Think Like a Teacher

I love this idea.
You’ve got to be kidding.
But, what about…

I just spent over an hour looking at RSS feeds from blogs I enjoy reading, and I’m fired up. My “personal learning network” includes blogs from teachers, a powerful new blog from the people we “teach” (HA!- they teach us), blogs from people who would probably consider everything I do or write to be trivial, blogs that intrigue me, blogs of well-organized people who write with the authority of an op-ed columnist, and blogs intended as outgoing information-providers not much interested in response. My Google Reader also has feeds from REALLY techie places whose content I add to my “I really should/want to learn about this” list  and feeds from traditional pubs that rework the same content multiple times each week into at least five versions to make their feeds look more prolific. But you don’t care who is on my reader, anyway.

But what a great way to start a birthday: finding things I am excited about, feel strongly about, must argue with, or am simply fascinated by: things I want to do, think about, learn, comment on, and more. This is my “bucket list” of things I want to do–not before I die, but before the bucket overflows. If I keep drawing things from the bucket, I can keep adding.  My bucket is latex and expands like a swim cap under a faucet (try that experiment sometime, if your children are not swimmers— you can make it large enough to HOLD a swimmer). The first addition this year is the idea of a Birthday Bucket.

The Birthday Bucket idea is a hitch-hike on the “Annual Report” contest (deadline tomorrow…I probably won’t make it this year). What better idea on your birthday than to reflect and build a visual representation-in-four of the past year’s accomplishments/events/questions/thoughts/travels, etc. ?

Of course, Think-Like-a-Teacher me says this is something we could ask students to share in lieu of unhealthy birthday treats on their own birthdays. Imagine a fresh 8-year old’s visual version of being 7-going-on-8. We say kids are not reflective at this age, but wouldn’t that be a terrific skill to start building at a young age? Imagine how it would blossom when adolescence injects new questioning…and how great the retrospective of Birthday Buckets would be when trying to decide about life after high school or (in a dream world) what to STUDY in high school. Here are the instructions:

Birthday Bucket
Create a way to SHOW (not tell) what you are learning, wondering, fired up about, simply MUST say something about, have accomplished, or just think is special about you right now and over the past year. Put the items in some sort of “Birthday Bucket” of at least four elements that others can ask about, explore, see, feel, hear, or even taste. The bucket must be preserved in some way so you can look at it in months/years to come. Use any tools you enjoy and at least one tool you have never tried before. 

Stir. Share freely. Welcome comments.

This blog entry is my Birthday Bucket for this year:

My old blog home had some great connections: people who left behind comments or  linked to me there. I feel as if I moved out of my home and left no forwarding address. So what do I do? What everyone does (or used to do before RSS feeds): Since it’s holiday time, I send everyone I ever knew a “card” to let them know where I “live” now. Here is hoping that blog-magic will get the word out.

So, to all of you, this is my invitation to visit this, my new blog home, whenever you wish. I will refrain from writing an annoying holiday letter that describes the trials of moving a blog and instead mention these bloggers or commenters I consider to be “gifts” who have made me think, made me angry, made me laugh, or simply motivated  me to respond. What better gift could I receive than thoughts sparked by a fellow blogger?

Thank you notes and address-change Christmas cards, therefore, go to:

Drapes Takes, MatthewKTabor.com, Rambling Reflections, Herman Wood’s EdTech Blog, Cathy Nelson’s TechnoTuesday, Chris Lehmann’s Practical Theory, Krysia, Ryan Palmer, Wes Fryer’s Speed of Creativity, David Warlick’s 2 Cents Worth, Jim Gates’ TIPline, Karl Fisch’s Fischbowl, KJ’s NCS Tech, Andy Carvin’s Learning Now, and miscellaneous others who arrive via Google Reader.

Now if I could just avoid cleaning my real house for the holidays by having everyone visit vis RSS feed (?!)

Merry Christmas to all!

 As I finally make the first post at this new home for my blog, a thick coating of ice covers the trees and shrubs outside my window. I left my old blog reluctantly, since I cannot bring along the old webs I have spun there. As a spider leaving behind a sticky web, I hope these posts will retain their stickiness. But I know they are probably more like ice than spider webs. They will soon drop away and melt into the archives of old blog posts. As most writers, I love my own words more than I should. I have finally accepted that there must be a reason why hours of efforts to export and import from an out-of-date, no-longer-supported blogging tool simply does not work. If anyone really wants to hunt down the old posts (and some marvelous comments from others), you can click on Shively Blogmire in my new Blogroll.

So I am making a clean break. Here is my NEW blog. 

Welcome to Think Like a Teacher. It’s not just a title. It’s what I do. I hope you will join in the dialog about education and where it is going, how technology fits in, how parents and kids and society all work together (or not), and where we want to be going. There’s certainly a lot to talk about.