Showing posts with label maine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maine. Show all posts
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Who are you following in the world of educational technology?
Find someone on this list to follow over the summah and your personal learning will increase substantially. Why, because it will be your choice, your motivation! You will find this information at EdTech K-12. I am going to choose someone new to follow to expand my horizons and to get some different ideas. While I already follow some great bloggers I am going to push myself to learn about new ideas from new people. Who will you follow?
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Shrinking budgets! What is a Superintendent to do?
Shrinking budgets! What is a superintendent to do?
cross posted at TechLearning.comPermanent link
Chuck McLaughlin photo
In Southern Maine, the superintendents took action! After a county meeting, the superintendents asked their curriculum coordinators and technology coordinators to get together and see where collaboration would benefit the group.
For five meetings, spread across five months, this eclectic group met, offered ideas, discussed, created an action plan and went to work and designed a professional development day in the middle of August for county administrators. (Since most of the work was done during the work year there wasn’t an additional cost associated with this planning.) The group surveyed local administrators to see what they would be interested in, from a list of our suggested ideas.
With survey results in hand, a little bit of skepticism, the group continued with the planning. We had the normal questions, would anyone give up a summer day to attend? would teachers agree to be presenters for the administrators? would we be able to offer a valuable workshop for this audience?
This may be trite, but build it, do your homework, and they will come! We tailored the workshop to the administrator’s needs, we offered a workshop site where most people only traveled 20 miles to attend, we demonstrated the ISTE standards. You can download the standards for student, NETS-S the standards for teachers, NETS-T and the standards for administrators, NETS-A.
There was an audible gasp from the group, when a statement was made about the building leader being responsible for driving (and modeling) the change for technology integration and meaningful work by staff and students. The whole day was about driving this change and providing secure examples of rich technology lessons and what an administrator should look for during a walk through or teacher and lesson evaluation.
We talked about purpose and purposeful use of technology. There were over 60 administrators in the room participating in a technology rich day, all using their MLTI laptops. The survey results at the end of the day were full of anticipation for a new school year, excitement about taking some of the knowledge back to their buildings, and appreciation for what they learned throughout the day. A bonus, this group of administrators have their own personal learning network.
All the administrators joined an Edmodo social network where they can experience the continued virtual conversation. All the web 2.0 tools the presenters shared had a dual purpose, as the tools were FREE and something that an administrator could use when they returned to school. We will be offering two follow-up dine and discuss evenings in early autumn and early spring to continue the conversations and learning. Stay tuned.
Web 2.0 Tools used during the workshop day.
Wallwisher http://www.wallwisher.com
Edmodo http://www.edmodo.com
Twitter http:/twitter.com
LOTI http://loticonnection.com/lotilevels.html
H.E.A.T. http://loticonnection.com/HEATframework.html
To find more examples of other leadership initiatives, see the post by Dr. Scott McLeod,
Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University, also the Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE).
Sunday, May 31, 2009
MLTI Student Conference 2009
Please check out the results to our survey questions here http://docs.google.com/View?id=djtmqgv_57cm2k2bf4
A few months ago, I along with Kern Kelley, Alice Barr, and Sarah Sutter, were asked to be part of a presentation to 800 MLTI students at a student conference on the University of Maine campus. After several sessions on SKYPE and planning with conference organizer Jim Moulton, the 5 of us, were going to present to an auditorium of 800 participants in an interactive fashion. How can 800 participants interact with the presentation? With Google online tools! Wait a minute! I know we have a hard time when we get 20 students in a classroom using a wireless access point in one room, we freeze up, have slow speeds getting to a website, but with 800, oh my!
Jim assured us that the University would get their best thinkers and doers working on this. Dr. Bruce Seegee and the fine engineers from CISCO took on this mission and would actually join us in the session to watch the bandwidth use and troubleshoot if necessary. This would be a perfect opportunity for all the conference participants to observe what happens behind the scenes to make things work at their schools and for all to see that when using technology we always have a backup plan.
Our presentation was the final session at the end of a very busy and productive day. Our session was titled (http://archives.mainelearns.org/studentconference/)
Block 3 - Only Google is big enough - Everyone, all together, one room, one session!
o In 2009 Good Questions are More Powerful Than Good Answers - Google Super Session (Alice Barr - Yarmouth High School; Kern Kelley - MSAD #48; Cheryl Oakes - Wells Ogunquit CSD; Sarah Sutter - Wiscasset High School)Maine's own team of Google certified educators will be leading the whole gang through a series of activities that will demonstrate the power of the Google Toolset. Sure, we all use Google, but wait till you see what you can do when you understand how to leverage Google's power to go beyond getting answers and learn how to use Google to ask your own thoughtful questions of people in your class, in your school, around your state, or even around the world!
As part of the preparation, the five of us, created a series of questions in a Google Form, and sent the questions out to our worldwide networks, in 10 days we collected information from all our personal networks, and after some clamoring this information is published for all to share and use. Thank you to all who participated in our survey. We hope you will create a survey that we can participate in at some point in the future.
A few months ago, I along with Kern Kelley, Alice Barr, and Sarah Sutter, were asked to be part of a presentation to 800 MLTI students at a student conference on the University of Maine campus. After several sessions on SKYPE and planning with conference organizer Jim Moulton, the 5 of us, were going to present to an auditorium of 800 participants in an interactive fashion. How can 800 participants interact with the presentation? With Google online tools! Wait a minute! I know we have a hard time when we get 20 students in a classroom using a wireless access point in one room, we freeze up, have slow speeds getting to a website, but with 800, oh my!
