In creating a social media strategy for my blog, Actualization: Human Potential Project, I wanted to reach out to colleagues through multiple channels, both the established Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ as well as the emerging Pinterest, Instagram, and ASCD EDge. Content is pushed out through the established channels and archived in the emerging channels. Not all channels post the same content, and not all channels have been equally successful. The sum total for these efforts over the last eight months has fluctuated between a Klout score of 60 and 69, settling around 63 over the last three months. My blog, of curse, remains the original source for all my content, with the exception of Instagram which includes original photographs not posted elsewhere. I am very pleased with the success of this strategy thus far, and look forward to continuing to develop and fine tune its effectiveness in the year ahead!
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What a Way to Start the New Year! [INFOGRAPHIC]
Eight months into the launch of my new blog, Actualization: The Human Potential Project, WordPress provided me with the stats I needed to put together this awesome infographic. Thanks to all of you who have been a part of its first year, through all of the different social media channels I use to push out content and cultivate dialogue, Here’s to a great year for all of us in 2015!
Actualization’s Top Curated Content from 2014
Launched in May, 2014. I wanted this blog to feature both my original writings plus excellent content from other sources across the public, private and academic sectors. It’s always a pleasure to share blog posts, memes, infographics, video and audio clips that push thinking for human potential professionals! In this post I showcase the top content I curated on Actualization: The Human Potential Project. Rankings are determined by the total number of hits for each post during the calendar year. As a companion post, you can review my top original content here.
Whether this is your opportunity to revisit a favorite posting or have a first glance at something undiscovered, I hope you enjoy the top curated content I selected to share on my blog this past year:
1. I Truly Don’t Think There is Anything You Can Do to Retain Me in Your District… [BLOG POST]
Olivia Chapman wrote this response to DCPS’s question on the Declaration of Intent to Not Return Form for Resigning or Retiring Teachers: “What could we have done to retain you in the district?”
2. What Differentiation Is, And What It Isn’t… [INFOGRAPHIC]
Consider the definition of differentiation, what it is and what it is not, provided in this ASCD infographic from Carol Ann Tomlinson’s “The Differentiated Classroom” 2nd ed. (ASCD, 2014).
3. Seven Challenges Schools Can Work to Overcome [INFOGRAPHIC]
The spring 2014 workshop of Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools generated a set of challenges and solutions that we can all work to implement, presented here in this infographic.
4. Sir Ken Robinson: How is Technology Transforming Education? [VIDEO 2:21]
Today’s students seamlessly incorporate technology into their daily lives. Sir Ken Robinson sees this as the dynamic that is forcing education to completely transform itself starting now.
5. How Kids Use Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
According to this FashionPlatyes infographic, a full 81 percent of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 use social media (compared to 72 percent of the internet population as a whole).
6. ISTE and the Verizon Foundation Launch Free Mobile Learning Academy for Educators [BLOG POST]
The VMLA will be offered online four times between September 2014 and December 2015. Interested teams can pre-register online.
7. The Question, Waiting to be Answered [VIDEO 1:58]
Google suggests that the crux of the pivotal paradigm shift to which we constantly refer comes down to this: questions, not answers. Once you make the shift, everything else will shift with you.
8. NOT Old School! [VIDEO 10:42]
Educators, students, and architects explore three new elementary schools designed by HMFH Architects for the Concord, NH School District, discussing 21st century learning environments.
9. Six Quick Questions to Determine Technology’s Value [BLOG POST]
Alan November believes SAMR doesn’t provide enough concrete guidance. Many technology projects demonstrate the highest level of SAMR, but November sees them as merely substitution.
10. Seven Ways to Increase Student Engagement [INFOGRAPHIC]
Reading Hosrizons offers this infographic identifying seven ways you can increase the amount of time that students in your class are engaged in your instruction.
11. What Universities Have In Common With Record Labels [BLOG POST]
Martin Smith contends that the internet’s power to unbundle content sparked a rapid transformation of the music industry, and it’s now doing the same thing for higher education.
12. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]
Always Prepped presents this infographic offering 7 habits of highly effective teachers who use technology. Does this say more about the use of technology or the mindset?
13. You Think You Know What Teachers Do? You’re Wrong [BLOG POST]
Sarah Blaine’s thoughtful piece which contends the problem with teaching as a profession is that every single adult citizen of this country thinks that they know what teachers do. And they don’t.
14. Personalization, Not Standardization [MEME]
Lucas Dredge originally posted this meme on Twitter, which asks “Why are teachers told to differentiate their instruction but standardize their tests?” Good question.
15. Twenty-first Century Classroom Design Cultivates Collaboration [VIDEO 2:56]
There is a new innovation zone in Sakamaki Hall on the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa campus that includes three new classroom spaces—and these are not your mom and dad’s college classrooms.
16. Growth Mindset Checklist [INFOGRAPHIC]
Jackie Gerstein developed this Personal Accountability and Reflection checklist of nine questions to promote personal accountability and reflection as students develop their own growth mindset.
17. Gartner: 10 Business & Technology Trends for Education in 2015 [INFOGRAPHIC]
Transformation is key and education is the industry that needs the biggest overhaul. Jan-Martin Lowendahl, a Gartner analyst, notes that “more people will need to reskill more often.”
18. Educators and the Growth Mindset [INFOGRAPHIC]
This infographic, comparing fixed and growth mindsets, is created by Jackie Gerstein, and is originally posted on her User Generated Education blog.
19. Steve Jobs Didn’t Let His Kids Use iPhones Or iPads [BLOG POST]
Tim Butters shares that, while Steve Jobs may have had an instinctive flair for technology, he was in fact a low tech parent who firmly believed in restricting his children’s access to electronic devices.
