Podcast Share – UEN Homeroom with Dr. Scott McLeod

If you go to ISTE23 in Philadelphia this year, make sure that you make some time for Playgrounds. ISTE Playgrounds are short table presentations made by experts all centered around the same topic.  These interactive sessions help everyone make personal connections to content and give you time to ask your questions to experts who can help you build your understanding.

Case in point, at ISTE22 in New Orleans, I visited the Coaching Playground with a few of my Utah educator friends. They were coaches in a local district and I took them to this space to explore what coaches in other areas of the US are doing to help their teachers. While they were exploring different tables and listening to the presenters, I found myself at Dr. Scott McLeod’s table where he was discussing the 4 Shifts Protocol. If you are unfamiliar with the 4 Shifts, it is a companion piece to SAMR developed by Dr. McLeod and his colleagues. Where SAMR is a theoretical framework, 4 Shifts gives teachers direct questions to answer about their technology use in their learning environment to connect their pedagogy to their technology use. It provides a structure rather than just a framework. I had not heard too much about the 4 Shifts and immediately dug into Dr. McLeod and his work by asking a half dozen questions. It was great to talk to the direct expert about the content.

Flash forward ten months, Dani and I had the pleasure and honor to bring Dr. McLeod, who is on sabbatical, to Homeroom to talk about deeper learning, the 4 Shifts, and what is working in schools. The episode was a rollercoaster as Dr. McLeod had a great answer for every point and brought in great research to back up his points. One point that kept cropping into my mind was Dr. McLeod’s work doing site visits to innovative schools across the country. For instance, you will hear him talk about an interdisciplinary school in Colorado that is working on clothes-washing solutions for astronauts. This project includes heavy use of STEM, but also English to document the work they are doing and provide ample backing for their process, CTE for the mechanical processes, and even social studies to understand the impact of prior missions. These schools are doing work that is very small in idea, but deeply expansive in how much they cover per project. Check out the full episode at this link.

Also, check out Dr. McLeod’s great blog Dangerously Irrelevant, and his podcasts Redesigning for Deeper Learning and LeaderTalk.