I've MOVED!

Just tired of dealing with blocks on the firewall... so I picked up and moved!

Go to www.sentimentsoncommonsense.com

Thanks!
Andy

Dispatch from the road…. Above Hudson Bay: Just a Teacher Job Fair??

Monday, February 4, 2008

I just took flight out of Chicago about 2 hours ago. It was a very rough take off and it was peacefully interrupted by a flash of light and a big boom just to my left. The captain of this United flight assured us that it was “just” a strike of lightening and that they had checked all of the systems and “they are working properly” . I guess we really have no choice but to take his word for it. After all, I am at 31000 feet above the floor of our dear earth, and he is the one at the helm or the computer that he is in charge of is in guiding our way. For those of you out there who have not had the deep and spiritual experience of flying over this part of the world and being able to see Hudson Bay below you, I will try to describe:

Below me is a vast expanse of white ice. From here it seems as if there is no snow, but just ice covered with just a skiff of snow. The ice stretches beneath me to the right and left (east and west) as far as I can see,. The ice is not flat and just white. It appears to be the skin of our earth, pure and white with veins of blue blood flowing beneath us. The heartbeat of our home flows in each vein and the sun shines deep below the ice to depths that cannot be described and I trust that I will never explore in my mortal lifetime I think about the creatures that live there and I trust that they are happy, finding food and living their lives as if they were me sitting on a warm beach somewhere. I suppose life can be struggle or a fight or a series of small challenges that make each of us better and stronger, but does not kill us. If some creature lives down there, I hope that the ice is their beach. This time of year, the bay is ice and life continues on, in Churchill, or wherever one lives.

Just a Teacher Job Fair???
I have never been so glad to see Iowa. I landed without much fanfare in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA yesterday afternoon after a 3-day journey that was mostly spent in a hotel room in Chicago. I did a lot of time on the phone with my parents, and my family and with teachers fearing that I would not make it to Waterloo, Iowa. I made it finally and spoke to them all, but alas the one couple that really had trust I would make it was the only ones I ended up hiring. A nice young couple of soon-to-be newlyweds who will marry this summer and begin their married life in Shanghai. Kind of like Amanda Lynn and me back a few years ago.

I spent about 45 minutes with them in my hotel room and just knew that they were right for us and we for them. I offered the invitation, rolled out the benefits and sent them on their way to give me their answer the next day. My exact words were “I won’t let you answer now. I need to know that I have teachers who will not only give us their heads and their experiences, but also their hearts. We need dedicated teachers who be a part of the SAS community and focus on the school for the next 2 years, while we hope that you will give us 4 years.” In the end they jumped in with both feet and I know they will be my colleagues and friends for longer than just 4 years. I almost feel like these job fairs are where I go and collect friends and supporters for my life and career. It reminds me of a night in New York...

I had been “recruiting” a couple out of Alaska for sometime. I was in Saudi and scanning the databases for ISS and Search like there was no tomorrow. I needed to find some teachers! Recruiting was tough there. Nobody wanted to come our litte dirtball town and I needed a music teacher and a solid, talented HS English teacher. I dropped about 30 emails out to a few folks and got a nibble here and there, but was drawn to a couple out of some school district in Alaska. Go figure. In the process found a teaching couple interested in me and our little dirtball town in Saudi Arabia. They were from Alaska. We wrote back and forth a while and agreed to meet in New York City. The job fair before was wash with me finding nothing and fighting off a bad cold the whole time. My throat was about to explode and I slept and slept and worked through the pain.

The next job fair was better and I reveled in the sight of Martha’s Vineyard below me in the winter sea buoyed my spirits as I flew south and landed in “the city” and began my quest for someone to bring my music program to life again. I me the couple briefly at signup and got them to my hotel room to interview. This is the time I won’t forget….

Into my room walked a tall, regal and intelligent woman. She seemed to be as tall as I am with penetratingly beautiful eyes that reflected her intelligence and focus. Her style reflected her experiences and her heritage and yet I suspected a twinge of fear and trepidation. She obviously new her musical “stuff” well. Her husband was bundle of energy. Positive vibes were emanating from him as he talked about his students his experiences as a special education teacher and a classroom teacher. I hesitate to say this but…. I fell in love. In the end, I encourage my superintendent and he agreed to let me take them on in Yanbu. Their references assured me I would not be sorry. They were right.

Alicia and Andy…. Where are you now? When are we going to do this again?

The same thing happened in Iowa this weekend. A couple of emails and a few reference checks lead me to know that James and Sanna are also great fits for my school. I, like them, took the leap in trusting each other and knowing that each of us will hold the other accountable. In the end the students will be the ones who really benefit.

Is there common sense in all of this? Probably not. My colleague said it best when he stated that it was just like life-- “You just fall in love”. I would agree. You meet the right people and you just know it is right.

Dispatch from the Road… The Tale (tail) of Lester the Cat- The Last Note

February 2nd, and still in Chicago! I won’t bore you with the details. It really doesn’t matter.

I spoke with my lovely and gorgeous and patient and understanding wife Amanda a little while ago. She was headed to bed after a long day getting Lester from his extended hospital stay. She did find some time to blog today though. Check out Maddie’s Minute for a peek into the life of an expat 4 year old living in Shanghai. I gotta say that I have a beautiful family!

Lester- The last note

After we had our little incident in Yanbu on May 1, 2003 we spent our last year in Saudi. It was a long year with lots of tense days and nights. Amazingly we stuck it out, worked our way through a nerve-racking job search and found a way to work in Shanghai. I had, in m head decided that our Saudi cat Lester needed to stay a Saudi cat and I had found someone to adopt him; a nice family with twin girls who would love him and take care of him.

Amanda had other plans though and one night after having a couple of glasses of wine for bravery she boldly told me that Lester was coming home with us. No questions asked! It was my job to figure out a way to get him to the USA, and then to China. I spent the next weeks calling Jeddah, Saudia Airlines, British Airways, United Airlines and…. CHINA to get our free cat arranged.

