Flip2Facilitate

Social media, social networking and "socialnomics" are mainstays in today's business world. Those businesses who want to stay ahead of the curve are using social media tools to tap into the Internet network to launch campaigns, entice customers, and recruit employable talent. What are schools doing? Blocking these sites with filters. If we don't teach our students who will? We need to teach our students the following: 1) How to use social media as a tool. 2) How to protect one's self while using social media. 3) How to leverage information and data in social media, and 4) How to use social media to make positive connections with the world of work. That means we as teachers have to be social media experts. Most teachers fear this task. Fear no more. We must wade into the social stream and navigate its depths. It is our job to protect, educate, and enlighten our students. Since common core curriculum emphasizes "college and career readine...

"By better integrating academic, career and technical education, and work-based learning, the nation’s secondary schools can increase student engagement, boost student achievement, and provide students with more options after they graduate from high school, according to a new policy brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education." ---from Alliance for Education We all want to prepare our students for the future, a future we cannot see. We want our education to be work relevant and we aspire to make our assessments authentic. We are ever more aware of the push for this environment. In my state, Kansas, I am looking at multiple movements in this area: Kansas Common Core Standards and CTE (Career and Technical Education Pathways) . I, like many, find myself in this mix. Here's what I know. First, we need to look for methods (and tools) to help us shift accountability of learning from a teacher-based model to a student-learning based model. Please understand, I a...