Preparing to host a conference

If hosting a conference, the single worst thing that I believe you can do is not be prepared for your guests technological needs. So far, this year, I have attended two conferences at the Sharaton in Clive and at both conferences the amount of wireless networks needed have not been enough to handle the amount of participants. This creates a very frustrating environment for the guests, leading to a true "disconnect" (pun intended) from the content being presented. Multi-tasking is no longer an option for some, but a requirement to truly engage the tech-savvy learner. My suggestion to you, if you are going to host, is to place the infrastructure of your network at the forefront of your planning sessions.

Google Reader

The big learning so far for me at the Boot Camp has been Google Reader.  I knew there was a way to have the information come to you from different sites, but had never really taken the time to worry about learning how to do so.  Google Reader will allow me to have a plethora of information at my fingertips that I can now tweet to our educational team at #boonehs or for personal use (fantasy football news, etc.).

Social media

Education must be flexible and continually change if we are to keep pace with the world today.  Tweetdeck has become an essential part of my educational growth over the past month (re: why I have not blogged over the past month).  Here is a training video of the program itself being used with IPad, something I will have within the month as we have ordered it through the school as a tool for our HS administration team.

Access Granted!

Fantastic news through our technology committee meeting; today we have been granted full access to our blogging sites in order to implement these into our educational discussions and professional growth.  Wiki pages are open and expanding in use by our faculty and our new district website is growing in it's effective use daily.  I am very excited about the changes in technology at Boone CSD.

To Share with Faculty...

Woke up this morning to the following idea as a presentation to our faculty:

What is the goal of Education?

            To assist the student in learning the Core Concept Standards, which in turn will assist them towards the next stage of their lives - becoming successful citizens of our world.

Then what does it mean to fail?

            A student fails to learn the required Core Concept Standards in your class.

Why does a student fail?

1)   The student did not learn the basic concepts earlier in his/her education that are needed to understand the concept standards you are teaching.

2)   They want to fail (attention seeking behavior).

3)   They are not engaged in the classroom and therefore tune out.

Why would a student want to fail?

           

I struggle with the thought that any student really wants to fail, but it they choose to fail it is usually due to issues in the students personal life (psycho-social, social-emotional).

How do we stop a student from choosing to fail?

           

            By building a relationship with the student, we can gain insight into their personal life issues and then assist them through what they are dealing with.  By building this relationship, we can then discover the students’ interests and develop a meaningful classroom experience specific to them.

Whose job is it to do this?

            All of ours; the days of being a content-only teacher are over.  Education is a service industry and we must provide the best-personalized service possible or parents will make the choice to educate their children elsewhere.

            “Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world; It will be better than any single university” – Bill Gates, August 6^th, 2010

According to Gates, our textbooks are three times longer than the equivalents in Asia. And yet they’re beating us in many ways with education. The problem is that these things are built by committee, and more things are simply added on top of what’s already in there.

Gates said that technology is the only way to bring education back under control and expand it.

Reflective questions: 

What do these statements mean for the future of high school education? educators? you right now?

Church Small Group

Last night while at small group I heard a fantastic analogy of life.  Life is like driving in the dark, you can only really see what is in your headlights.  The curves are coming, but a lot of times you don't see them until you are right up on them. There are things going on all around you, but you can't see those either because they are not on the road you are lighting up to see.

This led to some contemplation on my part.  If we can only see what is in our headlights, do people who are educated, communicative, collaborative, and reflective have their brights permanently on instead of on dim?

First TwitterChat

I had the opportunity to experience my first twitter chat today #edchat.  What an unbelievable learning experience!  This was an incredible sharing and caring experience regarding education and I could only sit and attempt to keep up with the amount of information being tweeted about.  This is week 2 for me in the twitterverse and I can't believe how out of touch I feel in regards to technology after feeling on top of the subject only one year ago.  Our world as we know it has and is changing in leaps and bounds and, as an educator, this is something I am getting on board with now.  Students need to be creators of their own knowledge and sharing information using twitters, blogs, wikis, etc. as tools in conjunction with proper training on how to use (not only how tech wise but how reflectively).  I will be sharing more throughout this year with our faculty at Boone High (who now have their own laptop computers to work with) on how implementation of these communication tools can impact the learning, engagement, and growth of our students.

First Posting

After months of contemplating, I have decided to make the jump into blogging as a way to share information on new events occurring in education at my current high school, the state level, the national level, and worldwide.  I also will be sharing my thoughts on the never ending struggle to maintain balancing in my life as a Christian husband, parent of four children, and active educational administrator.  You may ask where the title of this blog came from?  It was taken from a document that was shared (and I have attached) with the leadership team at Boone by our current superintendent, Dr. Brad Manard, and which I believe shows the incredible amount of ingenuity and creativity it takes for educational leaders in Iowa (and across the world) to manage our current educational system in its current form. Enough for now, time to balance some time with my wife (she has just returned from the hospital visiting our youngest who was born 2 pounds 3.5 ounces on June 1st - more on this later).