Alot of water under the bridge

I can’t believe I have not posted since February. It has been an incredibly busy spring, and the lack of blog time attests to that fact. In February and March we participated in Read Around the Planet class-to-class videoconferences. This year we had many experienced teachers who participate every year and many new teachers. The addition of the new equipment at Maricopa Elementary School this past summer - courtesy Pinal County ITv Consortium - helped MES teachers to experience videoconferencing from the comfort of their own library - no muss, no fuss, no bus!

Teachers still bussed in from Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and Pima Butte, and as always is the case, both the Middle School and High School participated again this year. BIG THANKS to our fabulous transportation Department - Charlie Hatt, Director for their support and great flexibility in scheduling! Watch for pictures to get posted int he near future!

Here’s a wonderful article by Rob Nessler, CopaNews.com, about our first international conference, dialed from an MUSD site with Katie Honeycutt’s first grade class! http://copanews.com/?c=137&a=1584

Several months ago the State Department of Education put out a call for persons interested in joining committees to (a) revise the State Technology Plan and (b) revise the Az State Technology Standards. I am delighted to have been selected as a member of the State Technology Standards Revision Task Force. As is appropriate for such an important undertaking, some of our meetings are face-to-face, some are virtual, using a variety of web-based collaborative software (Web 2.0 tools!). As we update standards intended for 21st Century Students, we are utilizing 21st Century Tools!!!

I was invited to teach blogging classes at Casa Grande Union High School and at their District Office. I held two really interesting classes, I was honored to have the opportunity to work with CG teachers. Some participants remained after the scheduled blog session so that we could have a mini-session on wiki’s. I am happy to say that some really robust math class wiki’s have already been rolled out - the teachers are using them for on-line content delivery!

Tomorrow I am holding an information session at the Board Room at 3:30 pm. Topic: Web 2.0 Tools. If you have not RSVP’s yet, there is still room. This is an informal presentation designed to share with teachers and other staff a wide array of FREE, web-based products that will be available for the picking next school year. At the beginning of the 08-09 school year, MUSD will have an amazing increase in bandwidth that will permit our students and teachers to fully realize the user-created-content and collaborative environments that have been just beyond our ‘bandwidth’ reach. Join us as we preview a wide variety of tools and discuss how they might apply to our educational environment.

Next week, Rich King, Executive Director - Media Services, Central Arizona College and I will be presenting at the America-Asia Educational Summit in Phoenix. Our topic: Building Sustainable Educational Communities through Videoconferencing. This is the only Summit conference to be held in the United States and translators will be on hand to translate our presentation into Mandarin!

Xie xie (Mandarin for Thank You)