20. Daniel Pink: We Have a Poverty Problem More Than An Education Problem [VIDEO 3:23]
Daniel Pink shares, “We just happen to have, disgracefully, a heck of a lot of poor kids. The real issue here is what do we do to address these kids we are systematically leaving behind.”
Thank you for a wonderful first year of Actualization! Here’s to continuing these important conversations in the new year!
Actualization’s Top Original Content from 2014
I launched this blog in May, 2014. And over the past seven months it has evolved week by week, with ideas and insights addressing education’s opportunities to help each child, and indeed the entire world, reach full potential. As we conclude the calendar year, I am showcasing my top original content from Actualization: The Human Potential Project in 2014. Rankings are determined by the total number of hits for each post during the calendar year. You can view my top curated content of 2014 here.
Whether this is your opportunity to revisit a favorite post or have a first glance at something yet discovered, I hope you enjoy this top twenty annotated list!
1. A Matter of Choice
American public education was the envy of the world in the last century, until it was hijacked and redefined as a business enterprise that needs to produce numbers to justify its value. The American public needs to reclaim its schools and take responsibility for their success.
2. Seriously, Why Are You Still In Education?
If these facts are all you need to know to walk away, then walk. Seriously, why are you still in education? On the other hand, if you know in your heart that nothing is going to get better until you step up, then we need you to lead from wherever you find yourself in your current position.
3. Welcoming New Leaders in Education
New leaders have arrived in education, and they’re not beholden to anyone or anything that came before them. They do not fit any one profile or group or demographic. They lead in ways of thinking and working and succeeding that look ahead, not behind.
4. Vet Depth: The Challenge of Social Media as Professional Development
Social media already provides us the tools. We simply need to make the most of them. Commit yourself to deep dives all the way down to vet depth, where we can advance one another’s professional development.
5. Ten Takeaways from Atlanta ISTE
I am just back to DC after my first ISTE conference in five years. Here are ten takeaways from my time in Atlanta. Thanks for a great conference, ISTE!
6. MI21: Multiple Intelligences & the Global Knowledge Economy
While Howard Gardner created his intelligence theory at the dusk of the industrial age, his greatest impact may well be its application in the dawn of the information age. My new working model in my ongoing work on MI & IT.
7. The Socratic Oath for Educators
I crafted this proposed oath for professional educators – a Socratic Oath – for your consideration. Thanks to everyone in my blog readership who offered feedback and input in refining this important creed for educators everywhere.
8. No Planned Obsolescence in Education
More than a century ago, Oscar Wilde famously observed, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” In an age of abundance, it’s time to shake off the resigned legacy of planned obsolescence, especially when it comes to our children and their future.
9. Studying: A 22nd Century Skill?
Studying seems incidental to the larger process of learning by doing. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We have been aspiring to the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy for more than half a century now. Will studying be a 22nd century skill? My answer is, “No.”
10. Expect More
Shake off false-feel-good gratefulness and artificially-induced optimism. Think like a pedestrian: raise the bar high enough that you won’t trip over it. Finding yourself repeatedly unexpectedly face-down on the ground dazed and confused is no way to go through life.
11. Self-Selecting, Real-World Learning Communities
Picture in your mind hot spots that indicate places people go to learn new things and practice skills that are important to them. Where are those heat surges? Athletic fields? Dance studios? Book stores? Parks and beaches? Art galleries? Theaters? How about school buildings? No? Why not?
12. 2015: The Year of the Teacher
Now therefore, let it be proclaimed that the year 2015 is the Year of the Teacher, with a focus on the work of transforming our profession, our classrooms and society, so that our children are fully prepared to embrace their fast-approaching and fast-changing future.
13. Making That Choice Every Day
I continue to hold onto my belief that, regardless of what sphere of education in which we choose to work, the more educators who stand up and speak out for what is best for children today, the more the critical mass will build, and eventually real transformation can and will take place.
14. Future-Fluent
The tech experts that support businesses and government agencies are all about seamless functionality that support and (more importantly) don’t disrupt business. Why should education be different? Why is it still about the technology?
15. Brass Elephants
Imagine a world free of humanly-created obstacles; the bottled-up potential that would be unleashed. Imagine a world where we are no longer limited by our self-imposed impediments, and answers to our most long-standing problems begin to become evident.
16. No One Right Answers Anywhere
As uncomfortable and uncertain as it may be to let go of the world we once knew, it is time to acknowledge there is no one right answer anymore. Creativity. Innovation. Transformation. Buckle up, baby boomers. It’s going to be a wild ride.
17. 12 Ways to Make This Year Your Best! [INFOGRAPHIC]
12 simple ideas succinctly stated that can help you optimize your leadership in the coming year. This was the first original infographic I created, and the most popular one among my followers, to date!
18. Sing Out!
No one can make us change our world view. We need to choose to no longer be exclusively U.S.-centric, but us-centric…because “us” is no longer three-million people inhabiting the United States, but seven-billion people inhabiting the entire planet…we are all in this together.
19. On Ulysses, Yoda And The School of Hard Knocks
In many ways we are aspiring to a new image of that shining city on a hill. The only difference is, this time around, the city is not in a physical location, it’s virtual; and equitable access and opportunity, free from poverty, injustice and oppression, are the right of every citizen.
20. Let’s Have An Honest Conversation
What is the common denominator in each of these examples? Politics. Our professional discussions are becoming a reflection of the politicization of education. We recognize it in elected officials and decision makers, but do we recognize it in our selves?
Thank you for a wonderful first year of Actualization! Here’s to continuing our good work on behalf of children in 2015!
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