Thanks to everyone for joining me for lunch today to go over a few skills in Word and in Google Docs. Here is the video recording of our session. It looks like the DimDim web system froze up on the video. The audio of the session is fully recorded.

Open the blog post to watch the embedded video



We have much more comprehensive material online at this link and I encourage you to check it out:

http://www.littletonpublicschools.net/forStaff/TechnologyResources/HandoutsandHelp/tabid/246/Default.aspx

and here:

http://www.littletonpublicschools.net/forStaff/TechnologyResources/MondayModels/tabid/6984/Default.aspx

Thanks again everyone. I will continue to look to use web conferencing tools to extend the training and record the event for...

A new book showed up in my mailbox yesterday... Dr. Yong Zhao writes from his personal experience being educated in China and now serves as a distinguished professor at Michigan State University.  His message takes on the fallacies of strict adherence to measuring the success of education only through test scores.  He describes the advantages of the American education and how China and many other countries whose test scores are superior to ours... are in fact working to emulate our method.  But far from advocating for the status quo, he shares his views on what we need to do to revamp our system to be prepare students for a globalized economy.  He cherishes the individual and the independence that are hallmarks of being an American.  He advocates for supporting a passion for learning... well, he tells it better than I can.  Here is a video:

http://www.mobilelearninginstitute.org/21stcenturyeducation/films/film-yong-zhao.html

...

While it seems so many of THE Journal's articles these days are really advertisements for the sponsors associated, I usually find the editorials enlightening.  Particularly this one from this month's THE Journal about the planning for the NAEP Technology Literacy assessment.  Editorial Director Geoffrey Fletcher warns of an impending train wreck as the NAEP is planning to merge three very large, and pretty disparite definitions of Technological Literacy for the planning of a national test due 2012.  Curious, I went to the NAEP report available here: http://ow.ly/jYYg

Below, I've copied the frameworks of the standards for review.  Many of these seem to suggest that every high school graduate should have a basic engineering background.  I find this interesting and question whether this is taking something that is vitally important to have among our graduates and perhaps over-emphasizing it to be a general education skill?  I certainly agree we need more and really good engineers... but should everyone...

For the past three years, the staff in the ITS department have contributed to, edited and most importantly, adopted a set of guidelines and principles for our work with technology in schools.  I am a big fan of Stephen Covey's Principle-centered Leadership approach and have tried to embrace these ideas in my efforts to provide leadership here.  It is clear to me that the combined intelligence, experience and innovation that exists in our staff far exceeds the capacity of the few of us who have the duty of leadership can provide LPS.  By empowering our team, we become more effective.  But empowerment can be scary for some leaders and the way I have been able to feel confident that the decision-making the ITS staff make on a daily basis is aligned with my vision is codified in this document.

We call it a doctrine because verbally it is too easy to confuse principles with principals [;-)  This is the latest version but is a living document.  I share this because I am proud that our team upholds these tenets...

You know what is incredible daunting? Writing notes to a bunch of Language Arts teachers. I can feel the red pencils sharpening! However, now that we’re a couple of weeks into Inspired Writing, I just wanted to share a few resources and observations. The first is an article that, to me, strikes a balance between the challenges and opportunities of literacy in the 21^st Century. Among our challenges is the rising expectation that all our students will need to proficient writers.