Dangerously Irrelevant

Video - The Digital Education Revolution in NSW

The New South Wales province in Australia is on a quest to outfit every Year 9 to 12 student with a customized Lenovo netbook by 2012. It is expected that over 200,000 computers will be distributed to students and teachers. If you’re interested, you can read more about the project or listen to a podcast about the initiative. 

I think this is a GREAT idea. Guess which high school graduates will be better prepared for a digital world: those who get to use computers in interesting and empowering ways on a regular basis or those who don’t?

Below is the publicity video for the initiative (thanks, John Strange, for leading me to this). Happy viewing, everyone!

New podcast channel - UCEA Interview Series

The University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) has started a new podcast channel and will be interviewing top educational leadership scholars from around the world about school administrator research and/or preparation.

The first live podcast will occur tomorrow and will feature Dr. Karen Seashore, who holds the Rodney Wallace Professorship for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota. Karen will be discussing the linkages between P-12 school leadership and student academic learning outcomes. As a former faculty colleague of Karen’s, I know her well and anticipate that this will be a great conversation.

• Listen live to the interview with Dr. Karen Seashore
• Download the interview afterward
• Learn more about UCEA’s interview series

We here at CASTLE have been working with UCEA to get this up and running. CASTLE is one of several UCEA centers; I also serve as UCEA’s Associate Director of Communications. Stay tuned to the podcast channel to hear future interviews and, while you’re at it, sign up for UCEA’s Twitter feed if you’re interested in more school leadership resources.

Happy listening!

4 Guys Talking - Episode 6 (Chuck Heinlein)

If you’d like to know what a good statewide 21st century school leadership development program looks like, have we got a podcast for you!

This morning we had Episode 6 of 4 Guys Talking, the ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. We spent the first 40 minutes talking with Chuck Heinlein, Director of the Leadership Center for 21st Century Schools at the West Virginia Department of Education.

I think this was one of our best podcasts to date. Chuck shared a wealth of information about the statewide principal institutes that he’s running, and we learned a ton about the legislative supports, Department of Education commitments, funding and policy mechanisms, and other supports that are in place in the state. I have the sense that West Virginia really is trying very hard to move its schools (and its school leaders) forward in a thoughtful, progressive, sustainable manner.

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live. I’m not sure when our next episodes will be but I will blog about them when I know. Happy listening!

Update: I deleted the embedded BlogTalkRadio player that used to be in this post. Since it started playing automatically, I thought it was too annoying!

4 Guys Talking - May 26 guest, Chuck Heinlein

Chuck Heinlein, Director of the Leadership Center for 21st Century Schools at the West Virginia Department of Education, will be our guest tomorrow on the 4 Guys Talking podcast. Chuck has an incredible job. Over the past few years he has run hundreds of administrators in his state through year-long institutes on 21st century schooling. As far as I can tell, West Virginia is far ahead of other states when it comes to investing in a statewide model for 21st century leadership development.

You can join us and Chuck on May 26, 1pm Central, for the live podcast. Feel free to call in and join the conversation yourself and/or help us brainstorm some questions for Chuck beforehand. The podcast also will be available for download afterward. Thanks!

Top 10 K12 Online 2008 podcasts for busy school administrators

Here are my top 10 2008 K12 Online Conference podcasts for busy principals and superintendents (in no particular order). These are the K12 Online presentations that I think are most likely to interest, educate, and entertain administrators as well as make them think!

1. There’s something going on here you need to know about… (Dennis Richards)
2. Current leadership models are inadequate for disruptive innovations (Scott McLeod)
3. The voices of School 2.0: School reform as described by the words and images of the people of the Science Leadership Academy (Chris Lehmann)
4. I like Delicious things: An introduction to tagging and folksonomies (Chris Betcher)
5. Telling the new story: Leverage points for inspiring change orientation (David Warlick)
6. Oh the possibilities (Lisa Parisi)
7. Games in education (Sylvia Martinez)
8. Facilitating technology integration: A synthesis of the research (Jon Becker)
9. “What did you do in school yesterday, today, and three years ago?” (H Songhai)
10. Parental engagement in the 21st century: Leveraging Web 2.0 tools to engage parents in non-traditional ways (Lorna Constantini & Matt Montagne)

Load these onto an iPod, hand it to a busy school administrator, and say, “Here are some presentations that I think you’ll enjoy while you’re exercising or driving around. After you’ve listened to a few, let me know what you think!”