He landed safely in Illinois, then Arizona, then Oregon and at last in Shanghai. Over 3500 USD later he was safely tucked into his new home where he has lived for the last 2.5 years. Our free cat was now a multiple continent passport holder, and he still thinks I am the best lap to sit on, even if I have a lap top there at the time.

*Note that cat hair is very hard to get out of a keyboard.

Over this last Christmas we left him safely tucked in the house, with our housekeeper coming in every day to check on him, give him a few cuddles and some attention and of course food. He had grown dramatically since his summer walkabout in Saudi and his fat needed some more fat for company. Who are we to deny that! So, he was ok till the day we arrived when he slipped out of the house probably to go look for us. When we got home he was no where to be seen and I looked for him half-heartedly that first night knowing that he would just show up as he always had before. 3 very cold days later still no Lester.

Amanda was convinced that Lester had hopped a freighter for America knowing that we were there, and frankly I was a bit concerned that an obese black and white cat was going to crawl off a Chinese cargo ship in Portland, Oregon and make his way to my parents house. One more day went by and Amanda was now really peeved. She was going to fire the housekeeper who let him out, and I could see that we were going to probably adopt a horse or mule or something if we didn’t find Lester. My secretary helped our distress by informing our nanny through translation that Lester was missing and Ms. Zhou decided herself to take Amelia our 4 month old for a walk to look for our darn cat. Low and behold she found him in a bush, with his paw in a large rat trap. Lester seemed fine. Sore foot but fine. He walked on it for the first few days and then infection set in the foot that was in the trap. The darn implement of rodent death had done it’s damage and Lester spend 2 weeks in a Korean vets clinic (more money!) to have his foot amputated. This darn cat will not die!

Lester made it home today, as I said, and first thing he did was eat and eat and eat (as reported by Amanda on the phone) and then hide under the stairs thinking that he was going to have something else trimmed off. Last I heard though was that he was walking on his stump just fine and was making himself at home again. He will be fine and we will continue to dump resources into him as he is just one of us, and he keeps us entertained. I rely on him to complain about, and Maddie and Amanda love him as well. That’s what pets do for us… giving us something to care for, love and to come home to after long vacations.

I am sure that Jake the Moosehound is in heaven now awaiting Lester’s arrival and looking forward to those ceremonial butt sniffs and a cuddle. Jake, if you are reading this, I want to let you know that it will be a loooooonnnnnnnggggg wait for Lester. For some reason God thinks he needs to stay around a while.

The Tale (tail) of Lester the Cat Part II

Here I am on a plane over the Pacific Ocean. I have no idea where I am as the screen on this high quality 747 from United Airline is out and despite the single attempt by an animated and cute flight attendant, the movie is non-existent and I am “forced” top watch a few video podcasts and to write my blog. I am not complaining here… I just would rather dose off with a movie. I think I will try downloading a movie from itunes when I get to Chicago.

United Airlines is not getting my positive vote on this flight for sure, and these attendants seem to really have a bad attitude. Just my opinion, but I am sure you can ask United if they get any positive votes from us in this part of the plane. From seat 43H, it just ain’t that good. Nonetheless, I am a loyal customer and I will continue till they really peeve me off. One of the attendants blamed the lack of maintenance on the executives taking all the money and not paying the employees! Yes... she really said that to about 200 people on this plane! That is employee discontent!

This entry takes the writing on the road thing to a whole new level…. Say 35,000 feet. It is a heck of a lot smoother than the Shanghai highways.

I need to do a brief plug for Gourmet Geeks. Jeff Utecht and I did our 2nd installment and pulled out the old reliable Buffalo Chicken Wings Recipe (see below) with a special geeks spin to it. The meal was delicious (yes… wings can be a meal!) and Jeff and his lovely wife Uma, and my family lead by Hetta the Happy Homemaker snarfed down the chicken like it was going out of style. The recipe is a no-brainer and is super yummy. Try it.





Now…. Lester Part II

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Jake, the Moosehound, was kept very busy with Lester during the day in Saudi. He stopped tearing up the house and Lester took his days to a whole new level of following this homely and ugly kitten around the house watching what he was tearing up, and occasionally getting a good whiff of the cat’s butt for some kicks. Life was full of fun and full of “scentational” fun for Jake.

On the other hand, Lester was feeling his oats and was moving rapidly into kitty adolescence. That means he was started to act like a tomcat, and leaving little tomcat markings all over the house, spraying the windows and peeing in the spare bedroom. We didn’t have Maddie at that point and I noticed that his…. Ahem…. “nuts” were looking quite large and he was spending a lot of time… ahem… licking his nether-regions for more than just a cleansing purpose. In short…. the cat was a horny black and white monster that needed a fix.

I joked with Amanda that it seemed that he seems that his personality was based upon the fur around his little kitty testicles. One was covered in white fur and one in black. In short, Lester had a good nut and a bad nut.

I didn’t want to tell Lester, but both the good one and the bad one were doomed as the vet was coming for a visit. The Vet for Jeddah showed up, gave the cat the gas and snipped blacky and whitey off in a matter of minutes, delivering a woozy and somewhat lighter cat to my arms for a long walk back to the house. Lester had had his tomcathood chopped off in a storage closet behind the Star Market for $200.00 USD. I think we would all be surprised. I am sure he was, but thankfully didn’t blame me a bit. He’s loyal that way.

editorial note: I just did a flickr search on the term "good nut bad nut". I got 350+ hits. I am worried about the world.

After that Lester was the most loveable, affectionate cat in the world. I was his best friend. He ignored Jake execept when the occasional butt sniff came his way, and even Amanda came to like him. We had Maddie. We sent Jake home to the USA to stay with Mom-in-law and enjoy life in Arizona. Jake’s life was full of chasing more tennis balls and he had another cat’s butt to sniff in his new home because another cat my wife fended off on her mother lived there.

Now, Lester was free (as I stated) and we have now spent more than we should have to keep this cat “tame” and his shots and even let this darn cat worm his way into our hearts. Then in early April 2003, Lester got out of the house (as he did frequently) and did not come back. This is Saudi Arabia. We were about to move into daily temps in the high 90’s to 110 F. EVERYDAY, and the darn cat disappears. We put signs out, we asked the workers on the compound to find him and yet he is just gone.

