An example of failing forward

There are lots of fancy cute inspirational messages out there about "failing forward" or how failure leads to success. The problem is that sometimes when you fail you don't always get to see the successes.

Original image: https://goo.gl/J2vNu5

One thing I've learned over the years is that, as much as I want instant results, that's not the way it works. When I got my first Snowball mic, it was a year or two before I started using it on a regular basis by doing webinars for staff. It took another year or so for others to realize how beneficial online meetings could be in a large district. Which is why this article about my former district launching online classes caught my eye. Maybe seven years ago...I don't recall exactly now...I helped try online classes as a pilot at the two high schools in that same district. It didn't work for a number of reasons. The LMS was clunky. The teachers we chose were ones that kids wanted to interact with face-to-face, not online. We didn't have our minds quite wrapped around how best to compensate staff without alienating others. We learned a lot, bit in the end, it got dropped due to lack of enrollment. While there has been a number of staff turn over since that project ended, it's good to see that the idea was revisited. Since I've left, I've seen a couple of projects I had worked on get resurrected. While I take no credit for any of the projects today, I do believe that planting seeds of ideas may, sometimes subconsciously, impact decisions made down the road. While I could make you whimsical, inspirational image to make as your desktop background, I'll leave you with this - don't be discouraged when an idea doesn't take off immediately. Sometimes people need to let it percolate for a bit.

Learning and Sharing with Flipboard Magazines

Updated (June 2014) - Flipboard mentioned this blog post in their own article about educators and magazines! Thanks Flipboard! 

This spring, I was tasked with learning more about blended learning for my district. I set up a Flipboard magazine for myself to read based off the #blendedlearning hashtag on Twitter, but I wanted a way to save and share the great articles I was reading. I had heard about creating your own magazines in Flipboard, but hadn't ever tried one. They are very simple to create and easy to add to from any device, not just the app! Check out the video below on how to do it (or click here for Flipboard's "how to" page).

Recently I accepted a new position in a district that uses Google Apps for Education (GAFE), something my previous district hadn't used. So I set up another magazine! But this time I knew I needed some help with curating good articles. When you create your magazines, you are also allowed to add "contributors" to help you curate. I had added my friend Kristina to my blended learning magazine because of some work she's doing at our state department of education. This time, I decided to add a larger number of people who were already familiar with GAFE (Stacy, Mickie, and Jim), knowing they would have different perspectives and information streams that I might not be familiar with.
During a recent Dads in Ed podcast, a show I host with Devin Schoening and Brent Catlett, I mentioned Flipboard as my "app/site of the week." One of our listeners, Patrick, shared an article he had found on embedding Flipboard into Google Sites. Even better! I had just created a new Google Site for my upcoming job, so I added the GAFE magazine to the site. It's great because it automatically updates, meaning content will always be new! 
Magazines would be a great way for secondary teachers to create textbook supplements for their students, especially around current events. One idea mentioned in the video above was to save recipes into a magazine to create a cookbook. What a great idea for a family and consumer science classroom! They'd also be great for building leaders who are researching a new curricular or behavior philosophy. You literally can put ANYTHING into magazine form. I may need to share this with my soon-to-be-four-year-old as she works on plans for her birthday cake!

Below I've linked the three magazines I have created. While demonstrating Flipboard magazines for teachers in my iPad graduate course last week, I created one for iPad Ed as well. I'm open to having more people contribute, so drop me a line in the comments or on Twitter if you're interested! 
Blended Learning Magazine
Google Apps for Education #GAFE Magazine
iPad in Education Magazine

Beginning to blend

My school district is rarely the first to do anything, and I'm perfectly OK with that. We really try to do what's best for students based off of the information we have at the time, not what's new and shiny. Along those lines, we are beginning to explore blended learning in our classrooms. We've began gathering resources and look at where this might be a good fit for our curriculum. We haven't ruled anything out, but we are starting to craft a vision for what it looks like in our district. 
Our students do well on standardized tests, so it's been difficult to promote a need for changing instruction. Fortunately, our curriculum department sees that we need to better engage our students with the curriculum so they can develop a deeper understanding of it. I found this picture from Sean Junkins today that really resonates that point.

Learning vs. Listening. #TCEA14 pic.twitter.com/tId8DA4w0p
— Sean Junkins (@sjunkins) February 4, 2014

We know there are different ways that blended learning can be successful in our schools, and not just with technology (could insert another Junkins post that speaks to that). We also understand that it's going to look different at different grade levels.
I've started an Evernote Notebook (here) and a Flipboard channel (here) to gather some information for our district. This link from the Christensen Institute (also located in the Evernote Notebook) has been great for me to wrap my head around what blended learning looks like. If you have other resources, we'd love to hear about them! We will definitely be relying on the experts (like the one already in PLN that I found during an EdWeek webinar I attended) for help!
Lastly, I'll share my initial sketch as I sat down to start thinking and gathering info on blended learning. I'm excited to look back in a year to see how far we've come and how right or wrong/naive some of these notes were.