Yesterday

• See my list of the top 20 TED Talks podcasts for busy school administrators.

See also

• The Moving Forward wiki’s Podcasts page

Related posts

• Creating digitally-interested administrators
• Professional development for the leaders
• Great education podcasts meme

Top 20 TED Talks podcasts for busy school administrators

Here are my top 20 TED Talks podcasts for busy principals and superintendents (in no particular order). These are the TED presentations that I think are most likely to interest, educate, and entertain administrators as well as make them think!

1. Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web
2. Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom
3. Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library
4. Jonathan Drori on what we think we know
5. Mae Jemison on teaching arts and sciences together
6. Patti Maes demos the Sixth Sense
7. Clay Shirky on institutions vs. collaboration
8. Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
9. David Perry on videogames
10. Stuart Brown says play is more than fun
11. Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves
12. Charles Leadbeater on innovation
13. Michael Merzenich on re-wiring the brain
14. Dave Eggers’ wish: Once upon a school
15. Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us
16. Alan Kay shares a powerful idea about ideas
17. Howard Rheingold on collaboration
18. Erin McKean redefines the dictionary
19. Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning
20. Ann Cooper talks school lunches

Load these onto an iPod, hand it to a busy school administrator, and say, “Here are some presentations that I think you’ll enjoy while you’re exercising or driving around. After you’ve listened to a few, let me know what you think!”

Stay tuned

• Come back tomorrow for my list of the top 10 2008 K12 Online Conference podcasts for busy school administrators.

See also

• The Moving Forward wiki’s Podcasts page

Related posts

• Creating digitally-interested administrators
• Professional development for the leaders
• Great education podcasts meme

4 Guys Talking - Episode 5 (Lane Mills)

This morning we had Episode 5 of 4 Guys Talking, the new ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. We spent almost the entire time talking about university educational leadership preparation programs.

Our first 40 minutes was spent with Dr. Lane Mills, Associate Professor at East Carolina University (ECU) and board member for the journal,Innovate. Among other things, Lane talked about being the ‘lone wolf’ faculty member when it came to trying to prepare his program’s graduates (future school administrators) for the demands of the digital, global age. Lane essentially said that

Making change in higher education is like pushing a rope.

We continued to talk about the difficulty of getting our faculty peers on board ideologically and, even when they are, also getting them the training and knowledge that they need but currently lack. There’s little support for faculty even when they do want to move in this direction.

After Lane left us, we continued to talk about the struggles that educational leadership programs face as they work to prepare appropriately-empowered graduates. One issue that we started to discuss - and probably should spend some more time on in a later podcast – is the desirability of having certain technology and/or leadership expectations for admission of our incoming students (who are typically teachers or principals) and/or explicitly-stated desired outcomes for our graduates regarding technology leadership.

Jen Hegna challenged us right at the end, stating:

What can k-12 schools do while higher ed is trying to figure [out] their leadership programs? It is hard for us to wait...we need change now!

She’s got us dead to rights, I’m afraid. Other than for her to keep plugging away on her end, I don’t have any great answers right now for her concern. It’s going to take a while for those of us in academe to get our act together (if ever we will).

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live. Our next show will be on May 26, 1pm to 2pm Central. We’ll be talking with Dr. Chuck Heinlein, Director of the West Virginia Institute for 21st Century Leadership, which is sponsored by the West Virginia Department of Education.

[I'm still reworking CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel, which will include all previous and podcasts (including 4 Guys Talking). I'll post about it when it's ready (probably not until later this summer).]

Happy listening!

