NECC - Tuesday 7/1

Seven Highly Effective Habits of Technology Administrators and The Seven Deadly Sins

Let's keep this quick and dirty.
What I liked: He gave me my simple guidelines that I do so appreciate. He translated Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People into tech director speak. He applied how to make mistakes and how to avoid them. Great experience - the staff to machine ratio in his department is 1750:1. He knows how to manage scarce resources.

He encouraged preparation for the unknown, automation of problem "tickets," communicating - holy cow what a concept. I'm not really being sarcastic toward him, I find it encouraging that we are still making certain that we all TALK between departments. It helps your image and, as we all know, image is everything. Truthfully, it's not, but if you have a crappy image in your district, see what happens when you come begging for more funds.

I also liked that he encourages his people to exercise creativity on Friday afternoons (Free Fridays). He lets the staff work on whatever pet projects they want. It's like a super0dork pressure valve and what gets let off is sweet techno-rific productivity.


Report from the Front: What’s in Store for Ed Tech in 2008

This session was a forecast for educational technology in the coming years. Underscore this point - GET INVOLVED. It was presented by the same people who ran the advocacy training on Sunday. I like them. One point that I, of course, remember because of my former life as a social studies teacher but bears repeating. 435 members of the House Representative and 35 memeber od the Senate are up for re-election this year (not to mention president, which, I guess I did just mention. Why do we say that?). That means influence if we can get to them. There were over 2,200 letters sent to Congress from NECC at the time of that workshop and it was still growing. I need to sharpen my advocacy tools and get to work.


Strategic Thinking About Technology in Education

You might see a pattern in my sessions... lots about where educational technology is going. I'm outwardly trying to increase my understanding of the subject on a national scale. This was really a discussion that we witnessed as the gallery from tech ed heavy hitters from ISTE, corporate world (Apple, Microsoft), higher ed, primary/secondary ed and others.

The first question thrown out was something like, "if you get a legislator cornered in the elevator, what will you say is the role of technology in education?" I have to consider my answer.... (elevator music...Jeopardy music... a little Social Distortion... ahhhhhhhh) As I see it, the role of technology in education is to elevate student understanding beyond where it was possible before. We have a massive opportunity to revolutionize education to reach more students, to engage more students and to develop higher thinking.

If we look at education from early times, a major achievement was the development of the hand axe. We don't teach students how to make a hand axe anymore because we have advanced beyond that. We teach the importance of the hand axe in developmental history of the world. We are at another significant point in the development of collaborative technologies that can impact more students a greater amount of time and transform teaching 3-dimensionally.

Problem is, we need help to do it and the government is the one to help at every level. If you're listening, don't make us beg.