by Scott McLeod | May 12, 2010 | Blogging, CASTLE, News and Events |
For those of you who haven’t noticed (yes, I’m talking to you, RSS subscribers), Dangerously Irrelevant now has a new look! I finally made the switch from TypePad to WordPress. Let me know what feedback you have about the new design…
I owe a HUGE THANK YOU to the folks at Foliovision. Alec Kinnear and his team were unbelievably fabulous from the very start. They were always responsive, incredibly patient with all of my questions, and did a great job of soothing my fears as I pondered the switch to the new platform (Are my internal links all going to work? What’s going to happen to my Feedburner feed? Am I going to lose all of my RSS subscribers?). The process couldn’t have happened more smoothly and I couldn’t be more happy with their work. They even sent me a shirt as a thank you!
If you’re considering your own move from TypePad, I recommend Foliovision highly; they’re one of the few places that specializes in that service. If you just want a new web site or need search engine optimization (SEO) help, I’m sure they’re great for that too. I still can’t believe they did what they did for the price that they charged me. There’s no way they made money off me. Did I mention they’re in Bratislava, Slovakia. I’ve never met them!
I’ll be rolling out some new features (as well as reviving some old ones) over the next few weeks. Stay tuned (and thanks for being loyal readers)!
![Our April 7 Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) is full!]()
by Scott McLeod | Mar 3, 2010 | CASTLE, Leadership and Vision, Learning and Teaching, News and Events, Tech Integration |
Just a quick post to note that registration for our Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) on April 7 is now closed. We hit our mark of 500 attendees last week despite doing very little publicity.
I’m excited. This conference has grown very organically (we’ve used Edubloggercon as a model; thanks, Steve Hargadon!). It’s going to be a great day!
by Scott McLeod | Feb 17, 2010 | CASTLE, Leadership and Vision, Learning and Teaching, News and Events, Tech Integration |
Just a few weeks after publicizing our first-ever Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I), we already have over 300 people who have registered to attend on April 7. Our registration is capped at 500, so if you’re interested, sign up soon! Oh, did I mention that attendance is FREE?
Angela Maiers has agreed to be our keynote speaker. It looks like Wes Fryer will be coming to do a few sessions. The CASTLE staff will be in action as well.
What else are we doing that day? Well, how about a couple of Web 2.0 Smackdowns, a TweetUp, and a variety of role-alike conversations for teachers, administrators, and board members? And some space set aside for an ‘unconference.’ And, of course, lots of good sessions from 1:1 laptop districts in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Illinois. And whatever else we come up with…
Stay tuned. Hope to see you in Des Moines in April!
by Scott McLeod | Feb 2, 2010 | 21st Century Skills, CASTLE, Learning and Teaching, News and Events, Tech Integration |
Iowa’s first-ever conference dedicated solely to P-12 laptop programs, the Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I), will be on April 7, 2010 at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines. Administrators, teachers, media specialists, technology staff, and other educators are all encouraged to attend.
Registration is FREE.
Also, the Iowa 1:1 Network is growing rapidly. Learn more and join yourself!
by Scott McLeod | Dec 8, 2009 | Blogging, CASTLE, Interviews, Leadership and Vision, Learning and Teaching, News and Events, Tech Integration |
Some of you have noticed that CASTLE has a new blog: 1to1 Schools. We’re excited about this new venture, which is meant to highlight news, stories, videos, and other resources related to elementary and secondary 1:1 laptop programs.
1to1 Schools is a group blog. For example, check out Nick Sauers’ series on using John Kotter’s 8–stage change process as a model framework for schools that are considering 1:1. Or his post on banning boredom, not laptops. Nick and I also have been on the road with our Flip camcorders, making videos of educators who are involved in laptop programs (see, e.g., our chats with Wynn Draper-Bryant and Marge Beatty).
Pamela Livingston, author of 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work, recently had two posts about an international survey of students in 1:1 programs:
She also wrote recently about how laptops are NOT for listening.
