Day One of the TICL EdTech Conference

Yesterday was day one of the TICL EdTech Conference held at Buena Vista University and sponsored by both Prairie Lakes AEA and Northwest AEA. It is such a treat to have such an excellent conference right in our own backyard. We have a total of 36 SLCSD staff members attending the three day conference, many of whom return year after year, because the information about integrating technology in the classroom is so useful. Here is the link to the conference program, so you can take a look yourself:

TICL 2012 Conference Program

Here are some of our staff members:

Some of the things I learned today:

1. McRel's Classroom Strategies that Work have been updated in the second edition of the book, with the realization that none of the nine strategies are better than others, that the choice of strategy depends on what one is teaching. While we want to get to the higher order thinking skills in our classrooms, we can't do that without our students having a certain base of knowledge.
2. The best way to learn is through play, and the best way to teach is by developing relationships with our students, according to the keynote speaker Zac Chase.
3. If you want your teachers and students to use technology in the very best ways for learning, your administrators have to model the behavior by their use of technology.
4. While I love the battery life of my iPad, it does not play well with Google Apps. It lends itself best to individual users with their own iTunes accounts but can't be deployed on a mass scale in a school that way. That iPads can do some really cool things if you have a Mac computer to use with them. That the first iPad, which is only 2 years old, is already outdated and can't run the current operating system, which means there are new apps it just can't run. And most are in agreement that an iPad is great for running apps, such as games for students, but that it isn't a replacement for a computer.
5. That you can realistically create professional presentations of your announcements each day with nothing more than a laptop and Windows Movie Maker.

I love getting together with my peers, experts in the field of EdTech, teachers who are using technology effectively in the classroom, and my co-workers to work on improving education for our students. This group of 36 teachers from SLCSD doesn't get paid to do this. They do it, because they are great teachers who love their students!

More tomorrow.

Off and running for summer EdTech work

I've been away from blogging the past month or so as school wound down, and we prepared for a busy summer of educational technology. We have 6 new mobile labs coming in as I write this that will be deployed to the elementary school, the middle school, and the high school. We have an updated version of our student information system that we will roll out on a new server. We are deploying brand new wireless at our middle school. We are updating sections of our network district-wide. We are working on quotes for a few new interactive whiteboards for the district. Add all of that to the updates, repairs, and plain upkeep of the technologies we have, and we have a busy summer ahead of us. In addition, we are attending two educational technology conferences: 36 staff members are attending the T.I.C.L. Conference held next week at Buena Vista University right here in Storm Lake, and I am attending the International Society for Technology in Education Conference in San Diego the following week.

We believe in the value of technology for learning here in the Storm Lake Community School District, and we work very hard every summer to make sure that the new school year tops the old one when it comes to technology equipment, infrastructure, and teacher training for better integration.

I'll keep you posted!

Outstanding students and outstanding teachers

I had the pleasure of attending the National Honor Society induction ceremony a couple days ago, and while there were many things that struck me as very special during that event, there was one thing I just have to share here. Every year the NHS students select a faculty member to give a speech at the ceremony. This year Mr. Jason Heeren, high school band director, was invited to give the speech, and he did an excellent job giving these outstanding students advice.

What struck me, though, is this. The students voted to select the teacher to give the speech, and in that voting process nineteen different teachers received votes. Nineteen! To know that so many of the SLCSD teachers are respected so much by their students just makes my heart sing. What wonderful students! What wonderful teachers!

"Share the Dream" Presentation

Wonderful presentation by Elementary Principal Juli Kwikkel, Elementary Reading Specialist Michelle Huntress, and Kindergarten Teacher Deb Mortensen at the School Board Meeting last night concerning the Share the Dream grant that Storm Lake Elementary received last fall. The grant allowed the district to buy sixteen netbooks, two for each kindergarten classroom, for student use. The purpose of the grant is for "Using Technology to Reach the Corners of the World," and the kindergarten teachers have embraced the challenge by forging partnerships with various schools in other countries. By using Skype, blogging, email, and various presentations for sharing, these classrooms have embraced the concept of learning outside the four walls of our own district.

Mrs. Mortensen, specifically, has formed a partnership with a school in British Columbia. They have exchanged various presentations to learn about each other's culture.

What a great way to show the School Board one of the pieces of the puzzle when it comes to integrating technology for learning!

Family Fun Night!

The elementary school held their second Family Fun Night of the year last night. Take a look at all the fun and learning that went on!

Family Fun Night

How will we use the educational technology?

If you read my blog regularly, you know that one of my biggest pet peeves is acquiring technology without first asking the question: What is it we want to accomplish? It's always seemed crazy to me to listen to vendors and advertisers show off the newest and greatest technology, get excited about the bells and whistles, and then jump in head first to a massive purchase and rollout of the technology without knowing what in the world we are trying to do that couldn't be accomplished before we spent the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on the new technology.

I just read two articles in the April 2012 District Administration magazine that address this issue in two different ways. The first article, "Using Tomorrow'sTechnology to Teach Yesterday's Curriculum" by Cathleen Norris and Elliot Soloway, concerns the crazy notion of purchasing $600 tablets only to use them for flashcard or drill and practice apps. The point being that tablets may hold all the promise in the world to contribute to 21st Century skills such as "teamwork and problem solving," but if we don't purposefully use them that way, we've wasted the $600.

The second article, "The Three Pillars of 21st Century Learning" by Rob Mancabelli, talks about moving away from what he deems the old pillars of education: "the textbook, the lecturer, and the classroom," to the new pillars, paraphrased here: I'm only one of my students' teachers; I must teach my students to learn independently; and student knowledge is partially a product of their networks.

Take a look at the original articles. Both of them bolster my belief that school technology is only as beneficial to learning as our ability to view teaching and learning in new ways. Until we are willing to shift our thinking, we might as well have saved our technology dollars.

SLCSD April Newsletter

As hard as it is to believe we are already to April of this school year! Here is the current newsletter from Central Office:

http://www.slcsd.org/SLCSD/News/April12NL.pdf

We continue to enjoy learning together!