Author Archives: toddwirt

SAS Curriculum Pathways

SAS Curriculum Pathways

If you are looking for a free comprehensive digital resource to use in the classroom, look no further than SAS Curriculum Pathways.  The people at SAS have the model for the future of digital content and they have been feverishly developing it over the last few years.  Here in Mooresville we have had a great partnership with SAS and our teachers have been vigorous users on the product for four years.  The best part is it is FREE!! 

SAS ranks as one of the top companies in the world.  “SAS helps organizations anticipate and optimize business opportunities. We do this through advanced analytics that turn data about customers, performance, financials and more into meaningful information. The result? Fact-based decisions for undeniable bottom line impact – this is how we transform the way our customers do business.”  

Leadership in Education Blog

Leadership in Education Blog

Over the past seven years I have had the good fortune of partnering with The Flippen Group at two different schools.  The Flippen Group works with schools and organizations all over the country and is a leader in the development of culture and leadership.  At two different schools now, I have had the pleasure of exposing those staffs to the training Capturing Kids Hearts.  It is a transformational training that puts students at the center of the work and creates and environment of trust and helps schools have a consistent way to develop meaningful relationships with kids.  My friend Chris Layton, an employee of The Flippen Group, recently shared with me his blog on Leadership in Education.  It is a great read.  I would encourage any school leader to follow the blog and to check out Capturing Kids Hearts and the many other service offered by The Flippen Group at http://www.flippengroup.com.

Visuwords

Visuwords

I absolutely cannot get enough of this site.  So many times I have sat in a classroom and watched kids do vocabulary lists in isolation as they look up the word and write down the definition.  With visuwords, you can Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

  • It’s a dictionary! It’s a thesaurus!
  • Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists.
  • The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection.
  • No membership required.

It’s off the chain!!

21st Century Parent Conferences

21st Century Parent Conferences

How many times have you heard the excuse or even given the excuse, “We just can’t get the parents in for a conference.”  It’s fallen on my ears way too many times.  It’s time we starting thinking differently about parent conferences as well and using on-line tools.  For example, http://www.yugma.com, is a free desktop sharing and video conferencing website.  Check out the link here and begin brainstorming ways to have on-line parent conferences and eliminate any excuses with parent communication.

Out of Date Websites

We live in a day and time when many principals are requiring each of their teachers to have their own personal website.  I often scan the internet looking at different school and teacher sites not only in my own district but in that of other districts too.  There is absolutely nothing worse than a teacher or school site that has not been recently updated.  When I say recently, I mean weekly!  If we offer up to date information for parents and children, then that is what we should provide.  Here are some tips for teachers or administrators on updating of websites:

1.  Create a team of people/students that work on the site.  I completely agree that it is sometime difficult to constantly generate new ideas and find the time to do the updating.  Empower others to be creative and add content.

2.  Make sure social media is a part of your website.  You can use twitter, box, facebook, etc. to give constant updates to your site or blog right from your phone anywhere in the world. 

3.  Do not think that everything that you add to your site has to be profound or some amazing piece of information.  Part of maintaining a website or social media is that you use it on a regular basis that keep people coming back for more.  Sometimes you can just share your thoughts or a picture of something coll you have observed kids doing that day in your classroom or school. 

4.  Make sure the look of your site changes periodically and is “current.”  I am immediately turned off by a website that looks like it was created prior to the start of the 21st century.

5.  Finally, if you are going to have a website or blog, then maintain it!  Otherwise take it down.  It is a poor reflection on you as a professional if your site is months out of date!  I think it is better to not have one than have one that looks neglected and irrelevant.

Thank You

Yesterday I defended my capstone project for Wingate University and became Dr. Todd Wirt.  This has been quite a journey and I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to thank all of those that were so instrumental and help me along this 3 1/2 year journey.  Thanks first and foremost to my wife for the sacrifices that she makes daily so that I can follow my dream of impacting the lives of kids.  Thank you to all of my colleagues for picking me up, offering assistance, and providing faith and belief on those days that I had none left.

I hope to soon share the results of my research as I worked to design a profile for a successful leader of a 1:1 technology school.  The research raised some interesting points and also brought about some concerns.  What I can share is that as a nation, we have a long way to go.  This technological revolution going on in schools as only just begun and even those considered “successful” have a lot of work to do.  The challenge is to tie this new wave of instruction to performance and then to scale it out.  More to come…