Hack Learning

Experienced educator and Hack Learning creator Mark Barnes explains three easy ways to create your own TQZ, or Teacher Quiet Zone, and escape the chaos of your hectic work day. Based on a concept from the bestselling book, Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School, Mark details what a TQZ is, where to find it, and how to start using it immediately. The Teacher Quiet Zone can be used by non-educators too and is a marvelous way to reduce stress and decompress from the craziness of your work day. This is Hacking Chaos with a TQZ.

In the new Hack Learning Series book,Hacking Leadership: 10 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Learning That Teachers, Students, and Parents Love, Joe Sanfelippo and Tony Sinanis discuss how important it is for leaders to be present and engaged with all stakeholders. Hack Learning host Mark Barnes shares the authors' 5 strategies for moving beyond traditional leadership and engaging with all stakeholders daily. This is 5 Quick Tips for Becoming a Lead Learner.

In another brief Hack Learning 101, Mark Barnes provides a quick tip for looking inside the lives of educators and schools, using Periscope live streaming video. Mark also explains how to break down the walls of teaching and learning with monthly PassTheScopeEDU events--live streaming videos from more than a dozen educators, opening the doors to their classrooms and homes, in order to reveal exactly how they teach and learn. This is Hack Learning 101.

School district superintendent Joe Sanfelippo and professor emeritus John Bennett explain how old-school mandates that stifle teacher autonomy can destroy school and work place culture. Hack Learning creator Mark Barnes rants about outdated leadership practices and challenges leaders to trust the people they hire to do the job the best way they know how. This is Hacking School Culture.

Nashville teacher Mike Stein shares the power of Genius Hour with Hack Learning host Mark Barnes, who passes along some quick tips for starting your own Genius Hour. Learn how to inspire students to pursue their passions and, more important, how to intrigue kids to believe those passions are valuable parts of independent learning. This is 101: Genius Hour for Passion Projects.

Mark Barnes shares 10 teaching strategies for amazing leanring in May -- a time when many teachers and learners shut down for the summer. Mark highlights some of the best ways to engage learners until the end of the school year and beyond, featuring 10 tweets from a live #HackLearning Twitter chat, facilitated by Jennifer Hogan, a co-moderator of the #LastBell movement. See all 10 strategies at HackLearning.org. This is Hacking the End of the School Year.

As long as report cards exist, teachers must supply a number or letter grade at the end of a grading period. For teachers who operate no-grades classrooms, based on conversation about learning and ongoing narrative feedback, report card time can be a struggle. If we're not assigning grades throughout the year, how do we suddenly assign a grade for a report card? Hack Learning creator and no-grades classroom advocate Mark Barnes provides 5 strategies for successful student self-grading at report card time. This is Hacking Report Cards.

In this 101 session, Mark Barnes explains the power of Twitter hashtags for creating your own tribe of like-minded teachers and learners. Mark, whose tweets reach more than 3 million newsfeeds monthly, explains how you can create any hashtag you like on any subject of interest and find people who will tweet their thoughts and resources about the topic daily. Soon, you'll have your own expert tribe that you can learn from 24/7. Hack Learning 101 appears in your Hack Learning Podcast feed every Thursday, teaching you one amazing resource or skill in about 101 seconds.

Education hacker, Mark Barnes, never envisioned himself as a podcaster, believing that producing a podcast would be far too time-consuming and very difficult. After producing twenty-eight episodes for the Hack Learning podcast, in just over two months, attracting more than 7,000 listeners, Barnes explains how he records, uploads, and publishes Hack Learning episodes in just minutes a day. This is Hacking the Podcast.

With so many websites and mobile applications available and more cropping up daily, teachers sometimes struggle to find the right tool to engage learners. Longtime educator, author and Cult of Pedagogy publisher, Jennifer Gonzalez, shares simple strategies for finding the best EdTech for your students, as she discusses her new Teachers Guide to Tech -- an interactive library of hundreds of powerful tools and ways to use them in any classroom. Gonzalez reveals one shockingly simple hack for better integration of digital learning tools. This is Hacking EdTech.