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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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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