May 1, 2003 we have the scary experience of terrorism. Scary is a lame term. People… many people die. Bad people shoot, kill, maim and terrorize an entire city for a whole day. They are killed. We close our school for a week, and shorten our school year to finish a graduation for our seniors and get them off to schools and colleges around the world. I install concrete and barbwire. I turn a school into a fortress. Lester… all the while is gone. We escape to the US for a long summer of explaining to our families why we would be taking our infant daughter and ourselves back to a place where there are others who want us dead and gone. It was a long summer. We returned proudly for our last year in Yanbu. We made it work and worked that school through a tough time.

Still no Lester though and I was sure he was dead. Summers are cruel in Saudi. It is 110-115 degrees during the day. There is no water to be found anywhere. Nothing, including my car lived through the summer unscathed. I finally gave up in early September. I threw away the litter box. I gave away the cat food. I shook my head and wondered where Lester had gone or died. The very next day we arrived home as usual about 4:30 – 5:00 began to unload the car with the huge pile of baby stuff that we hauled daily and was greeted by a familiar “meow”. Over in the corner of the wall by our front door was a skinny, bald, black and white cat that was a shadow of the former Lester, but was him nonetheless! The darn cat had arisen from the dead and come back the desert. I decided right there that this cat was staying in Saudi and I needed to find a home for the cat. I was NOT going to haul this animal out of that country. He needed to stay where he obviously was fit to be.

Next week….. The Tale (tail) of Lester Part III: Does he stay or does he go??

As promised the Gourmet Geeks Recipe-

Gourmet Geeks Super Bowl Buffalo Wings

24-20 wing segments (I just buy the mini drumsticks)
¼ cup Honey
5 Tablespoons of Hot Sauce (The Geeks used Cholula)
½ teaspoon of garlic powder
4 Tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
If you want it red, add a teaspoon of Paprika. I don’t think red is that important,

Deep Fry wings after coating with some sort of flour (I used corn flour) till crispy brown.
Let Wings cool.
Dip cooled chicken in sauce and then bake for about 25 minutes at 375 degrees

Remove immediately and serve with blue cheese dressing and veggies. The Geeks and the Back Channel Girls (Uma and Hetta) had a nice salad and a lovely after dinner drink. Good food, good company, good times!

On the road dispatch January 23, 2008: The Tale (tail??) of Lester the Cat Part I

I am happy to report that the debut of Gourmet Geeks (GG) was held last night and came off without many hitches besides some delays/hiccups from the challenges of the internet here in China, but my fellow Gourmet Geek Jeff Utecht is working to fix it in some way, and the recipe (seen at the end of this post) was a great hit with the back channel girls Uma the Sous chef and Hetta the Happy Homemaker (better known as our wives). Both Hetta and Uma had seconds of the soup.

The reason that the delay of the GG was due in part to many things, but primarily is blamed on my cat. The now famous and infamous three footed cat Lester. Now, before the winter holiday, Lester was a four footed cat, like most cats, but his curiosity got the best of him again, and he got caught in a large rat trap and spent a full week of very chilly nights being stuck in the bushes around our house. Thanks to the persistence of our housekeeper and nanny Ms. Zhou, Lester was saved from certain death and rescued. Sadly for Lester, having a foot caught in a trap for almost a week did its damage and he has been “enjoying” a week at the vet after having his foot trimmed back to a single toe. He now embodies the old joke that reads…

A three legged cat walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, ‘I am lookin’ for the man that shot my pa.’

The thing about Lester is that he was really adopted to keep our dog entertained when we lived in Saudi Arabia. This is really where the story begins…

We spent the first few months in Saudi Arabia without our dog and family member Jake, but he eventually found his way through a multi-continent trip and a lot of hassle by a whole bunch of people who really, really love us a lot. That is a whole 'nother post.

Jake was a Chocolate Labrador Retriever who just left us for a better place just a few weeks ago. Jake was a huge dog weighing in at 110 pounds. He was the Moosehound for us, and his heart was filled with the kindness of a hundred dogs. Sweet and loyal, he lived for one single purpose and that was to bring back to his owners anything that happened to be thrown or dropped for him. Tennis balls were his favorite thing to fetch, but sticks, rocks, toys, and shoes worked just as well. Jake was also smart and knew how to relax. We would leave him at home for the day when we went to work (taking him along only about once a week) and we would return to a house where all the cushions on the couch on the floor, all the beds unmade and entire loaves of bread being eaten.

In short, Jake was bored, and he was entertaining himself, and knew full well he was doing big no, no’s! We would enter the door from the street where we parked our car, stepped into a house with a whining and embarrassed, head down, tail between his legs, recalcitrant dog. We just had to laugh and we needed a solution. We tried leaving the TV on for him. It worked for about one day. We locked all the doors to protect the bedding, but that didn’t protect the couches and our food supply. Frankly speaking I was worried Jake was going to learn how run a can opener!

A couple of weeks went by and it came time for Jake to go to the vet for some shots. The vet we went to was in Jeddah, which was a 3 hour drive through the Saudi desert to the south. We jumped up early in the AM, drove to the Vet. Jake’s check went well, and we were awaiting some medication to be dispensed to us along with a hefty bill when we spotted this homely, skinny kitten with ears too big for his head and a tail that seemed to be two feet long. We asked the price of the cat and they responded with the word that should never be associated with pets and in particular cats. The gentleman from the other side of the counter said twice in fact. He said, “Free. Free sir.” We decided that the kitten would keep Jake occupied and entertained and we took this “free” cat home.

The story gets good from here. Jake, the HUGE Lab cowered in the back seat while this little kitten first crawled all over him and then fell asleep in Amanda’s lap. He then made his way to our house where made himself at home falling asleep in the sunshine, using Jake as a scratching post. We named him Lester because he was so homely and skinny, and it seemed to fit him well. We also learned quickly that Lester had an evil side and seemed to be accelerating to kitty adolescence quickly, and his neutering cost us 300 dollars on a compound visit from the traveling vet a weekend a few weeks later. That was just the first dispatch of funds from my wallet for Lester and I will continue the “Tale (tail??) of Lester the Cat” in my next posting.

