If you've visited the Celebrating Piedmont blog lately (or seen my Twitter feed)  you know that I've been trying to showcase what greatness happens here at Piedmont every day. I think the best way to learn is from each other.

I want to know what you'd like me to cover and share- I want to film and photograph your work, and I also want to help you if you want to try something new or "deep".

Finally, I want to give you a "badge" for your Personalized learning via Credly so you can recognize and advertise your strongest skills and tech tool proficiencies. ( I can't give you a pay raise so I do what I can!)  

A badge is a virtual sticker but I can also make you a hard copy for display in the "real" world. You can place it on your wiki, weebly or other, or just post it with pride) for the areas you excel in. Now is not a time to be modest. What tools of our craft are you good at? Tell me and I will badge you and we can all learn from and celbrate your hard work.

Students as well as you teachers can take part in this so if you have a student who's done something amazing, send them to me or to this page: Toot horn here

If you are interested in using badging within your own class for student skills (a big movement in standards based education and authentic mastery based learning) I can also set you up with your own classroom based system.

PS regarding showcasing your greatness- I want to say I know I am only capturing the tip of the iceberg and I wish I could keep up! No wonder I'm behind on posting the photos to Celbrating Piedmont- I can't walk into your rooms without seeing something worth showing off. I'm filling up my storage! 

Still not sure about this badging thing? It's the latest trend! Here is one principal's take on it at his school.

New Page on this website- Check out Celebrating Piedmont!

I needed more space to show off the things you do so I created the Celebrating Piedmont page because there is always something special going on around here! Call me and I will add photos of your event.

I've only begun to put up my backlog of Piedmont amazingness. Check out the posts on Read Across America, some of the Olympics stuff, and ...

Coming soon I'll publish the great projects I see on display as I walk down the halls (like the art , math home design, science planets, LA cinquians and  industrial revolution projects, too.  I might turn it into its own website.

Thanks to Melissa Nixon on Twitter for this article: "The things that linger after they forgot everything you taught"

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/the-things-that-linger-after-they-forget-everything-you-taught/

I retweet a lot of what I think is interesting that I come across via Twitter. If you don't want to tweet, you can just take a look. I've embedded my twitter feed here.

For you OR your students: Click this image to be taken to a form to submit the link to any work you are proud of.  (if the work is not digitized, see me and I will publish it on the web via google drive, youtube or a website.) Whenever we have Piedmont guests, I can show them your work and the work of your students.

I originally made this link for teachers for open house, but so many amazing projects and events happen all year, that I'd like to keep a running tally.

This was in Sunday's NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html

When I hear teachers making pedagogical choices for how students should show mastery of material based on "but they'll be asked to do it this way in college (or high school ) -I am getting them ready now" it is articles like this that make me question the value of that kind of decision making. It used to be that there was some ethics in that - they needed to learn to jump through the hoops bc a degree was some kind of guaranteed ticket to a good job- but that is just not the case now in more and more fields ! It is putting a lot of precious eggs into a very old basket riddled with holes - wouldn't it be best to protect each egg according to its unique size and shape ?

The quote from Google that GPA and test scores mean absolutely nothing to them- they don't predict anything and are ignored in hiring- means we may be not looking far enough into their futures when we are saying that education is to make a child college -ready.

Student need a core base of knowledge but there is just not a single universal canon anymore. We as teachers are kidding ourselves if we think there is and there probably never was- just a few class markers if anything. Students need to be skilled and flexible for their futures. We need to give them the opportunity for lasting learning -not the kind that goes away after the test.. That kind of game is just not worth playing anymore.