Frerichs v. Mao: Showdown at the netbook corral

Chad Frerichs, Director of Technology for the Okoboji (IA) Community Schools, listened to Episode 4 of the 4 Guys Talking podcast and disagreed with Jeff Mao’s assertion that netbooks were not viable options for 1:1 laptop programs.

Here is Chad’s Tweet:

Here is Chad’s follow-up e-mail to me:

We've not been using them yet. I have been demoing varioius units for the last 2 months for consideration for purchase for next school year. I have been loving them. I have to admit I was skeptical and had the same reservations going in, but I have proven myself wrong. I have upgraded each demo unit to XP Pro (we have available licenses), and they have all ran smoothly. I await Win 7 which is supposed to have Atom specific things in it. I have been using Google Earth, Movie Maker, Gimp, OpenOffice.org, etc. without issue. Granted Google Earth is slow during the 3D stuff, and Movie Maker takes a little longer to do massive amounts of transitions/effects, but it is very workable. I have made a 'news cast' on each of the netbooks demoed with multiple transitions/effects with the built in camera and mic. A project I envision students doing. I have edited photos in Gimp and applied multiple filters without issues.
 
I have been proven wrong about these things. I think they are a viable solution for us, and possibly others. Are there drawbacks? Absolutely, but viable none-the-less. I think we will be ordering 72 or 96 of them for next year.

Your thoughts?

4 Guys Talking - May 11 guest, Dr. Lane Mills

Dr. Lane Mills, Associate Professor at East Carolina University (ECU) and board member for the journal, Innovate, will be our next guest on the 4 Guys Talking podcast. Lane's working hard to integrate digital technologies into the Educational Leadership program at ECU. He also does a great deal of technology-facilitated data-driven decision-making work with school districts.

You can join Lane and us on May 11, 9am Central, for the live podcast. Feel free to call in and join the conversation yourself and/or help us brainstorm some questions for Lane beforehand. The podcast also will be available for download afterward. Thanks!

4 Guys Talking - Episode 4 (Jeff Mao)

Yesterday was Episode 4 of 4 Guys Talking, the new ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. We spent the entire time talking about 1:1 laptop programs. Our first 50 minutes was spent with Jeff Mao, Learning Technology Policy Director for the State of Maine. Among other things, Jeff talked about funding models, professional development for teachers and administrators, pedagogical frameworks, challenges faced by the state over the past few years, and, perhaps surprisingly, the relative lack of emphasis on standardized test scores as measurable outcomes for the initiative. He also shared his strong feelings about laptops v. netbooks for 1:1 programs. After Jeff left us, we spent the last 10 minutes debriefing, sharing thoughts, and raising further questions.

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live yesterday, either by calling in or listening over the Web. Future dates/times are as follows (all times Central):

• May 11, 9am to 10am
• May 26, 1pm to 2pm

[Yes, I'm still reworking CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel, which will include all previous and podcasts (including 4 Guys Talking). I'll post about it when it's ready (probably not until summer).]

Happy listening!

Photo credit: An Apple in the dark 2

4 Guys Talking - Jeff Mao (Maine 1:1 laptop initiative) joins us on Monday!

I’m pleased to announce that Jeff Mao, Learning Technology Policy Director for the State of Maine, will be our first-ever official guest at 4 Guys Talking. Jeff will be joining us on Monday, April 20, at 2:00pm Central to share the latest on Maine’s statewide 1:1 laptop initiative, including its recent push to expand the program to include all students in grades 7 through 12.

We have started brainstorming some questions for Jeff on our wiki page. Feel free to add yours! You also may wish to first listen to Jeff’s conversation with the EdTechTalk crew back in June 2007. Hope you’ll join us on Monday!

Photo credit: An Apple in the dark 2

4 Guys Talking - Episode 3

This is a long overdue post that Episode 3 of 4 Guys Talking, the new ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE, is now available. As usual, our conversation ranged a bit but our focus was on reinventing schools. Justin Bathon said that we may have been a little negative. You’ll have to listen to see if you concur.