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As promised… the recipe

Gourmet Geeks Tortilla Soup
6 cups of Chicken Broth (Homemade is best)
1/3 cup of lime juice
3 chilis (Hot ones!)
5 Chicken breast halves
4 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 tbs of ground cumin
1 tbs or more of Italian seasoning or Oregano
4 cans of Mexican Stewed Tomatoes
Fresh Chopped Cilantro
Tortilla Chips

1. Cook chicken breasts in broth 20-25 minutes till well cooked.
2. Remove chicken to cool.
3. Turn broth to simmer
4. In sauce pan sauté garlic, onions, chilis. When softened add spices.
5. Add cans of tomatoes to sauce pan. When warm, add broth and lime juice
6. Season to taste with Salt and Pepper
7. Shred chicken, add to soup.
8. When heated through add fresh coarsely chopped cilantro and, serve in large bowls topped with tortilla chips, shredded cheese and sour cream.

January 9, 2008…. On the road again!

Whew… it was a great holiday. A nice long one with those of us in Shanghai enjoying a three week break! The family and I headed back to the homestead with snow, and grandparents, and “real” Christmas trees. One can complain a lot about living overseas and being away from life in the states, but I am still convinced that working in international schools is the way to go.

A few things keeping my motivated and focused this coming year and I want to share. I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions, but I do try to keep a list in my head of the things that I am looking forward to facing and meeting aggressively this calendar year.

1. My school is in the midst of an accreditation self study through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. We have some clearly identified outcomes that should come out of this effort which include:
• the transformation of the way we do our work (more on this later),
• a clearly articulated measure of the current operating state of our school based upon our own
• the establishment of a set of metrics of which we can measure our progress toward our vision points that can be reported out to our community regularly (more on that one as well!)
2. It appears as if we are moving toward a new school information system installation at our school. This will be a big logistical and motivational challenge for our school as we move into the mess and muss of data migration, learning of software, establishing new procedures and systems….. should be fun!
3. Planning and subsequent implementation of a one to one computing initiative. I don’t think this one will be realized till the fall of ’09, but with the selection of the right teachers and leaders we can make this organizationally transformational for our classroom programs.

I have mentioned challenge and fun earlier in this post, but I have some other REAL fun to look forward to as well.

1. I am looking forward to attending the NECC conference this summer. I think that this will be my first educational computing conference I have attended in over 7 years besides the Learning 2.0 conference this last fall in Shanghai.
2. I am looking forward to beginning a video podcast series with Mr. Jeff Utecht which is a spin off of the famed “Cooking with Jeff” Twitter session that he has been doing on a regular basis. “Cooking with Jeff…. and ANDY!” will premier next week and we are going to shoot for a bi-weekly effort. Our wives think we are nuts, but frankly speaking, this is how I learn best. I combine a fun, self-motivated activity AND I will learn the nuances of video podcasting.
3. Spend more time with my wife and children. I am hoping and praying that the road will not consume me. I don’t think it will as I see changes on the horizon on how I am going to work my “work” in the months to come.
4. Spend some time in the gym and get some exercise. Yes… that is fun too.

Communications note:

In early December I did a post about positive communications practices and thanks to Jeff “The Thinking Stick” Utecht drawing some attention to the post, I got some nice responses.

One respondant wrote...

I am a superintendent who celebrates our positives/achievements whenever I can. I even structured a commitment to celebrate into the beginning of every report I give to the school committee. A reminder goes out the week before each meeting for things administrators and teachers want me to celebrate. I summarize them for the committee, the press, and the public.

But, why do it? Competition? Economic gain? Politics? You have to watch a video that Dewitt Jones produced to understand why. I showed it to every faculty and parent organization and many community group when I began in my current school district. It was fundamental to my theories about leadership and learning. The video is Celebrate What's Right with the World. It is expensive, but the vision in the video is transformational. I've watched it close to thirty times, and the message never grows old and never loses meaning for me. You can read about it and see it at www.celebratetraining.com Don't miss it.

And Darren Draper linked me to his blog post as an example of stressing the positives to create change! Drapes Takes has some great content and I have enjoyed reading it! Thanks Darren for the comment which you wrote....

I think that if we were doing a better job at celebrating the positive, newspaper articles like the one I recently responded to would have a different slant.

Thank you to all... until the next car trip across Shanghai! Keep the focus on Common Sense!

The Shameless Art of Self Promotion For Schools

We need to do a much better job of self promotion or we will be run over by our own failures and lack of progress. Let’s face it. Common sense would tell anyone that no school is perfect. In fact, by nature of the school improvement process, we honed our knives of self improvement by becoming very, very good at self criticism, and ultimately it is also deemed cathartic to announce our own weak points out loud and with robust vigor and valor. Such announcements like,

“Our school has progressed just 10 percentage points on the nationally normed test in the past three years, missing our target by 2 percentage points. We are disappointed in missing our target despite the tremendous progress we have made.”

The newspapers and online networks out there are all over this stuff, and the fuel for the school critics’ fire is among the worst in journalism falling just short of the criticisms and interrogations meted out on Meet the Press and Jerry Springer combined! Sigh… why do schools insist on focusing on the negatives? Must we be so self critical? Is it a deeply held community expectation that we be negative about ourselves? Would be appear to be a cover up if we instead said,

“The progress that our school has made in the past three years equates to 10 percentage points, and has moved our school to within 2 percentage points of our target. The school will reevaluate their academic targets and continue with our aggressive school improvement progress to ensure our students continued success

Much nicer if you ask me. Alas… things do go bad in schools sometimes and black and white honesty is the best policy for sure. We seemed to have our share of them lately, and sadly some are really out of our control, although that is NOT the message a school administrator wants to send. To take responsibility and not being able to truly implement mitigating steps is certainly frustrating. I won’t make the laundry list of things that go awry, as I suspect you have two or three on your mind right now. Instead let’s turn this coin over and I propose some positive communications that will rebuild the interest and confidence in the school. George Pawlas college professor and author of The Administrator's Guide to School-Community Relations states that administrators should have 6 things that they can brag about their school at any given moment. He states in a 2005 Education World interview that,

Having a list of six things you can say with pride about your school can serve a principal in many ways. As new parents come to visit your school to see if it meets their expectations, those six pride statements can be great conversation starters. I had committed my six statements to memory but, if it's helpful, I recommend carrying an index card with the six statements on it. When you are at meetings of civic and community groups, that card will come in handy when community members ask about your school. The more you use those statements, the easier it is to recall them when the time is right.

