Random thoughts of an ed admin lifer

I have just finished a conversation with two of our curriculum consultants about utilizing technology to support assessment for learning.  Our conversation centred around what we could do to support teachers in their efforts to have the student take on self directed learning and produce products that would demonstrate their mastery of the learning.  We bantered around many ideas, one of the major themes was the idea that teachers would have to be comfortable with relinquishing the control of the content while still guarding foundational objectives.  We asked ourselves “What would it look like if we sat down with the students at the start of the semester and said:  This is what you need to know by the end of the term.  How are you going to go about learning it and demonstrating that you have?”  We have decided to have a luncheon meeting with our staff and present some ideas and ask for volunteers who would like to give this a try in a unit or project of some sort for the upcoming semester.  The big parts of this are:  the teachers need to decide the what it is they want to do and the how  we can support them.  The largest resource that I think I can provide is some release time in the form of substitute teachers through our professional development fund.  I would really like to get a small pod of 4 or 5 teachers to give this a go next semester and then get them to share their stories at the start of next year and perhaps motivate/encourage others to try a similar approach in their classrooms.  I am interested to see how this plays out . . .

I have just returned from an introductory session on our school division’s new Polycom units (video conferencing units).  After getting over the initial ooohs and aaahs of the technology I started thinking about how I could utilize this in my school - could sure add a different flavour to morning announcements!  As far as the impact on our school division,  I think there are some real cost savings to be had in the area of travel expenses and definite benefits for students in small schools where they could receive instruction in subjects they normally wouldn’t.  One of the challenges we were given as we were getting ready to leave was to try and find ways to implement this in our practice. . .  has anyone had any experience with video conferencing and particularly its use to enhance student learning?

Okay, I have always thought of myself as fairly forward thinking and progressive educator.  In the last two days I have come to feel as if I have been asleep for the past decade.  I’m 40 next year and I have an mp3 player, frequent the Internet - my friends and family get me to burn disks for them and are amazed at how quickly I can do that.  I buy stuff on Ebay.  I, therefore am technologically literate . . .  right?!? 

Ah, no.

Web 2.0 or the multimedia, read-write-post-video-audio-voip thingy has set up camp in my nice little familiar world and I just don’t know how it happened.  I have been here the whole time - I am a pioneer.  First teacher to have Internet access in my school!  Ahhhhhhhhhh.  How do you keep up?!!

Thoughts?