Educational Leadership & Technology

It has been a rather productive week, which means that it is time to reflect on what has transpired.

On the technology front, I managed to get myself back into Twitter again. I use the Twhirl program to access my account. Many people scream the praises of Tweetdeck, but I just can’t use that thing efficiently or effectively. The interface reminds me of a student with ADHD — all over the place. My schedule has me in the classroom more this year, which gives less time for such endeavors like Twitter; but, I really enjoy more face time with teachers and students.
We discovered that Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) isn’t playing well with Snow Leopard, so we had to tell students to stop updating their software. This I find personally problematic because the computers belong to the students, but there really wasn’t another solution at the moment. We have a bunch of students who have account issues on the network and need to be worked out. Plus, Bruce, Greg, and I need to train the middle school and high school teachers how to use ARD, so when we return from vacation, we will hit the ground running… Not that we ever stopped running since the beginning of the year.

One of the art teachers has decided to use a blog as part of her class as a way for students to reflect on process. She got the idea from David Gran and we sat down and brainstormed some possibilities for it. I was pretty excited about this development because the three middle school departments that were having the most difficulty shifting in the past were art, music, and math. The music department made a giant leap last year and had students produce music videos to go along with their choir arrangements. Now the art department is seeing action with blogs and the math department has a new member who is keen to try some tech infusion. Awesome!

On the discipline front, I’m trying my best to be supportive of teachers and students, but sometimes both sides make it difficult. An example of this is a situation where a teacher lost a student’s assignment and later found it; but between the time of losing and finding, the student turned in a buddy’s assignment as his own. The teacher put the student in a difficult situation, but the student still made a bad choice while trying to solve his problem. Of course the student thinks the teacher is a little responsible for this situation. I addressed the issue, but was very curt with the student when pointing out that two wrongs don’t make a right. Overall the students are doing very well this year. The 6th graders have made the difficult transition from elementary to middle school and we have planned some orientation programing for next year that should smooth the transition even further. Also, many of the students are looking at ARD not as a policing threat, but as a way to help them stay on task during class. Nice!