FYI, you’ll see that we had some hosting glitches at the beginning. If you start at 5:45 into the podcast, you’ll skip all of our confusion!

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live, either by calling in or listening over the Web. Future dates/times are as follows (all times Central):

• April 20, 2pm to 3pm
• May 11, 9am to 10am
• May 26, 1pm to 2pm

My hopes to rework CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel (which will include all previous and podcasts such as 4 Guys Talking), are on hold until the end of my semester. I'll post about it when it's ready.

Happy listening!

4 Guys Talking - Episode 3 is today

FYI, Episode 3 of 4 Guys Talking is today at noon Central. Follow the link to the live Internet stream, which also includes the call-in number if you want to give us a ring!

4 Guys Talking - Episode 2

Yesterday was Episode 2 of 4 Guys Talking, the new ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. Like last time, our conversation ranged widely. Among other things, we discussed whether or not university educational administration programs should bear some blame for the poor leadership that exists in many schools, the fact that most school district technology leaders have had little to no leadership training, the unfortunate and continuing marginalization of technology to its own ‘silo’ within school organizations, and efforts within our respective states to train school administrators to be better technology leaders.

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live yesterday, either by calling in or listening over the Web. Future dates/times are as follows (all times Central):

• April 1, 12pm to 1pm
• April 20, 2pm to 3pm
• May 11, 9am to 10am
• May 26, 1pm to 2pm

I'm still reworking CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel, which will include all previous and podcasts (including 4 Guys Talking). I'll post about it when it's ready.

Happy listening!

4 Guys Talking - Episode 2 is today

FYI, Episode 2 of 4 Guys Talking is today at 2pm Central. Follow the link to the live Internet stream, which also includes the call-in number if you want to give us a ring!

4 Guys Talking - Episode 1

Thursday was the inaugural episode of 4 Guys Talking, a new podcast series from CASTLE. The podcast consists of me, Jon Becker, David Quinn, and Jayson Richardson talking about a variety of education (K-12 and higher ed), technology, and/or leadership issues. We're all Educational Leadership professors who care about things like digital technologies, 21st century skills, and the like. Unfortunately, we're an extremely small minority in academia...

Thursday's conversation ranged widely. Among other things, we discussed whether undergraduates are truly the 'digital natives' that many say they are, universities' implementation of open source course management systems, how to facilitate K-12 teachers' buy-in toward technological initiatives, and who's to blame for the bad leadership that exists in many schools (a topic we'll likely return to in our next episode).

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle 

We do the podcast live on BlogTalkRadio, which essentially allows you to host (for free) an Internet version of live talk radio, so you can call in and participate if you wish. I think we can handle two or three callers at once besides the four of us (thanks to Jared and Lance who joined us for Episode 1!). Future dates/times are as follows (all times Central):

• March 9, 2pm to 3pm
• April 1, 12pm to 1pm 
• April 20, 2pm to 3pm 
• May 11, 9am to 10am 
• May 26, 1pm to 2pm 

FYI, I'm reworking CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel. It will include all previous and podcasts (including 4 Guys Talking) so you'll be able to subscribe via RSS or iTunes. I'll post about it when it's ready.

Happy listening!

Help wanted: Podcasting superintendents?

Does anyone know of some superintendents who are podcasting? If so, would you drop a URL and/or some contact info in the comments area for this post? Doug Johnson and I are looking for some examples that we can show other superintendents…

Social Media in Plain English and Mr. Winkle

I’m a big fan of the videos from Common Craft. I use them constantly in my classes and workshops. Their newest video is Social Media in Plain English:

I also ran across the Mr. Winkle Wakes video today (hat tip to Jon Becker):

Interview: Mike Vitelli, The Gaming Krib

As promised, here is my interview of Mike Vitelli, CEO of The Gaming Krib:

• Conversation 29: Interview with Mike Vitelli

Happy listening!