Taking the old motto “Ten to glow on, one to grow on”, I figure that we must provide 10 or more quality examples of positive results in our schools to counter balance the single quality result. Guiding factors for these include:

• Always tell the truth. (This should be easy)
• Do not exaggerate. (This is harder than you think)
• Make the message understandable. (This is the hardest thing to do!)
• Recognize your experts. Show them off to your community. Quote them frequently.
• Any school event or school personnel recognized by an independent source (i.e. newspaper, professional organization) should be published and republished. Theses events and people should be your poster children.
• Focus on direct implementation steps taken by the school, and not just mere happenstance occurrences.
• Student learning data must be targeted and not over generalized
• Over reliance regarding co-curricular (sports, after school, clubs, etc) for positives should be avoided.
• Concrete, real life celebrations of school events connected to learning are most efficient.
• Be visible with your positives and the positives will make your visibility less negative even when bad things happen.

I just finished with an article about online learning community at our school. The article will hopefully be placed in our weekly parent communications bulletin this week, and will highlight some of the good stuff we are doing. I am focusing not on the delivery our programs but on the results of our strong and effective work. This article will be a first in a series and I am planning on going out and reviewing blogs, wikis and websites around our organization. I think we need a few more positives, and I think that if I start taking a look at this work and publicizing it, we will see results being our focus in stead of our lack thereof.

I would appreciate you comments and suggestions.

1994....

24.... one of my favorite shows! With the lack of quality television here in China, I now enjoy boxed sets of shows here, and '24' is no exception.

Then I saw this yesterday and had to point out the changes we have experienced through the last 13+ years. This goes for life, loves, careers, technology, and sadly the reality of terrorism. Granted... Al Quaeda was not even a word we understood in '94. Terrorism was something that happenned only in the Middle East, but the realities of world espionage, spys and war still were 3D realities to all of us.

So... trying not to be too heavy here..... take an amusing look back to what '24' would look like in '94.

Tech Best-Guesses

It has been a long time since I have written to this blog and much of it has to do with transitions and my life. Alas, time flies when you are having fun (or so they say), but time also flies when one is too busy to rest and take care of oneself as well. The latter is my case in the last few months of the school year (April and May) when I dropped off the grid and was working day to day to make it through. I am still standing and now have a new job with different responsibilities. Each day is a new adventure and that is good for my mental health. Ultimately, and deep down I have that sense of commitment and focus that I feel have lacked during the past academic year, probably much to having myself spread too thin and not getting to be as effective as I was with a single focus. Thus I am back to blogging.... AND I am getting sick and tired of my wife being better at blogging and showing off children for me!! Oh... and if you want to see what I am talking about click here!

Worse yet... my MOTHER has a blog with tons of readers! You can check this out here!

I thought of changing the name of this blog to “Sentiments on a turning stomach”, in that I have decided to write this note in a van as I ride between the Pudong and Puxi campuses. A little carsickness never killed anyone. Well, I hope not, so I will choke back the road chuck and and write on. It makes the ride go so much faster too.

Today, as is most days was a bit of rush, as it always is with a good meeting with my technology education colleagues and our IT director around the development of our technology plan. Mr. Jeff Utecht and Mr. Don Miron sat down with Mr. Orion Weber and me to talk about the direction of our school’s technology work and about where we might be going with a proposed one to one computing program. The discussion was lively, open and honest. It was challenging and frustrating too in that we are in a position right now to say no more often than to say yes… NOT my favorite place to be, but a role that someone must play.

Common sense would tell you a three year tech plan is really just a one year tech plan with a plan to review your “tech best-guesses” annually. If you do a little searching on the web you will find that there are many tech plans posted on the web and if they are more than one year old they really miss the mark. How do we move from being in a mode of planning and move to implementation in a landscape that is always changing?

Speaking of changing scenery…

Thanks to Karl Fisch for pointing out to us Shanghai residents that our city is one of the fastest developing landscapes (cityscapes… megalopolises??) in the world.

The most dynamic metropolis in the world’s most populous country numbs me with extremes: It’s a single city with more skyscrapers than the entire U.S. West Coast. In Shanghai, a new building of 30 stories or more has been completed every 12 days for the last six years. (At 1,375 feet, the Jin Mao Tower is soon to be dwarfed by the chisel-shaped, 101-story World Financial Centre, which should be the world’s tallest building when it’s completed in 2008.) From the United Airlines Hemispheres Magazine, October 2007 issue, p. 68.

With that many skyscrapers and cranes- I see 6 cranes out my van window right now- the changes we are feeling and seeing are much like the changes in technology we are seeing in the world.

Unofficial word from the US consulate (this is third hand information… so take it for what it’s worth) is that Shanghai is now around 22 million people.

Photo Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifemagic/446410824/, http://farm1.static.flickr.com/55/137523747_5e7b054727.jpg?v=0

TV Turn Off Week?? Does this mean no news for me?

This weeks is the newly renamed TV turnoff week.. ahem.. excuse me... "SCREEN AWARENESS WEEK".

