To Learn Twice

I have been at the new job for about 6 months and the Superintendent asked for a mid-year recap. Here is an overview of what we have don in the last 6 months. There is more coming soon too!

Updates in Educational Technology since July 1st include:·Blackberry roll-out to all District administrators, principals, assistant principals, athletic directors, deans, and technology staff.This has increased the ability to communicate via e-mail and has increased productivity.·Currently, we are half-way through a new technology planning process which has involved students, teachers, staff, and community members.·Department chairs all have new laptops this year and have been using them for staff development and evaluations.·Each building is now running i-Tech sessions, which provide for staff development opportunities for integrating technology into the curriculum.Nearly 150 teachers, administrators, and staff are participating throughout the district this year.Topics covered have included use o…

Here is what went out Friday as the next step in the tech planning process. I have linked to the planning graphic organizer. I am not releasing the actual requests to the public though. The process is starting to gather some steam...

Suggestions or ideas are always welcome!

We are reaching the cut-off point for all of the tech requests. I wanted to describe what will happen during the next step and outline the schedule from here. After the window for tech requests closes department chairs have a couple of weeks to review and revise submissions. I will then organize and group the items while adding some supplemental information. I will use all of that information to create a technology "wishbook" that will have all of the requests in it. That book will be circulated to all of the technology planning committee members and the department chairs. I am attaching a pdf of the requests that have come in to this point and excel spreadsheet that summarizes that same inf…

Well the snow has arrived and we are reaching that point in the year where it is good to curl up on the couch with a good book - or maybe a good blog :) I will talk about the following things below - skip to what you might find interesting 1 - What is a blog 2- Where can I find good blogs to read? 3 - How can I keep track of all of this stuff? Will RSS help? Do I need an Aggregator? Where do I get that stuff anyway? 1. What exactly is a blog? (from Wikipedia) A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive…

Last night was a huge day for our district. Our board of education approved us to move forward on a project that will revolutionize our web presence and what we can do on the web.

Here are the main parts:

A main site for each school in the district governed by a CMS.
A branch in the site for each activity/sport/teacher/etc... with the same CMS tools
Each teacher will have a portal page that will bring their customized content to them

Here is the real kicker -

Each student will have their own portal page that will populate with important information from around the school - and they will have the ability to post content to it - AND SHARE that content with other teachers and students

This will be a collaborative web 2.0 environment that gives our teachers and students the power to change the way they work in a classroom.

American Eagle has given me permission to post part of the proposal so anyone who is interested can get a better idea of the direction we are heading in.

When we started this p…