What would you ask Mike Schmoker?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

In May I have the glorious opportunity to interview Mike Schmoker, guru of data-driven education and author of Results, The Results Fieldbook, Results Now, and The Crayola Curriculum. And, yes, I’m going to try and record it as a podcast.

I know that many of you are familiar with Mike’s work. If you were me, what interview question(s) would you ask him?

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

In May I have the glorious opportunity to interview Mike Schmoker, guru of data-driven education and author of Results, The Results Fieldbook, Results Now, and The Crayola Curriculum. And, yes, I’m going to try and record it as a podcast.

I know that many of you are familiar with Mike’s work. If you were me, what interview question(s) would you ask him?

This stuff is too easy not to use

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I talked my department chair into letting me do a 10–minute technology demonstration to my faculty colleagues at each of our monthly department meetings. My last one was titled ‘Fun With Audio.’ It went something like this…

Hi everyone. You know how you open up your word processor software, type some stuff, and then hit Save and your file’s somewhere on your hard drive? Let’s take that same thought and extend it to audio…

[open up Audacity with the LAME MP3 encoder already installed]

This is audio software. It’s like your word processor but for voice.

[hold up tabletop mic]

This is a microphone. $30 at Best Buy. I plug it in here and I’m ready to go. I click on this record button, start talking [blah blah blah], hit stop when I’m done. Voila! A sound file!

[play back file]

What can I do with this? Well, I don’t know about you but I can talk faster than I can type. So maybe I’d like to send a message to my class…

[demonstrate a quick voice memo to students - blah blah blah]

Click on Export as MP3, put the file where I want it, and send it as an e-mail attachment. Ta da! I’ve just freed up 20 minutes of my day. What else might we do with this?

[talk about voice instructions for online course management systems, sending voice e-mails instead of text e-mails, doing interviews for research studies, interviewing local experts for department web site, etc.]

[expand my faculty colleagues’ horizon by quickly mentioning Skype and the ability to record long-distance phone calls for free; offer to help anyone install Audacity and get up and running; drop a hint that I’m going to do a hands-on podcasting clinic in the spring]

Done! Thank you very much!

[next month: YouTube QuickCapture!]

This stuff is getting too easy not to use. Faculty members in colleges of education don’t tend to be very tech-savvy. With the right approach, however, we can get them using, and thus exposing future educators to, these tools. My audio demonstration took about eight minutes, I never mentioned the word ‘podcast,’ and I had a ton of questions and interest at the end.

We can do this. Share the love, share your knowledge: adopt a professor today.

Great education podcasts meme

Here are five great education podcasts I’ve listened to recently (in reverse chronological order), each from a different source:

1. July 2007 – Angela McFarlane’s speech at the Building Learning Communities Conference
2. June 2007 – Bruce Dixon’s speech at EduComm
3. January 2007 – Ken Kay’s speech at FETC
4. January 2007 – Steve Hargadon’s interview of Chris Lehmann
5. November 2006 – Richard Elmore’s speech at UCEA (I made this one and keep listening to it!)

I’m thinking this might be a good meme, so I’m tagging the following bloggers:

• Clay Burell
• Scott Elias
• Wesley Fryer
• Dennis Harter
• Alice Mercer

Meme guidelines

1. Choose five of your favorite education podcasts. Any kind of education podcast is okay - students, teachers, administrators, professors, etc. - feel free to pick ones that you’ve made yourself! Try and pick specific podcasts, not podcast feeds.
2. Tag others for the meme. Feel free to participate even if you haven’t been ‘tagged.’
3. Please use a Technorati tag of educationpodcast or podcasteducation.
4. Please add your selections to the Moving Forward podcasts wiki page (and create categories as needed) so that others can benefit too!

Administrator Supershow, Round 2

This post is overdue, but last week I had a great time (again) with the "Women of Web 2.0" talking about K-12 technology leadership issues. If you haven't yet listened to the podcast, it's a great one (of course I'm biased!).

I dare you to listen to this

In fact, I triple dog dare you...

