Tech Infusion Workshop
If there is one significant lesson that educators can learn from the COVID pandemic it is that shifting to virtual teaching or remote teaching without a plan or preparation was hard at best and more chaotic for students, teachers, and families than anyone could have predicted.

With the dispersion of vaccines, we are now hearing about a potential resumption of school this coming fall of 2021. But, once schools return to traditional face-to-face attendance, will they revert to pre-COVID norms? Perhaps this past year of reactive remote learning will help school leaders to recognize that we need to be proactive and leverage technology to reshape their schools and transform student learning outcomes in the process.

The question we need to address is how do we go from hard pivot to seamless integration? The following are links to articles, blog posts, YouTube videos, TED Talks, and books that were used or referenced in my session for the School Leadership Progress & Innovation Series at Governors State University.

Workshop Slides, Resources & PDFs

Free COVA eBook

Context & Why

No Quick Fix

Technology – No Significant Difference

Learner’s Mindset & Assessment As Learning

Connecting the Dots vs Collecting the Dots

Change in Focus Part A

Links to Authentic Learning & CSLE+COVA posts:
I have been advocating authentic learning or project-based learning and creating significant learning environments for decades both professionally and personally. Talking the talk as an academic takes on a much more significant perspective when you walk the walk in your personal life.

Creating Significant Learning Environments

The CLSE+COVA section of this site is also a great starting place to see how to create a significant learning environment by giving your learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities.

I want more information and help on how to use the Learner’s Mindset to enable critical thinkers, real-world problem solvers, and lifelong learners!

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https://youtu.be/p94zVXQkygc

Great video overview of Thomas Sowell’s book Intellectuals and Society. Sowell explains how intellectuals have misguided the public in the past and how they’re still doing it in the present. He also explains why intellectuals feel the need to step into areas where they don’t have enough expertise.

Rosalinde Torres shares the result of 25 years of observing truly great leaders at work that are summed up in the following three simple but crucial questions:

  1. Where are you looking to anticipate the next change to your business model or life?
    Answer – The answer to this question is in your calendar – who are spending time with, what are you doing, what are your reading/learning. Great leaders are collaborating and looking around corners.
  2. What is the diversity measure of your network?
    Answer – Consider your capacity to develop relationships with people who are different than you. Having a diverse network is a source of pattern recognition and of potential solutions.
  3. Are you courageous enough to abandon the past?
    Answer – Going along to get along leads to failure. Great leaders dare to be different and don’t just talk about risk-taking they do it. People who will join you are usually different from your traditional network.

Torres states that the great leaders of the 21st Century are:

those women & men who are NOT preparing themselves for the comfortable predictability of yesterday but are preparing for the realities of today and all the unknown possibilities of tomorrow.

I am an avid reader and researcher so it is not uncommon for my students to ask me to recommend books, readings, or subjects that they can explore to go deeper into a subject. I was recently asked what program or course of study I would recommend for someone who wanted to go into Psychology. Even though I have a Ph.D. in Psychology or Educational Psychology to be more specific I often find it difficult to recommend traditional Psychological books or texts because I have found that they often provide too narrow of a focus or explanation.

Most people are drawn to the study of psychology because they want to better understand human behavior or find an explanation for why or how people tend to feel, act and do the things that they do. I have found that human behavior is much more complex and requires a much broader exploration. My main Recommended Reading List points to this broader perspective and points to my top 200+ reads.

I realize that most people do not have the time nor the desire to engage in the more classical study of philosophy, theology, and history to help them understand why we do the things we do so I will attempt to consolidate and offer my top 15 list of Psychology reads which are also listed on my Recommended Reading List page:

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by K. Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz
A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger
Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The following two books aren’t typically referred to as psychological texts but they do offer a perspective of why people tend to do the things that they do. Both of these books point to a time in history when humanity was not at its finest so we tend to get a perspective of why we do the things we do when then things are really bad. Some would argue that the best of times and the worst of times are when our true humanity is revealed.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Finally, you may want to download a copy of my COVA eBook which explains how to create a significant learning environment in which you give your learner choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities and also incorporates many of the ideas that you will find in the books listed above.