EduBlog Insights

This past Wednesday, I attended a GECA E-Learning workgroup meeting. My good friend, Jim Flowers, extended the invite. We listened to a presentation by Mary Boehm, President of BellSouth Foundation and Kim Mulkey, Director of the Technology Program. Kim discused the findings of the Foundation’s report ot the edu.pwr^3 initiative. This initiative consisted of three components:

• Power to Lead: Seminars and grants to support school superintendents with technology deployment strategies

• Power to Teach: Teacher professional development grants for school districts

• Power to Learn: Deeper exploration of four schools’ efforts to integrate technology schoolwide and the effects on learning over a two-year period.

Kim gave an excellent presentation and she gave us an excellent overview of what they have learned from this initiative. Kim is the kind of speaker who packs a lot of information into her talk while at the same time throws in enough relevant pieces to really get you thinking. She talked about how transformation happens when innovation begins in the reshaping of education. They used the book, “How People Learn” published by the National Research Council, to measure the learning. One of the relevant pieces that was of particular interest to me was when she started talking about student voices. They sought the student voice. The students had plenty to say. They had a wealth of ideas to share about how to use technology to reshape their learning, both inside and outside the classrooms. Plus, they had thoughts about how to make it more relevant to their lives.

Kim talked about the questions they asked the students and about the whole process of creating a dialogue to change the conversation. That really got me thinking about the questions they were asking the students. The questions we ask are really important. I think we need to tie in the way we are evaluating students to this whole equation. Ask those questions of students and educators. See if it helps or hurts. See if it is relevant to what they need to focus on day in and day out in our schools. Educators need help to have the time to be risk-takers, to be innovative, to make a difference. Every good educator wants accountability but the way we evaluate really doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about using technology as an agent of change for student learning. Plus, in my opinion, the focus we have to put on testing is counter productive to real change in schools. Evaluation should be based on more than just one instrument.

There was lots more and I can’t do it justice in this one post. I’m going to share some links below if any of you are interested in reading further about this BellSouth initiative.

As for me, I’m back to the “thinking board” and I have some ideas on how to get some more student and educator voices heard through weblogs. Another weblog for J.H. House is taking form. This is exciting. I’m going to think about good questions to ask. My experience has been that students give us dynamite answers if we can pose the right questions and really listen to the answers.

Got some thoughts??? What questions do we need to ask?

Additional links:

Power to Lead

Power to Teach

Power to Learn

SpeakOut!

The Growing Technology Gap Between Schools and Students

The Point of Transformation

Dreamland

Taglit (technology surveys)

I just arrived at this conference which is hosted by the Georgia Department of Education.  A quick look over the agenda showed no weblog sessions!  I just KNOW this is going to change SOMETIME soon.  This session is entitled “I’m Tiny, But I Can Be Techie Too!”  This session focuses on making the connectin between the primary curriculum (Prek-2) and technology.  Session’s beginning…. Here’s the link to the presentation. More later…

Tim and I went across town today to meet with a fellow weblogger, Jim Flowers.  We met Jim through Sarah- he’s here in Atlanta as we are but it took Sarah in Vermont to introduce us!  Don’t you just love the winding road of weblogs?

We met at the Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT).  Lisa Griffin, Project Director and Kelly Clark, the Senior Research Analyst were also in the meeting.  What a great group and it was wonderful to finally make some connections.  They have a proposal in the works, “Increasing IT Capacity of Minority Educators in Georgia” via NECC 2003.  The University System of Georgia is partnering with other organizations such as GCATT to identify activities that will assist teachers to more effectively integrate technology in the classroom.  A weblog will be developed to be used as a communication vehicle, and will also function as an on-line forum to collaborate on ideas and advance the momentum towards building a K-16 network.  Some of our Georgia State University pre-service and in-service educators and faculty will be attending.  What a terrific learning opportunity for them!  Gosh, I wish I were going.  I have attended almost every NECC except for last year and this.  Tim is going though so that is good!  We had a good discussion and we’re all clearly on the same page with our hopes and aspirations for educators to integrate technology effectively.  It’s exciting to see the beginning of a project like this. Tim and I talked about what we had been doing with our weblogs and we hope to help them in whatever way we can.  Tim walked them through weblog creation on Manila and they took off! (Georgia Educators & NECC 2003) It’s great to be hosting their site and we look forward to working with them!