Down Under, Again

Well, it looks as if another trip "Down Under" is on the immediate horizon. This time I will have my colleague Dan Morris, Director of the Colorado Teaching, Learning and Technology Center at the University of Colorado at Denver with me. I introduced Dan to Pete Dailhou, who had invited me to speak at several previous conferences, when we were in San Diego last July for NECC. When Pete found that Dan was a recognized consultant and trainer in ISTE Leadership workshops, he invited Dan to be the keynote speaker for the 2007 NSWCEG conference in Newcastle July 1 and 2.

We will also be doing several workshops on Leadership and 21st Century Skills while in Australia. Dan's wife and daughter will come down for a portion of the time to visit. Since Dan has never been to Australia before, I'm sure he will find the country extremely charming and the people with whom he interacts to be knowledgable and forthright in their discussions with him.

We will be visiting Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra and the University of New England as part of the workshop schedule. And while Dan and his family take time to visit FNQ and perhaps the Great Barrier Reef, I will get the opportunity to visit Perth with Pete.

Needless to say, Dan and I both are looking forward to this visit with a great deal of excitement. All my visits to Australia have been memorable ones. This should be no exception.

NECC 2006

This past week I attended the 2006 NECC convention in San Diego. You can't go to the California coast without seeing surfers. And since this conference was both at the coast in California AND about sharing and helping each other accomplish more for our schools and students, I thought a picture of a pair of surfers working together to show their talents would be a good one to include with this blog.

First, just getting to visit San Diego is always a wonderful experience. It's such a great city with some really great weather. But the real treasure of this visit was to get to see and network with old friends. As a former educator, and now a consultant, I have met and made friends with people from all over the world. To get to see them again, is always good.

Since I was there as part of an ISTE/HP grant, I was able to see the school grant teams and all the work they had accomplished this year. Yes, there were set-backs and obstacles they had to overcome, but that's a part of life we all have to come to terms with. They did some really good things for their schools and students.

The exhibit hall seemed as busy as ever with vendors showing off their latest software and hardware. Seems as if the latest "big thing" is data collection via the "clickers." Gives you instant visible data information to your questions (as long as you are asking mutilpe choice questions and provide the choices.) While I can see where this would be very useful in some situations, I question its real value in the classroom for things that require critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, etc. You know - all those things we educators expect students to be able to do in the "real world" but which don't seem to fall into today's mind-set of standardized testing. (But critical thinking and problem solving just don't seem to be skills as much in demand in the "real world" these days as they used to be.)

Networking with people is the best part of going to a conference like this, and this time was no exception. I renewed friendships with old friends and met some new people who will become part of my circle of friends, I hope. Let's hope that the desire to work to the benefit of our students continues to be the thing that brings us together. Hopefully next year when NECC is in Atlanta, we will meet and make even more friends.

Getting Started

I've been writing an article for an Australian technology journal about blogging in the classroom. It occurred to me that if I'm going to be writing about blogging, perhaps it just might be a good idea to have one of my own! So this will be the first entry. Having a public forum where the world (OK, probably a very FEW people) may read your thoughts and respond to them is a bit like leaving an open diary on the dining room table just before a cocktail party. You had better not write anything that you don't want people to know. A bit frightening to those of us who value our privacy.

Having been an educator for the better part of my life, though, I understand the value of getting responses to ideas shared, so it will be interesting from my vantage point to see what this produces.

I enjoy photography, so with each blog, I'm going to attach one of my pictures. You may or may not wish to comment on it. Since I think educators act as beacons of knowledge, the lighthouse I photographed at Crowdy Head seemed a good picture to include for this first blog.