It’s been a great year. I’ve learned a lot, started a blog, moved it to a completely new platform (with permalinks and Feedburner feeds still intact, thank you very much!), been accepted to a Ph.D. program, welcomed a new baby girl into the world, and made some positive progress on our campus with respect to utilizing technology to increase student engagement. I’ve made some new acquaintances and friends, and along the way I also managed to get invited as a regular poster on the LeaderTalk blog which, of its own right, has made some major strides in its first few months of existence.
Our little Internet Study Group here at West wrapped up a few weeks ago, culminating in a Skype video conference with a friend and former colleague and his students from 2000 miles away. As I look back, the biggest lesson I’ve learned this year is the power of a small group of like-minded people when it comes to influencing school-wide change. I could never have stood up at a faculty meeting and mandated that every teacher have a blog or wiki or that they utilize technology to foster collaboration among their students. But starting small – with a core group of interested teachers – I think we’re off to a great start. Ironically, given our current infrastructure and the availability of technology on our campus, if every teacher wanted to do this stuff, we’d be in trouble! On the positive side, this gives us a great business case to approach the Powers That Be when it comes time for our technology refresh.
So what will next year bring? I’m hoping to keep that core group interested and involved in technology, and am considering starting a monthly(?) podcast that would be a sort of a 5 to 10 minute overview of current happenings at the school. Perhaps interviewing some kids and teachers about what’s coming up with their clubs or teams.
Additionally, I’ve been kicking around the idea of an independent podcast that I would co-host along with the aforementioned friend in Florida. I don’t want to say to much at this time, but we’ve got a good plan in place and have some ideas for about 6 or 8 episodes so I’m optimistic that it will come together for the fall.
Photo credit: “Retrospective” by freewill
Perhaps I shouldn’t have blogged about it – I may have jinxed it. Sadly, the miraculous parting of the firewall that has allowed me to use Skype and Google Talk for the last two or three weeks appears to have come to an untimely end. On my return to my office today, I found neither application able to connect to the outside world.
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