21st Century Teaching & Learning Plan

Attention School Leaders: ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) have announced that they will work together to provide the online course: From Vision to Action: The 21^st Century Teaching and Learning Plan.  This will be a collaborative and interactive program in which school leaders will work together using tools such as readings, videos, presentations and application exercises to develop and implement a plan, which will reflect 21^st century teaching and learning. The price for the course is $99.

Great Ideas for All of Us from Apple Computer

When I read the Forbes’ article, Apple’s Retail Stores: More Than “Magic”, and watched the Wall Street Journal’s video: Secrets from Apple’s Genius Bar: Full Loyalty, No Negativity I thought about how some of these ideas could be used in our schools. Apple’s stores, for example, sell much more per square foot of space than Tiffany’s ($1400 more) and have had more visitors in a quarter than Disney’s top four theme parks. So what does the company do be make their stores so successful? Principles that must be followed by employees in Apple stores include: understanding how to work with customers in a way that will help them, trying to find out what customers needs are, believing in the value of what they are doing and of the power of delighting the customer, and listening for issues or concerns. New recruits must attend training classes, shadow experienced employees, and are not allowed to interact with customers until they are judged ready. Apple tries to recruit the right people and helps them with its continuing innovation and attention to detail in its products. Those employees who cannot follow these principles don’t last very long with the company.