The video clip had excellent ways of getting students, teachers and parents involved in the learning process. Even though these ideas are not new, they are very effective and worth trying.

This was a good discovery for me, this morning. I clicked on a link from the BarCamp LA DrupalCampLASession which happened yesterday.

As a fine art conservator & Open Source eRider practitioner/Organizer for California I work to combat the digital divide by providing elearning based train the trainer sessions for admin, teacher and voluneteer work with school alumni, staff and teachers at Roosevelt High School. My homepage is part of a school wide site http://rrider.net:8000 that I've established as part of the school IT Committee.

The Emotional Intelligence, part of the 10 Big Ideas for Better Classrooms, has inspired me to correspond with you regarding preliminary work I call http://teknowledgy.org . Click on the Conscious Kids graphic (bottom right corner of the above page) to see the documentation video I did at my elementary school Malabar in LAUSD.

Teknowledgy.org is based on the I work created by Dan Winter, a scientist, that created a book named "Conscious Kids" ( http://www.goldenmean.info/consciouskids/ and the bio feedback technology called the The Heart (Bliss) Tuner ( http://www.goldenmean.info/hearttuner ).

If you are at all interested please contact. Thanks

I found this video extremely interesting. The variety of projects being done by the students represented was unbelievable. There was no way I could begin to do something as in depth as the teachers featured in this video, but I must admit I was inspired to at least try to do more than what I am currently doing. I found myself nodding in agreement many times as I watched - knowing that what was being said was believed to be true by the staff and administrators in our district already. We have seen the necessity of educating the heart as well as the mind.

What an overwhelming amount of information. I made a few mental notes while watching this... When talking about Emotional Intelligence it's hard to argue that students learn better when they are learning through what they care about.

It seemed to hold true for project based learning as well in the sense that students learn more when they are actively involved and invested in what they are doing (they remember the projects that they make way beyond the tests/worksheets).

As far as integrated studies, I'd need to see this first hand to be able to internalize the depth of cooperation that would be needed across departments/grade levels.

I'd also like to see more about comprehensive assessments. It was intriguing to see students leaving high school with "big projects". And the speaker hit the nail on the head when talked about high standards. I'm all for high standards but do we get at what we want using the tests to drive what we do..

:-)
Sean M.

It was very interesting. It would require a lot of cooperation from the top down. The part I struggle with is how do we cover all the material, all the standards we are expected to and try to do them in exciting, project oriented ways. I try to add a couple of new or different ways to do things each year and not change everything all at once. I've done many projects over my 33 years of teaching and they're great ways to learn, however they take so much time to prepare and implement, not to mention expense. I'm constantly struggling with the question, "What do I throw out?" I've never completed a whole math book in my whole life but we are constantly trying to add more. It would be nice not to be driven by test or not to have to worry about them but the reality is we and our students are constantly being assessed and threatened by the state to preform better.

I totally agree with your assessment that this kind of learning would have to originate from the state to be completely successful. In terms of planning, resources, collaboration and cooperation of all entities within the education arena. I just don't see how these people are doing such great things!

Awesome!!! Very excited to not only teach but see how our children flourish throughout this century.

I am a 5th grade teacher in SC and I would have to say that these schools seem to have the right ideas on how to improve our public education, but what I would love to see would be all ten of these components implemented into one school. Is there such a place, and if so, what was the formula for doing so effectively?

If there had to be one major component to focus on first, I say it should be teacher collaboration. Not just meeting together for the sake of saying so, but truly sharing ideas and getting past the "this is the way I do it in my room and I'm not changing it for anybody" mentality. To truly affect changes in our schools, teachers need to know the state standards so well that they can focus their mental energy on how to most effectively teach them to their students, and if teachers are working together to assess what is effective and what isn't, then more students will likely be successful.

All ten of these ways to improve schools are great, but if we as teachers refuse to admit that we are weaker in some areas than our coworkers and refuse the help and expertise that they have to offer, then true change will never occur.

I thought this was great. However, I noticed that this concept seemed almost like a school of the arts in that the classes were not test driven. The empahisis was on the students and they wanted to be at school. This was good, showed passion, energy and diversity.

This is great but what about the teachers who have to have their kids pass the wonderful TAKS!!!
Those teachers can't do this type of teaching.