I took a few minutes this afternoon and recorded a public service style podcast with a first grader giving a few examples of what families and students can do when they are not watching TV or playing video games. I personally think my family has a nice balance and we get to watch our usuals, (American Idol, an occasional Simpson episode and our favorite... Lonely Planet Traveler and cooking shows). In typical digital native fashion we surf the web, catch up on our blogs and watch a movie or TV show without a blink of an eye. Despite my age (a whopping 42 years), my mind has remained just flexible enough to do 4 things at once and I think it will mark the beginning of the end when I cannot keep up with my "slightly" younger wife.

My much younger colleague and friend Jeff Utecht has been dragged into the "Screen Awareness week" by his lovely wife Daneah Galloway. Daneah is one of the counselors at my school and she left a great post for him on HIS blog, The Thinking Stick.


She writes:

"For those of you who are regular readers of The Thinking Stick, I offer my condolences. For the week of April 23rd-29th, Jeff Utecht will be unavailable to post any articles, respond to any inquiries, or leave any comments on your own blogs. This is due to his VOLUNTARY (well almost) participation in the annual “TURNOFF WEEK”where we take control of the power screens have in our lives. Jeff will be attempting to evaluate (along with thousands of other people and students from around the world) the amount of time he spends on activities involving a screen.

During this week, I would encourage you to do much the same. Take a break from your televisions, computers, and handhelds…take a break from screens and spend time exploring your life. Minimize your screen time for just seven days and maximize quality time with loved ones. Reevaluate your priorities. Just be."

Common sense tells us that "work" does not count on this week. We "get to" use computers and "screens" to do our work, but we are not allowed to have any "fun" with the "screens". Boy, oh boy, did that set me off with a few choice things to says this morning.

I gave the following excuses as to why I would use screens (tonight) and not feel a bit guilty about it:

1. My work is like play (mostly) so it does not count.

2. My screen time is related to learning and personal improvement, thus it does not count.

3. I live in the PRC and I need to access news outside of this place, otherwise I do not know what is going on.

4. I want to and "plllllllllllllllllzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" on you.

I think that number 1-3 work just fine. Number 4 is a bit suspect, but after having an elementary counselor shake her head no for 10 minutes straight at you while rolling her eyes, you would be giving her the biggest administrative raspberry too!

So what's my point? I think that this screen awareness week has hit the mark with me. No, I have not given up the small screen sitting on my lap. I have just been even more aware of the power it has to facilitate my learning, give me access to a world out of my reach and help me keep active, alive and learning. For you poor slobs (oops... it is also No Name Calling Week in our middle school)... nice, but mislead people who just find themselves sitting in front of the 72 inch plasma screen watching some inane and ridiculous slop (like American Idol... poor Sanjaya, forever to be a Tiger Beat Reject) without being involved in the world of the web. Well.... good luck.

So tonight... my lovely wife and I sit LISTENING to our music on our iPod, she's correcting math papers and me catching up on my blogs and writing to you. My brain engaged. This was preceded by a family cooking adventure of Peanut Butter Cookies (NOT on my diet, but who gives a rip on Screen Awareness week), and we all reading a couple of kid books before putting the 3 year old down for the night. When I got home, my daughter (she's THREE) explained in no uncertain terms that her teacher told her that we were NOT to watch TV. We were told, and we followed our directions.

Thanks Daneah and Madeline. I hope we last the week... albeit in our own way.

Technorati Tags: Screen Awareness Week, TV Turn-off Week, The Thinking Stick, Peanut Butter Cookies

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Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning

If you haven't read A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink, I really think you should.

Why you ask? Well, in education circles the words in the title of post will become (I am predicting here) part of our professional language, as each points to an area of where our careers/businesses, and our intelligence and our educational system will collide with an ever flattening world. The thing that Mr. Pink does so well is that he summarizes a body of research with understandable story telling. If you have not downloaded his lecture (available on iTunes), you really should. It is worth the download.

Think:Lab pointed me to this mind map created by Phil Chambers. Phil does a nice job of capturing the larger points of the book and I will use this diagram to talk about A Whole New Mind using this over the next couple of months.

What you really need to learn.

In my wanderings around the web I found a great article titled 10 things that everyone needs to learn by Steven Downes. You have to read this article as it is a nice summary and spin off from another piece done by Guy Kawasaki this last fall. Guy who writes for Signum sine tinnitu and several magazine did a piece with a similar title but much different content. Both are dated in the blogsphere in that they were written last fall... that's equivalent to our years.

We just finished with student-led conferences at our school and we asked that students be heavily involved in their own assessment. I keep talking to them about what they really need to know to be successful in life, and those who are paying attention and engage me in this conversation often hit the nail right on the head. Mr. Dowes #1 is "How to predict consequences". Mr. Kawasaki's #1 is "How to talk to your boss".

Common sense would tell you both are important. My question is how do we teach kids how to do either?

Readers of News on the Web: Not Short on Attention

Here is one for you brought to attention by my friends at U-Tech Tips! :

“Web news readers have greater attention span: study says”

You have to laugh! Don’t you?

I did a workshop last week with rousing crowd of four parents on how to use a new aggregator to collect, and read news from the choice stories available on the web. In each of the three sessions one of the attendees asked me “how much time do you spend reading blogs and news each day. I am very busy and don’t probably have the time that you do.”

Common sense would tell you that a principal of two schools with over 700 students, a father, husband and soon-to-be deputy superintendent is a pretty busy guy. “Spare time” is a commodity that I exploit to its fullest because I have so little of it. Thus , you can figure out the reason why I don’t have too many recent entries on this blog! Without a news aggregator and me continuing to collect feeds from news sources, blogs and professional journals, I would be hopelessly lost on current events, professional news and what my colleagues are doing out there in the “real” world. I would guess that the only real time I would get to “read” would be on my morning jaunts to the john!

As it is the RSS feeds that I have keep me informed and I can read them on the fly as I wait for meetings to start, when I am BORED in meetings when people are talking about things that do not apply to me, and when I am sitting in my cozy chair at home in the evenings enjoying a glass of wine or tea and winding down. My “newspaper” is my laptop and I can keep up with the world using the sources I want when I want them.

