Posted by Jeff on Nov 7, 2009 in
Education,
food About 36 hours in Maine, just enough to go do Halloween, and Steve rejoined me for yet another early morning flight.
5 days in DC and nothing spectacular to report in the culinary arena, although I did visit my favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant, Chinatown Express. Bob, Steve, and Sylvia joined me for dinner, and I think we manage to spend $60 between the 4 of us including a tip. Great cheap eats for DC.
MLTI at the Hart Senate Building - Future of Learning Showcase
The SETDA conference was a great success in my eyes. A lot of great conversations as always. The Senate showcase went well too. Maine had a great set up along the glass wall in the Hart building with the Capitol dome in the background and of course lots of computers in the foreground. Bruce Segee had a wall of 16 laptops set up to showcase his super computing display system that joins multiple computers to make one giant display. We had a bank of MLTI laptop along with 32″ and a 50″ monitors to highlight what was on the laptops. Overall, I think was very well represented.
MLTI at the Senate Hart Office Building - Future of Learning Showcase
Our day had an extra surprise as we were able to get 15 minutes with Sentator Collins. She and Sylvia had a good conversation about her nomination to the USAC Board. The senator will be lending her support, and we are all crossing our virtual fingers that she will be named to the board by the FCC Chair.
Tags: SETDA
Posted by Jeff on Nov 19, 2008 in
Education OK. I’m back in Maine. But I figure I should recap my time in DC at SETDA’s Education Forum and Leadership Summit. As usual, once we got going, we were on “SETDA time” which means up early, and to bed late. I think I made it to bed one night before midnight, but just barely.
Saturday evening, before things got going, I managed to get some “me” time and visit an friend from college. Met her 1 year-old twins, and caught up with her and her mother. Last time I visited her husband’s parents were visiting DC too. Odd coincidence…
The Capitol
SETDA began bright and early on Sunday, and before I knew it, it was 10 pm, and I still hadn’t seen dinner. Throughout the day we met with a variety of providers both for-profit and non-profit organizations including some “old friends” and new ones. I finally met Steven Hoy from
Tabula Digita in person. Didn’t have a lot of time to chat, but I think we will be talking soon to see if
Tabula Digita will be able to participate in this year’s Student Conference.
On Monday Lisa Hogan from Mt. Ararat MS and I teamed up with the State Ed Tech Directors from Arizona and Texas to present a session on Systemic Reform and the changing role of the teacher. Karan Kahan (TX) shared information about the Texas TIP program, and Cathy Poplin (AZ) shared information about the Arizona IDEAL portal. I presented about the MLTI program and our philosophy on teacher training. Finally, Lisa wrapped up by sharing her experiences as a teacher and the transition from a non-1:1 classroom to a 1:1 classroom. By all accounts, Lisa stole the show.
Monday night, we all (Bob Mcintire and Dennis Kunces were also in attendance from Maine) went to the annual SETDA Awards Gala. We were joined by our Commissioner, Susan Gendron. The event went off well from most perspectives, until I managed to struggle my way through presenting the Pushing the Envelope Award to Sue. Oddly, I had a hard time getting the words out…usually, as most know, I have too much to say about most anything.
Tuesday was another full day that started out with keynote presentations from Tony Wagner and Susan Gendron. Both presentations were well received, although I did find myself thinking about something that has been on my mind a lot more as of late. Tony Wagner’s keynote was very good as keynotes go. He shared some compelling stories and he’s a very dynamic speaker. But all in all, it was a variation on a theme of keynotes and books that remind us that we have a problem in American Education. He shared some thoughts on what needed doing, but as keynotes go, it was very global in its approach. Nothing wrong with it, but I think I’m ready to just spend more time working on the actual solutions at the school and classroom level than to keep re-identifying the national “crisis”.
Following the keynotes, we all headed off to some classroom experiences led by classroom teachers. Lisa Hogan led two sessions to give participants a hands-on feel for what a 1:1 classroom can be like. Participants used MLTI MacBooks we shipped down to DC for the occassion, and Lisa had them working in at least 5 different groups on 5 different facets of density using online simulations, real scales, graduated cylinders, and more. Too bad iBahn (the hotel network people) don’t know what Bonjour is…I asked for it when I helped negotiate the network arrangements for the event, but it was not delivered. “Bonjour…isn’t that a web browser?” asked the iBahn “network” guy. Argh! Lisa handled the network troubles like a pro, and I don’t think anyone was the wiser. As before, I think she was a hit among the participants.
Later we had a large group session with a group of high school students from Floydada Texas. Their school district is one of the Texas TIP schools (1:1 program). The superintendent shared some increases in test score trends and other statistics about numbers of online college credit courses his students were able to take advantage of as a result of the program. The kids followed up with their own thoughts about the program. As usual, the kids did a great job, and I think they impressed a lot of people. Made me think that we need to look into having more kids from Maine attend SETDA next fall and share their experiences.
Photo of Kate and Joel with a cardboard cutout of Obama
The day continued, but at this stage, what I remember now is simply going to dinner and being told I was not allowed to take a photo of some of our group with an Obama cardboard cutout because you are not allowed to take photographs in Union Station. I guess its a security thing since its a train station, and one very near Capitol Hill.
Wednesday saw more SETDA committee meetings, and an hour with the US DOE. Nothing new from US DOE. Glad to be home…even if only for a day! Cheers!
Tags: SETDA
Posted by Jeff on Nov 19, 2008 in
Travel I’m here at Reagan National Airport about to leave for Maine and I didn’t post a thing about the past 5 days here in DC. Imtypong on my phone so this will be short. Oops. Time to board! More to come.
Tags: SETDA
Posted by Jeff on Nov 8, 2008 in
Travel Greetings all,
I’m going to give it a try and see if I can keep up with posting to this blog while I’m traveling. To start, let me give you a sense of where I’m going to be. I leave on Saturday, November 15 for our nation’s capitol. I’ll be in Washington DC through Wednesday at SETDA’s annual Leadership Summit and Education Forum. I’ll return to Maine for a day before heading off to parts unknown (at least for me).
The major part of the trip will take me on flights from Boston to Melbourne, Australia. While in Australia, my draft itinerary includes the VITTA conference and meetings with various school and government officials to talk about their 1:1 efforts in Canberra, Hobart, Sydney, and Melbourne.
I’ll leave from Melbourne for Beijing on December 1 where I will meet up with the rest of the group from People to People. We’ll be traveling to Guiyang for a conference on Education Technology. At the end of the week, we’ll return to Beijing where I’ll meet up with my father. He and I will head off to visit our family’s ancestral home in Fuzhou City.
Well, that’s about it for now!
Tags: Itinerary, P2P, SETDA, VITTA
