I am currently working on the following, having just returned from a a two-week absence from school.
- Determine what site license to purchase for Adobe Creative Suite CS5
- Grant parent website privileges to recently admitted families
- Create website scripts to better track summer workstation maintenance and employee transitions
- Teach Facebook fan pages and Scratch to fourth and fifth grade classes
- Finalize summer project list
- Re-launch our collection of “computer help” articles
- Prepare for a school administration discussion of “just in time” tech support
- Continue work on our admission website tools
- Analyze upper school laptop survey results
- Follow senior project blogs
- Give the department’s iPad a spin
I don’t think that I will attend any ed-tech conferences this summer. I did not attend any this academic year, either. I have grown a little weary of the ed-tech bubble, in which discussions rarely focus on teaching and learning, which should be the main topic of any education conversation. We also had a bit of a slow year of conferences in Portland, relative to last year.
While away, I coordinated a tour for the Maru-a-Pula Marimba Band from my old employer in Botswana. I feel lucky to have spent two weeks with these remarkable children and their teachers. Here is a taste from one of our school performances.
Welcome back! I’m also a bit tired of conferences — I go hoping to meet inspiring educators and end up feeling like it was just a logistically inconvenient, synchronous, and less-good version of what I get from skimming the sphere. Which is a little depressing, really.
The best thing I’ve seen lately is Doug Lemov’s book Teach Like A Champion. I love the pragmatism and self-discipline of his approach… it feels like design patterns for teaching.
Thanks, Ben. At least we can identify the great conferences and attend them every other year or so. I’ve heard of the Lemov book — should pick it up.
Richard
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