Blair Peterson, another occasional contributor, has noted that we should be prepared for the expected opposition to laptop programs.
The blog is a work in progress - and like many new blogs we’re still working on finding our voice - so if you have suggestions. If you’d like to be a contributor (or know someone else who’d be a good writer for us) please let us know that too.
Happy reading!
by Scott McLeod | Dec 2, 2009 | CASTLE, Leadership and Vision, Learning and Teaching, Our Changing World, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Integration |
[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]
CASTLE has been doing a great deal of technology leadership training for the School Administrators of Iowa, some of the Iowa Area Education Agencies, some of the Minnesota Service Cooperatives, and other school organizations across the country. One of the discussion activities that we’ve been doing lately asks session participants to think in groups about the impacts that the Internet and other digital technologies have had on various sectors of our society:
- newspapers, magazines, and the news industry
- banking, money management, and personal finance
- television, movies, and video
- maps, travel agencies, and the travel industry
- radio, CDs, and the music industry
- medicine and personal health
- reading and books
- how we communicate, connect, and share with each other; and
- universities
[Download these slides: ppt pptx]
This is not an exclusive list – for example, it doesn’t include the postal service or politics / political campaigning [or real estate agents] – but it does include many of the major sectors in our society that are information-oriented. In other words, they’re societal sectors and activities that, at their heart, are all about information and knowledge in one form or another.
In groups, participants can quite easily identify that ALL of these societal sectors are undergoing major, radical transformations because of digital technologies. Information-oriented societal activities are being reshaped in significant ways, and it’s just getting started as digital tools and environments continue to advance at a rapid pace.
Characteristics of our new digital information landscape
If asked to describe the ideas or themes that cut across all of these societal changes, participants can identify the general characteristics of our new digital information landscape. It is
- open
- more accessible
- more convenient
- more immediate / real-time
- networked
- connected
- shared
- collaborative
- interactive
- individualized
- empowering
- flexible
- adaptive
- less dependent on “experts”
- rapidly-changing
- more comprehensive
- searchable
- often crowdsourced
- creative
- multimodal / multimedia
- more efficient
- often less expensive
- global
- less dependent on geography
- technology-suffused
- less dependent on physical media
- and so on…
These apply to us too!
The challenge for us as leaders, of course, is that P-12 schools also are information-oriented institutions. At our hearts, we too are all about information:
- information mastery
- knowledge transmission and transference
- organizing and accessing information
- making meaning
- etc.
Because of this, schools shouldn’t expect that they somehow will be immune from the same changes that are radically altering other information-oriented societal sectors. We can’t continue to pretend that these revolutions aren’t going to affect us too, in significant and as-yet-unknown ways.
How many of the big ideas / cross-cutting themes above describe your school? Does the daily work of your school organization reflect our new digital information landscape?
![Our April 7 Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) is full!]()
by Scott McLeod | Jul 13, 2009 | CASTLE, News and Events, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development |
Many of you have been participating in and/or following the conversations for this year’s CASTLE Summer Book Club.
I am pleased to announce that my interview today with Dr. Dan Willingham, professor at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, is now available as either streaming audio or a downloadable podcast.
Happy listening!
by Scott McLeod | Jun 26, 2009 | CASTLE, Miscellaneous, News and Events |
Thought I’d share some recent publicity that CASTLE and I have gotten. I’ve been sitting on some of these for a while and wanted to get them all out so I can focus on NECC ‘09!
Edutopia
Quick: Name ten excellent Web sites related to the grade level or subject area you teach.
Scott McLeod, coordinator of the educational-administration program at Iowa State University, recently posed that question on his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant. Many of the comments his readers left echo McLeod's assertion that the Internet delivers "a paucity of high-quality online resources for educators."
McLeod and others don't deny the abundance of online resources teachers have at their fingertips. The challenge is sifting through all that stuff to find what you need — and then knowing how to incorporate the gems into your curriculum.
