My previous post was about the technological advancements we have seen in LPS. This post is about our people. During a year that saw the closure of two schools and budget cuts in the midst of a terrible financial crisis nationally, our staff have continued to pursue excellence every day. Here are some accomplishments that come to mind:

Karl Fisch, Arapahoe High School, was recognized as the ISTE Technology Leader of the Year for 2009 and will be recognized at the NECC conference next week. We were proud to nominate him and we support his innovative work at the school. His colleagues Anne Smith, Kristin Leclaire, Maura Mortiz, Brian Hatak and others are setting the pace for 21st Century learning both in the district and around the world. Karl will be a featured speaker at the TIE Conference.

Steven Newell, Sandburg Elementary, was just recognized with the APEX Top Tech Teacher award for his work with technology in robotics, 21st Century learning, engineering...

Sometimes, we move so quickly that we fail to take time to take stock of our progress.  Here are some facts about technology progress at Littleton Public Schools:

All schools are connected via a Fiber-Optic network operating at 2 Gigabit speeds thanks to good partnership with the cities of Littleton and Centennial and the Comcast corporation.

Internet access for the district is at 100 Megabits per second and will go to 200 Megabits in July with the addition of a second link leveraging Erate discounts.

All LPS schools are covered end to end and top to bottom with wifi service funded by support from the Board of Education and the LPS Foundation.

The wifi services include a network we call PODNet which allows any IP device to connect to the Internet through our Internet Filter... indeed all of our high schools encourage kids to bring their own devices like iPods and laptops to come to school without powering down.

Our Internet Content filter system is synchronized with our Active...

I created this video by remixing a previous video and inserting a couple slides hoping to create a quick soundbyte advocating for 21st Century skills within our developing standards. This link contains a draft of the 21st Century Skills and Abilities that I am most directly addressing in hopes that revision here will then drive updates in the thousand plus pages of Draft Standards: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeassess/documents/OSA/stand_rev/21st%20Century%20description%20draft%20Jan%2028.pdf

Several years ago, Dan Pink spoke at the Colorado Association of School Executives summer convention and I had an opportunity to work with him.  We engaged in a kind of "fishbowl" keynote where we had an active blog site available and while Mr. Pink was speaking, people engaged in dialog about his points.  Some folks just posted questions while others engaged in full debate in real time.  Mr. Pink paused after about an hour and asked me to share some of the blog posts which he then addressed... thus making the keynote specific to the audience in the room.

This activity was patterned after a fishbowl blogging activity that Karl Fisch (one of our school technology leaders in LPS) where students blogged during fishbowl activities rather than taking reflective notes during a discussion.  Later that year, Karl Fisch, Anne Smith, Maura Moritz, Dan Pink and I corresponded about some freshman level classes reading A Whole New Mind for class.  We got the book added to the Board-approved list and the teachers...