The great news for me is that in this study, I am purportedly reading more content that those poor folks stuck to traditional news sources. Granted, I still miss that 7 pound paper on my lap on a Sunday morning, but that is just the way it goes. My lap top is always available and doesn’t get damp and drippy on the front door step unless I really lose my cool and put it out there after an annoying email!

Technorati Tags: Attention Spans, aggregators, RSS Feeds, redefining literacy

Web Compliment Day!

David Warlick called my attention to Jennifer Wagner's idea for Web Compliment Day, the antithesis of No Cyberbullying day! My compliments to fellow blogger Jennifer at The Technospud.

She writes: If last Friday, March 30th, was Stop Cyberbullying Day, then I would like to make THIS FRIDAY — April 6th – CYBER COMPLIMENT DAY!!

She is working on a good idea that I am trying to spread here as well. It is tough being on the other side of the world and being a day late, but it is the thought that counts.

So....here are my compliments!

I would first like to compliment my good friend, teacher, colleague and go to man Jeff Utecht. The man at The Thinking Stick and U-Tech’s tips keeps me thinking, rolling with new ideas and amazed at the power one Mariner’s fan can possibly have in any given day. He recently spent a great amount of time figuring out how to get the M’s games to stream through at work, and frankly I didn’t have the heart to say….”ahhhh… dude… we’re suppose to be teaching here!”. He gets done in one day what takes mere mortals like me a month. GREAT WORK Jeff! I look forward to changing the world with you!

Thank you to Doug Johnson and the Blue Skunk Blog! Great thinking stuff which I read with enthusiasm each time. He comes up with great quotes. Doug… here is one for you:

"Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways." -Samuel McChord Crothers

To David Warlick who visited us here in Shanghai in February for some heavy lifting and hard work. My compliments to you on your thinking, your energy and your great thoughts around educational change. Your words continue to have an effect on our work here at SAS!

To Christian Long at Think:Lab and Beckett-to-be for keeping me mentally stimulated and celebrating fatherhood! GREAT WORK Christian! His educational manifesto idea will be one that keeps me coming back and reading it again and again. I apply the ideas in my daily work.

My compliments to Scott Mcleod and his 100 Principals/100 Blogs project and the blog Dangerously Irrelevant I am not sure where he stands with the project, but this principal now has three blogs (one for each of his schools and one for himself). I think you can do three tally marks for me thanks to your encouragement! His collaborative blog Leadertalk is one of the best blogs going!!

Technorati Tags: cybercompliment, cyberbullying, Blogging

Maddie's Minute- A Learning Experience

In my wandering and wondering around the blogsphere I found Think:lab. The gents name who runs the blog is Christian Long, but I refer to him as the father of Beckett, with whom I have become quite fond. You see, Beckett is new to us here on this planet having just been born on September 6, 2006, and is finding his way around the world with the guidance of his parents. His father has dedicated himself to documenting his life and has provided a special way for us fathers to see what our relationship really means from another father’s perspective and alas, I believe we may see what it means to the children themselves. The blog “Beckett-to-be" apparently came from some frustration of paper and pencil.

Christian writes in his Think:lab profile:

“Beckett-to-Be” blog – We first learned that Karla was pregnant on New Years Eve day…and the daydreaming began immediately. After failing to keep several hand-written journals of my soon-to-be-father experience, I finally realized that a blog would not only offer a great way to keep track of the experience, but it’d eventually allow our child’s grandparents and family to keep up-to-date on his evolving life. Hence, the name of the blog: a testament to the fact that he’ll always be growing, exploring, changing, and ‘be’coming."

I, like Christian over a year ago, found out that I was to be a father (again) sometime in January- frankly the date escapes me- and while I was sitting on the couch watching the tube and keeping up on my RSS feeds, I came upon “Beckett-to-Be” blog. I giggled, smiled and even shed a little tear here and there as I read each passage and entry. Christian must be a pretty good guy and frankly, I think this man would be the type of character that I would like to have as a next door neighbor. We don’t have next door neighbors- in the United States sense- here in China, but if he lived nearby I think I would like to shoot the breeze over the proverbial back fence and let our kids play together.

When I discovered this blog, which I still read, I passed along a note to my wife. She had never blogged before and was a bit “anti-blog” as I spend a fair amount of screen time at work and she was wondering why I would do so at home so much. Nonetheless, I just dropped her a line with the url and a note that said, “this is really nice”. Next thing I know, my daughter Madeline (who is now 3 years old going on 35) now has “Maddie’s Minutes”. My wife Amanda was inspired and motivated and is now an avid blogger too! As I sit here typing this she is on the other couch doing her entries and working on her school work.

I have heard over and over that common sense would tell us that by making a work tool a life tool, we guarantee full implementation and useful application to the work environment. Just give the teachers computers to use at home and work and you will see increases in the classrooms. Show them how to apply their knowledge to their world and you will see them showing the very same (and probably more) applications to the educational environment.

Wanna see an example? http://maddiesminute.blogspot.com should be your target. Leave her a comment and let’s see who else we can inspire and pass this powerful tool along to the children in our classrooms!

Thank you Christian for the inspiration and the efforts with your son Beckett! He is one cute kid! I hope that Amanda and I can be blessed with another healthy and intelligent child like we have with Maddie!

Don't be Stuck. Just Avoid the "School" rut!

Doug Johnson has a great way to ending a blog that often makes me thing and explore a bit more. His Sunday quote is a great one (see below). He then goes to make me explore Will Richardson's blog and his entry Stuck.

A Sunday quote for contemplation:

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Will Richardson on his Weblogg-ed entry Stuck writes: "This whole School 2.0 thing is the crux of it. There’s this niggling feeling in my brain somewhere that at the end of the day, I’m totally missing the point. That for the most part, we’re all missing the point." What's our "endless immensity of the sea," Will?

Will Goes on to write:

My learning and classroom learning look very different. I will never enter another physical classroom as a “student” again, and that’s by choice. That physical space just doesn’t cut it. And schools are all about physical space. And control. And content.

