Dan Meyer

Adapted A Little

By Dan Meyer • June 15, 2007 • 3 Comments

Take a knee. Alright y’all, today we’re champions. Feels good, right? Enjoy it while it lasts ’cause tomorrow we’re targets. Next year, every other team in Texas is gonna be gunnin’ for us ’cause we’re number one. Now I don’t know about y’all but anything less than another state championship is completely unacceptable.

So here’s what we’re gonna do. Everyone think about the off season. The off season is about development. Development of strength, development of speed, development of character. [Teaching] is a twelve month, fifty-two week, 365 day commitment, [ladies and] gentlemen. Have a great day today. Enjoy it while it lasts because tomorrow we go to work.

Jason Street, Friday Night Lights S01E22.

Dear School 2.0: Please Stop.

By Dan Meyer • June 13, 2007 • 18 Comments

Please, this has to stop. You have to stop reducing your ideological opposition to its most loathsome members. It’s an easy way to gain sympathy and traction but you’re undermining yourselves and you’re positively driving me crazy.

Right now, as I type this, some School 2.0 blogger is pasting up a poster on her blog’s brick wall denouncing the lazy, lecture-driven, intellectually-abusive, technologically-ignorant teacher. Happens every day and shows up in my feed once a week.

Happened a few days ago, in fact, and it’s intentionally going unlinked because the author is typically such a class act:

“Sit down, shut up, and learn,” is no longer an acceptable model for effective classroom instruction.

Maybe some of the teachers who consciously (or unconsciously) parrot that ethos have yet to retire. Maybe their ranks are still thick but, if they exist and if they’re as obstinate and stupid as you School 2.0 bloggers have established them to be (over and over and over again) then you will not change their minds. Even sadder, none of them read your blog.

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Can We Talk About This?

By Dan Meyer • June 12, 2007 • 6 Comments

As an educator, how are you on the subject of t.v.?Â And, more to the not-so-carefully-veiled point, how are you on the subject of TV Turnoff Week?

Design for Educators: Greg Farr’s Dashboards

By Dan Meyer • June 11, 2007 • 18 Comments

I wrote about Greg Farr‘s dashboards awhile back, his weekly airing out of the campus’ dirty laundry: non-attendance, discipline, drop-outs. “There are no secrets at Shannon,” Greg says. If I were ever to step into administration, implementing that kind of accountability would head my list of Things To Do Before I Ever Sat Down.

Here’s a sample dashboard, lifted from the school’s website

This particular accountability measure freaks me out, also, because it demands focused graphic design, which my longtime subscribers will recall is an incessant fixation of mine.

Unfortunately, Greg and his team have here what designers call a “low signal-to-noise ratio.” The information he’s trying to convey pulses faintly from the screen (low signal) while other design elements blare static around it (high noise).

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Slack

By Dan Meyer • June 11, 2007 • 1 Comment

Due to a slight scheduling whoopsie, this week I’ll be playing both the part of a) your beleaguered full-time math teacher wrapping up his year and b) your ebullient summer camp videographer.Â No one’s exactly sure how this one’s gonna look but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve much blogging.Â I’ve got a long-form post ready to drop on y’all later this afternoon, but after that things are gonna be a bit light around here.

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