• The resilience of teacher culture (6:28)

[Dr. Elmore's full speech and other excerpts are available on my Podcasts page]

Interview with Phala Daniel

I have had the pleasure of working with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) on several occasions over the past few years, primarily in conjunction with its Principal Technology Leadership Institute (PTLI), which is a collaborative venture with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). I really enjoy the CPS folks. They face numerous challenges but are some of the most dedicated educators I know.

Some of the principals participating in the data-driven decision-making strand of the PTLI (which I helped design) had some questions that they wanted me to answer about data-driven leadership, so today I had a very pleasant conversation with Phala Daniel, who works in CPS' eLearning office along with Gerry Beimler (who is one of our CASTLE graduate certificate students). I recorded our 37-minute discussion and present it for your listening pleasure:

• May 25, 2007 CPS DDDM Podcast (36:36, 33.35 MB .mp3)

FYI, here's one example of a protocol for a data-driven team meeting (as mentioned in the conversation). Hope you enjoy the podcast. Let me know what you think!

Interview with Sara Dexter

On Sunday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Dr. Sara Dexter. Sara is an Assistant Professor of technology leadership in the Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at the University of Virginia. Sara had the students in her Technology Legal, Ethical, and Safety Policies course listen to the podcast I did with Tim Wilson in September 2005. Her students had some additional questions about legal issues and digital technologies in schools, so she arranged a follow-up podcast. If you're interested, here's the link to the podcast of our conversation:

• May 6, 2007 - Interview with Dr. Sara Dexter

Interview with Wesley Fryer

On Monday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Wesley Fryer. We talked about blogging, LeaderTalk, CASTLE's Principal Blogging Project, and technology leadership issues. If you're interested, here's the link to Wesley's podcast of our conversation:

• Wesley's post
• Actual podcast

Women of the Web Administrator Supershow

As promised, here is the link to the Women of the Web 2.0 podcast and chat transcript from March 20, 2007:

• Women of the Web 2.0 Administrator Supershow

Thanks to all who joined us, including Pete Reilly (who was a last-minute but very welcome addition) and everyone who participated in the quite-active chat space.

For those of you who are interested, here is my "money quote":

• Scott McLeod's money quote (responding to a question from Vicki Davis; 1:44 mp3)

I believe we're scheduled to rejoin the Women of the Web 2.0 on May 1 for a follow-up session. I'm looking forward to it!

Y'all come back now, hear?

How many times did I hear the title of this post when I was growing up in Virginia and visiting my relatives in the South?!

Hope you can join me, Miguel Guhlin, and Doug Johnson (and maybe a mystery guest?) at EdTechTalk this evening for the Women of Web 2.0 broadcast. We will be talking about issues related to K-12 technology leadership and administrators. The fun starts at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific. You also can log in to the chat room (use the link on the left) to interact with us and our hosts, Vicki Davis, Cheryl Oakes, Jen Wagner, and Sharon Peters. If you can't join us this evening, you can visit the Women of Web2.0 archives later on and download our podcast.

Three data-savvy principals

Today I uploaded the second CASTLE Conversations podcast for our data-driven decision-making podcast series. After feeding them a yummy lunch, I had a great discussion with Joan MacDonald, Linda Perdaems, and Colleen Wambach, three data-savvy principals here in Minnesota. If you enjoyed our previous conversation with Dr. Jan Witthuhn, you'll like this one too!

The intent of CASTLE Conversations is to interview folks that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility. Keep giving us feedback and let us know what you think. As always, we're interested in your nominations for interviewees. If you know someone interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

100% proficiency on old skills?

Here's something if you have a 60- to 90-minute block of time with educators...

100% Proficiency on Old Skills? A Candid Conversation About the Demands of NCLB and Preparing Students for the New Economy

• Step 1 - download the handout (jot a few notes)
• Step 2 - watch Did You Know? (6:05) (become a little overwhelmed)
• Step 3 - see the slides and listen to the podcast (34:20) (challenge the status quo)
• Step 4 - watch The Human Network (1:32) (remain hopeful)
• Step 5 - start discussing
• Step 6 - hand out either the short version or the long version as a take-away
• Step 7 - share widely!