Read more…
T.H.E. Journal
SCOTT MCLEOD SAYS the great sin in the way professional development is provided in this country is one of omission. On his blog, McLeod, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University and the coordinator of the department's Educational Administration Program, writes, "Most of our school leaders have received no training whatsoever when it comes to 21st-century schooling."
It is not totally their fault, he says. Few higher ed programs for administrators even have a course dealing with digital technology, and if they do, the course generally covers basic software, not leadership. Neither school districts nor professional organizations offer workshops in the area either. As a result, no movement can be made toward 21stlearning environments: When leaders are clueless about technology and the impact it can have in classrooms, they are powerless to change their school or district into one that provides tech-enabled instruction for students.
Read more…
Fort Dodge (IA) Messenger (this link might expire?)
In a world where so much revolves around technology, high school students often only have the opportunity to use technology as part of their in-school learning process for an average of 30 minutes per week.
That is something that Scott McLeod, associate professor of educational leadership at Iowa State University, would like to see change in Iowa classrooms.
McLeod was the keynote speaker Tuesday afternoon at the Iowa Central Summer Science Institute at Iowa Central Community College, where he addressed a group of 25 high school and college science instructors on how they can implement technology in the classroom and why it is so crucial for students to be able to develop workplace skills and remain engaged in their course work.
Read more…
ISU Talk About IT
See the original here…
ISU College of Human Sciences
See the original here… (pp. 18-19)
Happy reading / viewing!
![Our April 7 Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) is full!]()
by Scott McLeod | Jun 19, 2009 | Activities, CASTLE, News and Events, Professional Development, Tech Integration |
A few weeks ago we decided to offer a technology ‘boot camp’ for administrators. CASTLE is working with the School Administrators of Iowa to make it happen. For those of you who are interested, here is some information on what we’re doing:
We started yesterday. Unlike our Transitioning Schools into the 21st Century workshops, which focused on technology leadership issues, the purpose of the boot camp is solely to ramp up school leaders’ technological skills. Our emphasis is on providing a safe space for administrators to learn and empowering them to walk away from the workshop with the ability to actually do this stuff. We’re taking our time, answering lots of questions, and covering whatever we can in the time that we have. We had participants blogging within the first hour yesterday. They were pretty excited!
We’ve got a great bunch of school leaders in this first boot camp. If today goes as well as yesterday, we’ll do a few more next academic year.
Any feedback that you have on what we’re doing would be most welcome. Anyone out there doing something similar? If so, how’s it going?
by Scott McLeod | Jun 16, 2009 | CASTLE |
This is a quick round-up of what happened on the CASTLE blogs last week…
LeaderTalk
Sue King discussed her thoughts on wrapping up another school year.
Barbara Barreda noted that we need to rethink learning and curriculum resources when we move to 1:1 laptop programs in our schools.
Angela Maiers wrote about students who read without meaning.
EdJurist
Justin Bathon was busy last week! He wrote about the always-exciting area of teacher pension funds, the digital efficiencies that may come with electronic textbooks, an editorial in The Atlantic about K-12 education, and Senator Harrison Williams. He also highlighted the National Conference of State Legislators’ online bill tracking database and wondered if NCLB is a ‘hostage of fortune.’
In addition, Justin teed off on a news story about student sexual harassment:
The operating assumption here, and it is explicitly acknowledged in the article, is that kids are sexually harassing each other all over the place. Kids are probably exposing themselves everyday, fondling each other, forcing kisses on each other, raping each other. That is the clear modus operandi of all teenagers because they are "hormonally charged." To support these assumptions, she quotes a consultant who would benefit if such was the national perception. We must assume the worst, and that assumption must override any data … because, well, we all know that schools and tennagers are bad, in all cases.
Dangerously Irrelevant
Posting here at Dangerously Irrelevant was light as I was busy with Summer Book Club preparation. I posted two book club updates:
I also squeezed in a quick note about why I never let my visitors’ ability to comment on my old posts expire.
Happy reading!
