Barnes Mark - Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School

What educators say about Mark Barnes, Jennifer Gonzalez and Hacking Education

Got a problem? Need a practical, innovative solution that you can implement tomorrow? Look no further. In Hacking Education , Mark Barnes and Jennifer Gonzalez combine decades of teaching experience with hacker ingenuity, mixing a nifty recipe for success in any school. Hacking Education is more than a how-to book for best practices in the classroom. Its a blueprint for finding more time in your day, creating a culture of readers, solving daily tech woes, building rapport with students, and turning chaos into peace. Barnes and Gonzalez dont just solve problems; they turn teachers into hackersa transformation that is right on time.

Don Wettrick , author of Pure Genius: Building a Culture of Innovation and Taking 20% Time to the Next Level

With Hacking Education , Mark and Jennifer have created something really powerful! By identifying current problems in education and proposing creative solutions, theyre helping educators get past the obstacles that often impede progress, and instead focus in on what really counts: student learning.

Paul Solarz , author of Learn Like a Pirate: Empower Your Students to Collaborate, Lead, and Succeed

There arent many quick fixes in education. But Barnes and Gonzalez have identified 10 surprisingly doable ways to hack the status quo in schools. This highly readable book tackles problems that lead to teacher frustration (like long, pointless meetings and turning students into numbers) as well as goals that educators strive toward but often find tough to manage (such as flipping the learning and collaborating with other teachers). Hacking Education accurately describes the challenges schools are facing and provides creative, cutting edge, and easy-to-implement solutions that create a big impact in a short time period.

Angela Watson , author of Unshakeable: 20 Ways to Enjoy Teaching Every Day...No Matter What

Jennifer and Mark are two educators that know how to transform some of the most frustrating teacher problems into easy-to-implement solutions. Each hack in this book is presented in a clear and logical manner. I found myself agreeing over and over again with the sensibility of their ideas. Yet, as we all know, good ideas in education sometime get stopped in their tracks. Thankfully Jennifer and Mark have provided simple steps that anyone can take to overcome resistance and pushback against the doubters. Hacking Education proves that anyonefrom a first year-teacher to a 30-year veterancan be a more effective teacher and be a positive agent of change in their schools culture.

Brian Sztabnik , host of the Talks with Teachers podcast and writer at Edutopia

Hacking Education is more than just a book for teachers and school leaders. Mark Barnes and Jennifer Gonzalez provide a simple blueprint for smart and efficient changes that every school can benefit from regardless of its current situation.

A.J. Juliani , author of Learning by Choice: 10 Ways to Transform Your Classroom Into a Student-Centered Experience

Insightful... Schools and teachers that want to go from good to great must read Hacking Education . Youll be delighted by how simple it is to apply these hacks into your workflow. Barnes and Gonzalez provide a refreshingly modern take on a system that has become old and scleroticour schools. Their writing is succinct; it resonates and smacks you with the deliverables.

Daniel McCabe , Assistant Principal Accompsett Middle School, Smithtown, NY

Hacking Education

2015 by Times 10 Publications

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing by the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For information regarding permission, contact the publisher at .

These books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for use as premiums, promotions, fundraising, and educational use. For inquiries and details, contact us: .

Published by Times 10 Publications

Cleveland, OH

http://hacklearningseries.com

Cover Design by Tracey Henterly

Interior Design by Steven Plummer

Editing by Georgina Chong-You

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015908743

First Times 10 Publications Printing

Contents

A Hackers Approach

Replace Meetings with a Backchannel and a Bin

Boost Teacher Collaboration with a Public Chart of Open Door Lessons

Escape the Chaos and Maximize Planning Time

Make Classroom Management Enduring and Real with a Simple Notebook

Fix Small-Scale Tech Problems with a Team of Students

Nurture New Teachers with a Circle of Mentors

Bypass the Hurdles of Flipped Learning by Keeping It in School

Create a Culture of Readers with Free Books for Everyone

Put Learning on Display with Social Media

Collect a Different Kind of Student Data

Acknowledgements

W ed like to thank the amazing people in the Talks With Teachers community, especially those in the TWT Voxer group. You inspired us to turn a discussion about problem solving into a book. Thanks Lisa Hubler, Joe Mazza, Starr Sackstein, Abby Morton, Barbara LaBarre, Roxie Oberg, Mark Levezow, Lisa Tremonte, Barry Sanders, and the tech-savvy students at Richardsville Elementary for your contributions.

Mark: I would like to thank my wife, Mollie, and my children, Ethan and Lauren, for their ongoing love and support. Thank you Dave Burgess for letting me pick your brain. Special thanks to the amazing Jennifer Gonzalez, the best Hacker I know.

Jennifer: Im grateful to Mark Barnes for giving me such a great opportunity, for believing in this project, and for showing me what a true trailblazer looks like. A big thank you to my kids, Mia, Ruby, and Danny, for putting up with Mommy being on the computer so much. Finally, I want to thank my husband, Ralph, for thinking every idea I come up with is possible.

About the Hack Learning Series

Hackers dont take realities of the world for granted; they seek to break and rebuild what they dont like.

Sarah Lacy, Author/Journalist

A hacker is someone who explores programmable systems and molds them into something different, often, something better. Hackers are known as computer geekspeople who like to take applications and algorithms to places their designers never intended. Today, hackers are much more. They are people who explore many things both in and out of the technology world. They are tinkerers and fixers. They see solutions to problems that other people do not see. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg might be considered technologys greatest hackers. No one taught them how to build an operating system or a social network, but they saw possibilities that others couldnt see.

The Hack Learning Series is a collection of books written by people who, like Jobs and Zuckerberg, see things through a different lens. They are teachers, researchers, and consultants; they are administrators, professors, and specialists. They live to solve problems whose solutions, in many cases, already exist but may need to be hacked. In other words, the problem needs to be turned upside down or viewed from another perspective. Its fix may appear unreasonable to those plagued by the issue. To the hacker, though, the solution is evident, and with a little hacking, it will be as clear and beautiful as a gracefully-designed smartphone or a powerful social network.

The Story Behind the Series

In 2014, I had an idea about three problems in schools that I felt could be easily fixed. What they needed was the perspective of a hackersomeone unaffected by the problem, who viewed its underlying issues from a different angle. I wrote a short blog post identifying the problems and included very easy fixes. The post sparked plenty of thoughtful discussion, and someone suggested that schools have more concerns, similar to the ones in the blog postenough, perhaps, for a book. Some time later, three school problems became 10. All they needed was space on a page and a hackers finesse.