ISTE SIG-IS Announces Summer Reading Selection

As a new member of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Special Interest Group (SIG) for Independent Schools executive board, I have been involved in planning for a new project, a Summer Book Reading Selection. It was at my suggestion that we  selected  A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for A World of Constant Change by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown for this summer’s read. For me, this book is a great summer read. It is fairly short (140 pages), very readable, and available in paperback or eBook versions. Jonathan Martin, who I am assuming is a […]

Proposal – Renovate our Blended Learning Environment

As our newly renovated Upper School is nearing completion, my thoughts and attention turn to the spaces that we have used to build our  blended learning environments. Do the tools that we have chosen support the goals and compliment the goals of the physical spaces? Are there shifts in our framework that we need to move to in order for these goals to be more congruent with each other? First, our newly renovated high school space has been built to support a technology rich environment which supports collaboration and intellectual collisions between learners in the environment, both adults and young […]

Rethinking Furniture – Use of Media:scapes

Over a year ago, when we were planning for our newly renovated high school space, we had the opportunity to test Steelcase’s new Media:scapes, a collaborative workstation that easily allows for 4-6 users to connect their computers, iPads, or netbooks to a “puck”. Pressing on the puck, one can easily project their screen to a flat screen display that all of the users can see. You can read about my initial experiences using the Media:scape from January 2009 (http://vvrotny.org/2010/01/12/test-driving-collaborative-workstation/) Our first Media:scape was delivered just over two weeks ago and we have been begun using this device various classes. After […]

Repeat – Four Questions that Need Answers

Last week as the results of conversations I had or blog posts that I read, there were five ideas that reemerged and reentered my thinking. In this post, I am going to update my reflections from a post I wrote in July 2007 – Four Essential Questions that Need Answers (http://vvrotny.org/2007/07/15/four-essential-questions-that-need-answers/): Like many, I am intrigued by the promise and potential that integrating Web 2.0 tools provides for all learners, both students and teachers. I know that in many instances, that I leading the charge full bore down that path because I believe that it is imperative that we provide experiences […]

Enabling All Voice to Develop and Be Heard

Yesterday the New York Times published an article entitled, “Speaking Up in Class Silently, Using Social Media.” In this article, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Iowa, stated that “social media, once kept outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves via a medium they find as natural as breathing.” My reaction to the article is so what, why is this new? At our school, we first demonstrated in 1996, through a pilot 1:1 project that we ran in our AP United States History course (with Mac Powerbook 160’s and 56k modems) the […]