Continuous formation

Our school has our teachers choose a working group that meets every third week of the school year; they choose a topic to look at and then work through a discussion, research and perhaps reach a project.  I had the opportunity to work through with a group today looking at how teacher reflection can promote and strengthen pedagogical change. Although we use OneNote in our classrooms, I encourage teachers when they're looking at collecting research and tracking progress to consider Evernote .  For one, it separates the information flow that surrounds the classroom in OneNote from the personal & professional space that things like this research project comprises.  Second, Evernote is an all-around excellent tool for capturing information especially in a case like this where the teachers want to capture instances where students have said or done something that indicates their pedagogical change has had an effect or been noticed. Your Evernote account has an email ad...

One of my biggest goals this year has been to ensure that people have the information they need, when they need it in the form that they find usable. We've made some great steps forward using Excel to re-package a lot of the information held by our Student Information service (and held is the operative word -- it's locked in there quick tightly). Faculty have been able to use the information to involve students and parents more in day-to-day student life, academics and co-curriculars. And they've been doing a lot more analysis on formative and summative grades to find patterns, differentiate instruction and improve assessments. Another big step is redesigning Sharepoint to make certain that information is stored and presented in an organized way. Over the years, Sharepoint has grown in a haphazard way and users haven't really been made aware of how they can control their experience with the tools built in to it. Admittedly, it's not the most user-friendly sy...