Red+Bandanas

EcuCon 2.5 = = =Conversation: =
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=Making the Impossible... = =Possible! = || IMPORTANT RESOURCES: Join us on Google+ The Future of Learning, Networked Society - Ericsson How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere 

|| Anne Collier: NetFamilyNews.org and ConnectSafely.org, anne@netfamilynews.org Peggy Sheehy: Ramapo Central School District, G.A.M.E., WoW in School peggysheehy@mac.com Marianne Malmstrom: The Elisabeth Morrow School, knowclue@mac.com Bron Stuckey on Skype || If YOU could change education, what would YOU do? Join this conversation about our collective commitment to revolutionize learning and what it looks like in our individual spaces. Tell us what you have done, are doing, or will do to transform education in your own sphere(s) of influence. **Thoughts to Get Us Started Today:**

**The three of us, along with others of our "tribe" have been exploring solutions to the demise of meaningful education in our schools and continually find ourselves stuck--knee-deep in the mire of corporate overtures, government mandates and plain stupidity, determining what happens in OUR SCHOOLS, in OUR CLASSROOMS, with OUR CHILDREN. It's time to get out of the problems--and into solutions!**

**We understand--that many of us can't just put our foot down and openly and blatantly rebel against the machine. From a plain, practical standpoint, we need our jobs (income): WE GET THAT ... and, on a deeper level, although many in our profession have succumbed to the frustration, we don't believe that abandoning the ship when the waters get rough is a viable solution.**

So, what we’re trying to do, here today, is to have the "solution conversation" and begin to identify small (or not) incremental steps that we can all take to begin to take back our profession, renew our vocational vision, and get back to the driving principle that doing what's best for kids should be the BOTTOM LINE of all that we do. We've all come to understand that no monumental, pie-in-the-sky, single "event" is going to change education in one fell swoop. Rather, we need to take baby steps, BUT we need to start taking them, together and/or one by one**,** and we need to start taking them NOW. So, our purpose here today is to discover--discover the things we've already been doing & share them with each other in order to create an ARSENAL of steps we can take to bring education back to its original intent: to serve the best interests of children and learning.

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**“So let me explain how revolutions work. Revolutions destroy the perfect and then they enable the impossible. ** **They never go from everything-is-bad to everything-is-good. There’s a lot of noise in the middle.” ~Seth Godin **
 * Conversation: **
 * Like many of you, we are frustrated by the ineffectiveness of our educational system. It feels overwhelming and hopeless waiting for schools to shed outdated practices in favor of creating new learning models that fit today’s students. **


 * The daunting question is, How do we make it happen? **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps we already are. Our “perfect”system of education is crumbling. We are firmly embedded in the “noise” of change. Perhaps a more crucial question is, “How do we intensify “the noise” and make the “impossible” possible?” **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We do it together – collectively, but ALSO each in our own sphere, one by one. **


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Educational transformation is so complex that no single visionary educator, policymaker, or parent can make it happen singlehandedly. Rather, the wisdom of multiple perspectives, talents, and approaches will be key to authentic systemic change. It will require commitment,thoughtful action and purposeful deconstruction of the existing modelin ways that make sense in each of our contexts. It will take vision & individual acts of bravery to make the impossible possible. **

**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #ff0000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Conversational Practice: ** **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Think, Pair, and Share “ what’s working for you that others could replicate. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Consider our collective commitment and what it looks like in our individual spaces. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tell us what you have done, are doing or will do to transform education in your own sphere(s) of influence. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Think, Pair, Share during this session and then beyond. Again and again... “out there.” Think, Pair, Share, and Act. ** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">media type="custom" key="22018604" Follow the conversation.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Watch <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline;">[|__Future of Learning, Networked Society - Ericsson__] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Join this conversation about a movement to make education work for students. It is going to take all of us doing our own guerrilla-style acts to growthe transformation of learning. **

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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**The Red Bandanas** community supports this site and the awarding of the red bandana in recognition of educational change agents. These are people brave enough to break out of the constraints of our systems and whose work has inspired others to greater risk taking and new adventures. In the end its all about creating the best of learning environments that we can offer our kids! =====

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