Our new mission calls for an "elegant synthesis of humanity and technology" as descriptive of our educational technology efforts.  We chose these words because we don't want to just shove information technologies into classrooms and consider that 21st Century learning.  The application of tehcnology must have a certain purpose, the strength of work well done and of course a nice presentation.  All three of these are present at Wilder Elementary's online movie (the Colors of Wilder) and art show.  The purpose is to share the wonderful activities and products with people beyond immediate driving distance to the school.  Parents at work can get a glimpse of students in class; grandparents out of state can enjoy their latest family artwork and other educators can appreciate the activity through the online presentation.  The art itself is very well done and a credit to the school, the teachers, students,...

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Although I am not a Language Arts teacher, I get an opportunity to work with quite a few... and my role means I spend all my time engrossed in just what is different when information technology gets into the mix.  So, in light of CDE producing the new draft of Colorado Academic Standards for Reading, Writing and Communicating, these points have come to mind as my input to this work-in-development.

While I really like the layout of this document and the overt intention to make 21st Century skills integral to the new standards, I think the draft is still wholly contained in the 20th Century.  At this point, none of the skills and applications of skills represent anything that was not possible as a teaching philosophy in 1909... and while that universiliality is positive, I do think there are aspects of 21st Century literacy that were science-fiction in 1909.

So I would suggest the following 3-point plan for 21st Century writing skill:

1. Writers must be able to defend the validity of the...

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What are your summer plans?  A little reading, perhaps some exploring... even some writing?  That's what I have in mind and maybe some of you will join me!  I am signed up to run the Pikes Peak Ascent with my father and brother.  Training to run 13 miles up to the top of a 14,110' mountain is no small task and will take a considerable amount of training during the summer.  I hope to make it up to or near 14,000 feet at least six times in preparation for the race.  We will head into the mountains of Colorado to train by camping at high altitudes and taking as many runs up the big peaks as we can.

How can you come along?  Visit my personal blog: http://summitseeking.blogspot.com/ where I will keep tabs on the runs. We will carry some communications technologies with us because I noticed last year that I could often hit cellular services from the summits of many Colorado peaks.  So here's what we'll do:

My father (Fred Maas) will carry a small Ham...

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As approved by the Board and complete with relevant appendices, the ET-IL Plan as linked here represents the plan submitted to the Colorado Department of Education on April 30th, 2009.  The plan calls for us to embark upon a writing initiative we call Inspired Writing which I have dedicated some time to in previous posts.  The project is gaining momentum and it is very exciting to see how our Learning Services team is solving training and curriculum problems... and how our staff are responding so positively.  You can access the plan by clicking HERE

The Board of Education has formally approved the Educational Technology and Information Literacy plan during action on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009.  The ETIL Plan carries the new vision for Educational Technology in the district:  Inspired Learning.  These two simple words shall be our beacon of light and our expectation of the ultimate result of the use of technology in our schools: to inspire learning; for student work to be inspired learning; for our staff and community to be inspired by learning.

 Our Mission:

Through an elegant synthesis of humanity and technology, we will inspire a command of information, masterful communication, creative productivity and ethical citizenship in every learner.

 "Through an elegant synthesis of humanity and technology"

Here we state that this is about people who use technology to empower their lives and learning.  The technology must...

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LPS makes a serious committment to provide quality educational services to all students and all really does mean all.  Recently, I visited a PACE and SCIL program site in the district (I will leave out the location and names for privacy reasons) where students with severe disabilities were working with their teacher, Donna Millar, to create photo-stories for their reading.  Mrs. Millar and her team have an endless supply of patience and love for their students who return their affection with hard work and joy.  Mike Porter had worked with the class to develop the photo-stories with the student narrations which they celebrated with kids from other classes in the school.  Every single one of the PACE and SCIL students made a video.  From the student confined to a wheelchair who advanced his slides by moving his cheek against a sensor to the student who was so full of energy it was hard to keep still during any activity, each one created a work of art to share their reading skills.

...

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Perhaps not literally, but practically, Mr. Moore and Ms. Vander Velde have invited their 5^th graders into their professional learning community.  In this blog post from East, these innovative teachers have sent out the 5^th graders to look at blogs linked from this site to other classrooms.  The students are to review what they see other classes doing, evaluate it and return to their own blog with new ideas.  This assignment was only just made last Friday and I have seen the first two blog posts.  The student comments are constructive and demonstrate a clear understanding.  The second blog post in the list shows the student discovered Anne Smith’s High School English blog and was taken with her activities.  I wonder what Ms. Smith thinks of 5^th graders evaluating her work?  I’m betting she’ll be quite pleased… and eager for these students to become 9^th graders 
[;-)

Go check out their work at the Dragon Pagoda and if you like what you see, leave them a comment on their Guest Book.  Way to go Chris Moore and Nikki Vander Velde!

Walking into a Spanish III class at Heritage High School, I am immediately thrust into a self-directed learning environment. The students are arranged around the classroom in five areas. Some of the desks have EeePCs and some just have some handouts. Students then spend 10-15 minutes at each station completing the learning activities readied for them. One area is dedicated to “escuchar” or listening activities. The EeePCs are logged online and pointed to a web site that has Spanish language audio clips to listen to. The students listen to the audio streams and answer comprehension questions. Another space has EeePCs logged into a university web site that has conjugation drills ready to go. In other spaces, students read out of the text and write in their journals. The classroom buzzes with quiet conversation as students complete activities in small groups and manage their learning. You can overhear students sharing that this is not the only classroom that uses technology... “yeah, our physics class uses Skype every day to call a high school so they can take our class with us too.”

Technologies abound here... EeePCs and textbooks... journals and blogs. All used to support students learning Spanish. Great job Mary Kay Cummings!

We proposed our new educational technology project to the Board of Education last night.  Using the vehicle of the Educational Technology and Information Literacy plan, we proposed to place netbook computers in every 5th grade, every 6th and 9th grade Language Arts classroom in the district.  Building on the successful support of the Learning Services' Universal Literacy Frameworkin five 5th grade classrooms at East, Field, Moody, Whitman and Hopkins Elementary schools, we proposed a project we call Inspired Writing.

The ET-IL Plan (still in draft form) is a highly structured document to meet the requirements of the Colorado Department of Education.  Our attempt to write a document that both meets the requirements but also communicates our vision is presented here.  The Board was receptive to our presentation Thursday night and we...

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I awoke this morning with a term in my mind that characterizes my online philosophy:  I am an Internet Forager.  Yes, I thrive on living off the natural bounty of the Internet.  I prefer to seek out online services that are free or very low cost for my enterprises.  But like foraging in the wilderness, there are some things to be careful about.  For example, if you find yourself in the mountains of Colorado, you are likely to encounter mushrooms of many shapes and colors.  And while some might look pretty appetizing, most mushrooms are chock of full of chemicals that can make you sick and even kill you... so unless you REALLY know what you are doing (I'm talking Master's Degree level of knowledge) you do NOT want to ever forage off mushrooms.

With that in mind, I began thinking about what kind of similar advice I'd offer to other Internet Foragers... a digital equivalent to "Don't eat the mushrooms!"  Here's a beginning that I know my fellow foragers can build upon:

Guard your personal information. ...

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