? Are there any possible legal pitfalls for having and maintaining a social media presence? How can you make sure staff members who are using a social media presence to promote the school, district, or their classroom are not violating the law or propriety? As schools and school districts try to establish...

I stumbled across this post from Matthew Ingram entitled “Future Leaders Will Be Those Who Can Manage Technology Shifts.” According to Ingram, “The big question for businesses today is how they adapt to (technology progression) and particularly how the leaders of companies handle the implementation of technology inside their organizations, and try to help their employees evolve and succeed. And the...

What good is Facebook in education? That question and several variations of it is what I asked on Twitter two days ago. As schools continue to encounter both teacher and student issues with this social media environment, the pressure to block access is going to get more intense.  (See my previous post “Social Media: Facebook-What Good Is It? All of the Tweets or responses I received about the...

Just Google “teachers, facebook, inappropriate” and a flood of articles appear relating the indiscretions and sins of teachers who have overstepped the bounds of propriety by posting inappropriate statements, pictures, and videos on Facebook and other social media accounts. This past October, three teachers in New York were fired for having inappropriate relationships with students on Facebook. One...

Recently, I posted a series of questions on Twitter that asked for ideas and examples of effective use of Facebook as a classroom or instructional tool. I received only one example, and that was from a teacher who uses Facebook as a classroom communication tool. What was even more surprising, were the Tweets that suggested that Facebook be kept as far away from the classroom as possible. Most posters...

The first time I encountered Ms. Johnson, our school librarian, I was genuinely frightened. She looked the part of “Keeper of the Books” and she lived the part as well. She dressed very conservatively and always wore her hair the same way. I’ll always remember the long dresses she wore, and her gray hair, which she always pulled tightly into a ball at the back of her head. She was “sternness personified.”...

Today, as I drove to my parents home in my home town, I had to drive by the old elementary school where I spent the first eight years of my education. That building is now abandoned by progress and time, but seeing it always causes a flood of memories about the many, many days I spent walking its halls. This afternoon I thought of Ms. S- - - -‘s class, fourth grade and my earliest experience with...

Any technology device is only as good as the software installed on it. Combined with desktop access and Android phone access, I am able to use these applications just about anywhere. These are my iPad application recommendations to administrators. Evernote In an earlier post, I recommended Evernote as premium app for administrators. For many of the same reasons I listed there, adding Evernote to the...

Most of us who have been in education for some time remember the old Memorex cassette tape commercials. The one I remember has Ella Fitzgerald singing, and at the end, the voice over always asks, “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” Then a glass shatters. Here’s the video in case you missed or weren’t born yet. img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('f47d2060-e1c9-49e6-9d29-ba5672682fdc');...

Being a neophyte in blogging, this is my first year attempting to nominate Edublog winners, but I am going to give it a try because these are blogs I read religiously. Thank you for the wonderful year of information and resources. My nominations for the 2010 Edublog Awards are: Best Individual Blog: Michael Smith’s PrincipalsPage.com Best Individual Tweeter: Steven Anderson @web20classroom Best Group...

My iPad arrived on Monday, and I have spent the last week taking it through the paces, and testing applications. It has settled the question of whether I am going to buy a Nook, Kindle, or Sony E-reader. I don’t need either one of these. What I have discovered is that I can download the Nook E-reader, Kindle E-Reader, and others and not have to worry whether the one I bought is going to be out of...

Here’s a Web site where students and others can provide anonymous tips when they have encountered bullying or abuse. I briefly looked over the site and it is a legitimate site. You can check it out here. My questions are many at this point, like who protects the data and information that students enter into the Web site. As an administrator I would be concerned regarding who also might have access...

Jay Matthews’ post here entitled “Even Our Best Kids Lag in Math—Middle Schools to Blame” quotes a study done by Eric A Hanushek and Paul E. Peterson which blames the decline of US student math scores in comparison to other countries to “failure to raise standards for teaching and learning.” Matthews himself says he “blames middle schools.” This looking-for-blame game is definitely in vogue today...

Yesterday, researchers at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine released a study declaring that texting and social networking are the boogeymen we’ve always thought them to be. They described a whole list of “bad things” that can happen to teenagers who engage in what they call “hyper-texting” or “hyper-networking.” They chose to define hyper-texting as sending more than 120 messages a day,...

I began using Xmind with the free version about a year and a half ago. It is one of the simplest mind mapping tools you can find, with a very shallow learning curve. Even with the free version you can create excellent mind maps. But for $49 a year or $44 per year for educators, you can download the Xmind Pro version which gives you the following features. Feature Description Brainstorming and...

Evernote is an excellent application for anyone who copiously takes notes of all kinds from a variety of web sources. I am an avid reader of blogs and web sites, and Evernote provides me with just the right tools to capture information and graphics from the Internet. With this software, I can capture anything I find. I can make a text note, snap a photo, or grab a screenshot and keep all of these...