To Learn Twice

Well I have been away from blogging for a while. We had a crazy summer around here and everyone is back in place. I am setting a goal to offer more to the professional community this year (more details on how later - still piecing this together). I have been in a reflective mood over the last few days. It has been 14 months since I moved into this new role and I am trying to assess my impact on 207. I came here to work with a large organization to impact change. I'm not quite sure yet if it is all coming together perfectly or if it is tenuously held together with paperclips and bubblegum. I guess only time will answer that one. There have been a lot of people involved in moving this mountain and we are much further ahead in infrastructure, hardware, software, staffing, and planning. I feel like we are ready for the hardest part - using all of that to impact how learning occurs in the classroom. We will be working as a technology staff along with teachers over the next few we...

I am preparing a presentation for the AzTEA conference on May 3rd. I will be presenting on the connection between communicating among students, parents, and teachers and the impact on student achievement. Well it appears that for once I was ahead of my time. I did this little thing called a dissertation back in 2003-2004 when I was still in the science classroom. At the time nobody thought much of my topic. Probably because it was geeky and nobody really cares about dissertations. What I looked at was how communication with parents and students through my website impacted instruction. Big deal right? Here is the big deal (and I am still beginning to truly understand pieces of this myself) I was using Web 2.0 technologies from 2001-2004. OK I know according to Wikipedia web 2.0 didn't get coined until 2004. Yet check this out as I go back and look at my dissertation I was writing in it about the 2-way communication I was having with my students through my website. Get it - 2...