Visit to VentureLab’s MakerSpace – San Antonio

As a result of being involved in our Innovation Lab transformation and traveling to San Antonio for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference in San Antonio, I stumbled across the fact that there is a Venture Lab Makerspace, an educational maker space created for students to build, make, and hack. I had a chance to connect with Mark Barnett, the founder of the space on the Friday afternoon before the ISTE Conference. This space, which has been open for a few short weeks,  is located in Art Space San Antonio (445 N. Main Street – a short […]

Innovation Lab – Vision 20/20 Framework

Contributing to our Innovation Lab was the work we started on our learning and technology plan, Vision 20/20. Creating this framework was one of the first tasks that I was asked to begin to build at the school. We choose Vision 20/20, since it would provide us the opportunity to build, grow, and change over a multi-year process. The purpose of the plan was to provide us the lenses for all future technology and learning innovations moving forward. The goal was to make sure that all growth was done in a systemic way, rather than in an ad-hoc fashion. To […]

Innovation Lab – The Pedagogical Background

One of the project that I am heavily invested in is the transformation/renovation of our existing computer lab space. To tell this story, I am going to break this up into several posts, as it would be too long winded to explain in one mega-post. Today, I am sharing the pedagogical background to explain why we are doing what we are doing. Make, Hack, Build If you look around a classroom in the lower grades, you will most likely see a flurry of activity around centers, students building and constructing structures, experimenting with materials and structures. However, as these students […]

My 8 Tips for a Balanced ISTE Experience (Updated 6/2013)

This is an updated post for 2013. As an introvert, I find ISTE can be overwhelming. Here is how I try to keep in balance. ISTE can be an overwhelming conference with over 10,000+ attendees. I have been to the conference 14 times previously, and ISTE seems to get larger each year. Coupled with the advent of social media, there is a celebrity-like buzz and excitement  that has evolved, especially with the growth of Hack Education (formerly EduBloggerCon/SocialMediaCon). This is so unlike the first ISTE (then the NECC conference) I attended in Orlando twenty years ago in 1993. My goal for […]

On the First Day of My Summer Vacation

On the first day of my summer vacation…. It has been awhile since I have published anything via this channel and with the demise of Google Reader and the seemingly slow demise of RSS (which I hope I am misreading), fewer and fewer of you may actually find these posts. While I have not been publishing, I have been extremely busy and sharing tidbits of what is upcoming in my life through other social media channels, primarily Facebook and Twitter. Via IFTTT.com, I am going to have to make sure that these posts are visible to through may other channels. […]