A Huge Thanks to the Conveners and Volunteers at K12Online

I want to thank the four conveners, Darren Kuropatwa, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Dean Shareski, and Wes Fryer, the 40 teams of presenters, and all of the unnamed volunteers who gave of their time and energy to put together the K12 Online Conference this year. While the conference has not ended yet (as of this posting), I know from my experience last year how much time, energy, and effort it requires to make this conference the success that it is. In addition to the great content provided, the change I like most is the shift to a 20 minute maximum for each […]

Rethinking Professional Development

I have been thinking about how we deliver technology professional development at our school. There are currently two goals that we are trying to accomplish: Making sure teachers are aware of new tools so that they can become competent users of technology for themselves. Making sure teachers can use these tools to enrich and transform their classroom for the community of learners during that physical time and space. To date, we have employed following methods: Using email/blog to make teachers aware of different tools and sites. We sometimes use this in a broad sweep, sometimes in a targeted fashion. This […]

K12 Online Conference Starts Today

One of the most transformative conferences for me, over the past two years, is the K12 Online Conference (k12onlineconference.org). It began last Monday, with the posting of the Stephen Heppell’s keynote conversation, “It isn’t the 20th Century Anymore, So Why Should We Teach Like As Though it Was“.  Some of you heard refered to as working with the OWPP on their school design project, during our North Shore Educational Summit. Today and for each of the next nine school days, four presentations will be posted online for your viewing. The conference conveners have made the presentations available in audio only, […]

The Harkness Classroom for the 21st Century

Over the past six months, we have been investigating several converging ideas: Campus Wide Long Range Space Planning Questioning of Schedule and Time in all three of our divisions Discussion of the role of technology – tablets, laptops, projectors, network, and services to support learning These conditions are converging, suggesting that we are nearing a near perfect storm that potentially could transform our learning environments and provide us with the framework which will enable us to enter into our second century of existence in 11 years. I am really excited about the possibilities. Our Head of School has been interested […]

Web 1.5 + Inspiration = Potentially Great Product

One of the tools that I have and enjoyed is Inspiration. I have used this product since 1989, when a forward thinking local school system purchased it for its teachers and I had to train them on how to use it. I have always been a visual thinker, which is one of the reasons that I loved my Macintosh computers and why I think that tablet technology is an increasingly interesting tool for users.  The ability  to create diagrams and then simply create outlines, the ability to export a series a diagram into a web site were some of the […]