Jim assured us that the University would get their best thinkers and doers working on this. Dr. Bruce Seegee and the fine engineers from CISCO took on this mission and would actually join us in the session to watch the bandwidth use and troubleshoot if necessary. This would be a perfect opportunity for all the conference participants to observe what happens behind the scenes to make things work at their schools and for all to see that when using technology we always have a backup plan.
Our presentation was the final session at the end of a very busy and productive day. Our session was titled (http://archives.mainelearns.org/studentconference/)
Block 3 - Only Google is big enough - Everyone, all together, one room, one session!
o In 2009 Good Questions are More Powerful Than Good Answers - Google Super Session (Alice Barr - Yarmouth High School; Kern Kelley - MSAD #48; Cheryl Oakes - Wells Ogunquit CSD; Sarah Sutter - Wiscasset High School)Maine's own team of Google certified educators will be leading the whole gang through a series of activities that will demonstrate the power of the Google Toolset. Sure, we all use Google, but wait till you see what you can do when you understand how to leverage Google's power to go beyond getting answers and learn how to use Google to ask your own thoughtful questions of people in your class, in your school, around your state, or even around the world!
As part of the preparation, the five of us, created a series of questions in a Google Form, and sent the questions out to our worldwide networks, in 10 days we collected information from all our personal networks, and after some clamoring this information is published for all to share and use. Thank you to all who participated in our survey. We hope you will create a survey that we can participate in at some point in the future.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Resistant to Change?
See if this applies to you?
old snow shoes, new snowshoes, how hard is that???
BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing
Many of you are probably thinking it is a no brainer, new snowshoes! Well, I am going to make a connection here from old wooden snowshoes, comfort, a known quantity and any new technology, uncomfortable, an unknown and new, just plain new.
Why?
Why did I drag my old snowshoes out of the basement to go snowshoeing with friends?
They were there.
I knew how to use them.
I knew they would work.
Purpose
What was my purpose for snowshoeing on a winter day?
I wanted to go snowshoeing on a windy day when the ski lifts were not operating.
I wanted to be with my friends.
Results
What were the results?
I grabbed my ski poles, for balance and breaking trail.
I put on my snowshoes.
I hiked perfectly in the snow.
I slipped and slid all over the ice.
My friends did not slip and slide with their new and improved technologically tuned snowshoes.
This is pretty funny, you are the geeky girl and you have the oldest equipment!
Reflection
What did I think after the trip?
All during the hike my friends commented on how unwieldy my old snowshoes were.
Several people commented during the hike, oh are those your grandfathers snowshoes?
I did slip and slide out of control on the ice while my friends with the new 'technology' were able to move through snow and ice with ease.
How does this relate to technology and our classrooms? We need to plan. We take out the tried and true. It has always worked. It will work again.
We continue on until someone in our network, asks us to join them. We may be reluctant, we may go along with them giving the excuse that we don't have time to try something new, the old way has worked..... but I ask you to ask yourself.
Why are you doing something?
What is your purpose?
How are your results?
After you reflect will you do this the same way again?
That is all we can ask of ourselves, if we can affirm that what we are doing is the best and we have the results to prove it, then that is all we can ask of ourselves. However, if we have a network where we can share and reflect and try something new, compare the results then that may be the best that we can do for our students. Are you still resistant to change?
Not me, I purchased some .... some new pink ultra modern snowshoes!
LLBean photo.
old snow shoes, new snowshoes, how hard is that???
BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing
Many of you are probably thinking it is a no brainer, new snowshoes! Well, I am going to make a connection here from old wooden snowshoes, comfort, a known quantity and any new technology, uncomfortable, an unknown and new, just plain new.
Why?
Why did I drag my old snowshoes out of the basement to go snowshoeing with friends?
They were there.
I knew how to use them.
I knew they would work.
Purpose
What was my purpose for snowshoeing on a winter day?
I wanted to go snowshoeing on a windy day when the ski lifts were not operating.
I wanted to be with my friends.
Results
What were the results?
I grabbed my ski poles, for balance and breaking trail.
I put on my snowshoes.
I hiked perfectly in the snow.
I slipped and slid all over the ice.
My friends did not slip and slide with their new and improved technologically tuned snowshoes.
This is pretty funny, you are the geeky girl and you have the oldest equipment!
Reflection
What did I think after the trip?
All during the hike my friends commented on how unwieldy my old snowshoes were.
Several people commented during the hike, oh are those your grandfathers snowshoes?
I did slip and slide out of control on the ice while my friends with the new 'technology' were able to move through snow and ice with ease.
How does this relate to technology and our classrooms? We need to plan. We take out the tried and true. It has always worked. It will work again.
We continue on until someone in our network, asks us to join them. We may be reluctant, we may go along with them giving the excuse that we don't have time to try something new, the old way has worked..... but I ask you to ask yourself.
Why are you doing something?
What is your purpose?
How are your results?
After you reflect will you do this the same way again?
That is all we can ask of ourselves, if we can affirm that what we are doing is the best and we have the results to prove it, then that is all we can ask of ourselves. However, if we have a network where we can share and reflect and try something new, compare the results then that may be the best that we can do for our students. Are you still resistant to change?
Not me, I purchased some .... some new pink ultra modern snowshoes!
LLBean photo.
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