I'm not sure I understand your point. Can you elaborate?

Justin, I'm probably going to blog about that soon, but I'm also thinking of proposing a "New to Educon Orientation" session for next year with suggestions for how to "break in" to the community.

David, I think the process is more of an ongoing, constant thing. I also find that as a relatively new administrator, I'm doing a lot of adjusting and refining of my role and how I practice it.

It also seems to me that we have two options with regard to our role in the field and the profession: we can allow the circumstances to drive us, or we can stay ahead of it and define our own place in the system. I'm choosing to do the latter as much as I possibly can.

I'll be honest--until I visited Washington, it didn't really occur to me to dig that far back into our history. What I had learned in grad school about the roots of our educational system led me to believe it wasn't very relevant any more. I'm glad to find out I was wrong about that.

I believe the field of gifted education itself is a victim of its own success. Schools have struggled for decades with the reality that different kids learn differently and have tried different ways to address this. In the early part of the twentieth century, the prevailing thinking was that we needed to stratify education. Intelligence tests were designed to find those kids who could best benefit from academics and separate them out from the others who had a more practical, vocational destiny so that each could be assigned to the right track to prepare them for what the professionals had determined was their path in life.

We now believe that every child can learn and that tracking is wrong. But we still have to account for the fact that in a typical fourth grade classroom, for example, we may have both a student who struggles to read a simple sentence and a student who is writing a novel.

Gifted programs got a reputation for being the "fun" class that kids went to while everyone else was stuck with the drudgery. But doing "fun" enrichment activities is hardly the only way to address the needs of gifted kids, and to say that all we have to do is label all kids gifted and give them all the "fun" enrichment is counterproductive. Instead of thinking of any kids as a clump based on the artifical label we attach, what if we look at the individual, figure out what that child (singular) needs in order to learn, grow, and thrive in school, and then do it?

MB, I'm interested to hear from you in a few weeks when you've been using this 10-second strategy consistently in your classes. I'm wondering how your students' responses will change over time as they realize that you're going to ask them every day and the reflection becomes an automatic (and embedded) part of the classroom culture. Please report back and let us know!

MB, my pleasure. I'm glad to have your voice here as part of my conversation!

Great point about the mission and vision. I'm always curious when I see those posted in a school if the students have any idea what they are or what they mean. Try walking around a building sometime and asking, "So tell me about the school's mission" and see what kind of response you get!

I just completed a vision and mission statement for our gifted program, and I intend on making it an integral part of everything we do. I will talk about it, I will use it, and it will be a living document, not something laminated in the front of the procedure manual that no one looks at.

I counted 22 different mini-vignettes in the Microsoft video. By my reckoning, 7 of them (one third) are purely about individualized marketing to consumers. I was also thinking about how all of this could actually work. It would rely on having one universal standard for all devices (tablets, key fobs, tabletops, tools, VR goggles, virtual wallets, etc.) to communicate wtih each other. I'm guessing Microsoft would like to be the one to define that standard.

Interesting vision of the future Microsoft has.

I agree with MB and Andrew that a shared vision is more important than a corporate-driven one. Since schools are preparing tomorrow's visionaries, perhaps we ought to be at the cutting edge of participating in that sharing.

In the world that MS envisions, everything around us will be aware of our presence and our data. The table in your kitchen will know what your schedule is for the day. Presumably much of that data will be networked and available to others, especially marketers (and probably Facebook). If we're going to tackle the real-world problems this future is going to bring, kids need to start understanding the context in which those problems will arise.

What's the implication for schools and teachers? I think it would be irresponsible for us to say we don't want to learn new technology, or that technology is an "extra".

So many schools have in their mission statement something to the effect of developing future citizens. But what does it mean to be an informed, productive member of society today? What will it mean tomorrow? I don't think we can any longer say, "I just teach math" or "I just teach 3rd grade." We need to get this so that our kids have a shot at mastering it.

There is so much worth teaching, that we'll never be able to teach it all, so we have to stop trying. Let kids start driving more of what gets taught. Keep the core curriculum really core—only the absolute essentials (though agreeing on what those should be is part of the problem). I think part of my point is that if we design that core properly, kids will naturally and automatically pursue the rest on their own.

As an aside, I'm thinking teacher professional development needs to do the same, but that's a whole other blog post… :)