P.S. This presentation is better than the one I did last week.

CASTLE Conversations

We've started a new initiative we are calling CASTLE Conversations: interviews with interesting people about technology and/or leadership issues. In some ways it will be very similar to the awesome work that Steve Hargadon is doing (and that others are doing). However, we're mostly going to interview people that have expertise and are doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility.

Our first interview was with Dr. Jan Witthuhn, the Superintendent of the Mounds View Public Schools here in Minnesota. Jan is highly-regarded for her data-driven decision-making expertise. Give us some feedback and let us know what you think. We're also taking nominations for interviewees: if you know someone local and interesting that you think we should interview, get in touch!

Happy listening!

Hangin' out with MPS

Listen to this post!

I had the pleasure of spending last Friday morning with the Minneapolis Public Schools Technology Planning Steering Committee. Coleen Kosloski, Director of Information Technology Services, gave me the task of energizing the group and giving them some things to think about.

We started with Karl Fisch's Did You Know? presentation. I then talked for a little over half an hour about the changes we're seeing in American society, essential workplace skills for the 21st century, Web 2.0, gaming, and other fun stuff. If you're interested, here are the materials from the session:

• Did You Know?
• My PowerPoint presentation slides
• Podcast of my presentation (35 Mb; 37:40 with intro)

TIES - The blogging administrator

On Tuesday at the TIES conference I gave a presentation titled The Blogging Administrator. I discussed the benefits to principals of blogging generally, highlighted our Principal Blogging Project specifically, and had two principals, Drs. Jan Borelli and Nancy Flynn, speak to the audience about their blogging experiences (Jan connected from Oklahoma City via Skype).

The materials from this presentation are available on my TIES 2006 web page, including both my PowerPoint slides and the podcast I made of the presentation.

[FYI, for those of you who are tracking our progress, we're about halfway to our goal of getting 100 new principals blogging in 100 days]

TIES - Can schools regulate cyberbullying, harassment, and social networking?

Yesterday at the TIES conference I had the honor of giving the lunchtime presentation (i.e., I was the only presentation during that time slot). I gave a presentation titled Can Schools Regulate Cyberbullying, Harassment, and Social Networking? I discussed some general legal principles related to off-campus student cyberspeech, highlighted the only six court decisions I can find on this topic, and answered a lot of great questions from the audience.

The materials from this presentation are available on my TIES 2006 web page, including both my PowerPoint slides and the podcast I made of the presentation.

Chicago digital youth afterschool program

Gerry Beimler, who is Manager of Leadership Development Programs for the Chicago Public Schools Office of eLearning and one of our School Technology Leadership graduate certificate students, forwarded me this story about the digital afterschool program at North Kenwood / Oakland Charter School in Chicago. Grants from the MacArthur Foundation are facilitating incredible digital experiences for the students in this program, most of whom come from socioeconomically-disadvantaged familes.

The program operates on the assumption that digital technology can be used as a constructive force and, possibly, a necessary force to equip children with the technological literacy skills they will need to be competent in this age of iPods, cell phones, e-mail, computers and countless other gadgets. The program uses cutting-edge educational strategies to introduce middle school students to the creative uses of digital technology. It has existed for only one year, but students in the program are already creating robots, programming video games, transmitting podcasts, recording original rap music and producing digital documentaries.

Read the article - there's some very cool stuff happening in this program. Now all we have to do is replicate what's happening in this building after school into the regular school day and across multiple schools and districts. Gerry, thanks for sharing this inspiring tale from Chicago.

Administrator blogs or podcasts?

I'm on a search for administrator blogs and/or podcasts, particularly those that are using such tools to communicate about school / district issues to their communities.

Anyone know of any principals, superintendents, or central office administrators who are doing this (other than the phenomenal work being done at Meriwether Lewis Elementary School (OR) by Tim Lauer and his staff)?