I am not sure I can be much help to Will. I will say that it is sure fun to engage people in this conversation and see where it all goes. Talk about rocking the world of a classroom teacher when they start interacting with some drawings and text surrounding School 2.0. But Will, maybe it is more than school. Really you are writing (I think) about your own learning! Isn’t really LEARNING 2.0? Get out of that "school" rut!

In fact, I think it may be LEARNING 2.0 beta! We discussed this at a meeting I as at last week with a bunch of technology folks trying to develop a conference framework. We came up with in a short period of time Learning 2.0 beta: Communications, Collaborations and Connections. A pretty good start if you ask me!

If we really are all about schools, teaching and learning then let’s concentrate on the Learning and not so much on the school and teaching part. Will, you’ve directed and taught yourself to learn without the “…physical space. And control. And content.” Isn’t this what we want to instill in (and teach) our students?

Will, I urge you. Don’t be stuck. Move this “Learning 2.0” forward and analyze not the school, but the results we all dream of achieving.

In closing, I go back to the importance of assessment in our schools and what assessment for LEARNING really means. My fall back position is that we really need to come to terms with what learning is, how to measure it and how to teach ourselves and our students how
to manage the learning processes. This is long term goal stuff… not just a one lesson plan topic for sure!

Rick Stiggins of ATI states:

"If we wish to maximize student achievement in the U.S., we must pay far greater attention to the improvement of classroom assessment. Both assessment of learning and assessment for learning are essential. But one is currently in place, and the other is not." (Stiggins, 2002)
http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Stiggins,_Richard_J.

Technorati Tags: Will Richardson, Doug Johnson, Learning 2.0, Assessment

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Some Things Just Seem Crazy at the Time!

This is a mirror post from http://principalblogs.typepad.com/andrewtorris/

“We”- that’s the royal “We”- do weekly podcasts at my school. I started doing them this year from our podcast central sound room (my office) moved to a larger space, as the crowd around the microphone was uncomfortable in my small office, we invited a couple of kids to participate, and poof…. All of a sudden all the adults were relegated to the back of the stage as the kids started creating our weekly podcasts with quality content.

This last Thursday, my creative and focused technology coordinator, Jeff Utecht, came to me and said that he did not have time to get to classrooms to assist the 5th grade kids in the organizational aspects of the podcasts this week. He then handed me his iPod and a voice recorder and to me to just record the podcast and just pass it off to him in the afternoon when we met for a meeting at a location in downtown Shanghai.

COMMON SENSE would tell you that I would organize my thoughts, write a few notes, and get my calendar out to “talk to my audience” about my views on the school operations, our calendar of events and a few tips or tricks about working with the school. All good, but just a retread of ideas we have done before. Instead, I got this crazy idea that I would just stroll around and talk to teachers and students as I did my usual “lap” around the school. The podcast turned out to be a very lengthy 13+ minutes and Jeff cut out a fair amount of stuff (sorry to the teachers and students who ended up on the cutting room floor), but the result was a light hearted, fun and I think repeatable audio trip around the school. Thanks to Jeff, who took the time to paste together the sound files with some fun background music, and thanks to the teachers and students who participated in – impromptu- this podcast! It was a crazy idea that just seemed to work.

Our podcast page is a pretty popular place these days. According to our clustr map we have had over 4100 hits on this page this year! Ok, probably 20 or more are just me, as I check it frequently, make sure all things are working ok, and the kids are using the page appropriately (with Mr. U’s guidance), but even if we subtract 3000 hits we are doing pretty darn well! A few things a that Jeff has done to make the page a fun place to visit beyond our podcasts are a free download of the week from music artists sharing their work on the web. Frequently we get note back from them thank us for sharing their songs. Our recent principal coffee has been podcast and we will do it again later this next month. Hopefully I can get our PTSA to start using this medium to share their information out to our community as well. All in all, it is easy, it is fun and I think it has help change the shape of what we are doing in our classrooms as well.

It seems that more than just our school community is listening in as well. David Warlick wrote about us on his blog "2 cents worth" yesterday! Some of you from Pudong may remember David from his recent evening presentation!

He wrote:

I think that we need to find new ways of assessing the success of our education endeavors, methods that are more relevant to a changing market place, changing customers, and a rapidly changing information landscape. I found a perfect example this morning when I ran across a podcast program from the Pudong Campus of the Shanghai American School. One of their tech people, Mr. Torris simply walked into grade 5 classrooms and started interviewing teachers and kids about what they were learning.

What’s different here is that rather than relying on numbers that describe learners as products, the community is almost literally invited into the classrooms to learn what and how their children are learning and what they are doing with it. This is what I would like to have known about my children’s schools. I’d like to have been part of it — not just an outside inspector.

Thanks David for the nod and the compliment of calling me a "tech person". What a compliment!!

US and UK fall last? Where are our school resources??

This just in this on Valentines Day!

BERLIN – The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a U.N. survey of child welfare in 21 wealthy countries that assessed everything from infant mortality to whether children ate dinner with their parents or were bullied at school.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070214-1129-childwelfare.html

As an expatriate American and a former United States based principal serving in rural and suburban schools, I can now count on THREE fingers the number of times that I have had police officers in my school and office in the past six years as an international school administrator! In my former posting in the US I could count on a visit from law enforcement officers at least weekly. My heart breaks every time I think about that little boy in my office with the hand print bruise on his face, on his back on and on the inside of his thighs and that was 6 years ago. I think he is in middle school now and I hope he is ok. Or the 4 migrant children in the trailer with no heat and no hot water shivering under blankets and eating cold food, all the while suffering from bronchitis and the flu.

Common sense tells me that changes need to happen, and I am not sure who is in charge of these changes, but resources are indeed important. Working in a resource rich environment like I have now has shown me that it does and our schools can work like they should. Just give us a chance!


On another note... Doug Johnson writes about the 2007 Newbery Award winning book title "The H igher Power of Lucky" by Susan Patron, which apparently is raising a few eyebrows with the single word- scrotum.




Hmmpf! Read this response from Doug and his friend and colleague who really puts our resource need to the table's edge for us all to chew on! Nice post Doug!

Read the post here at: http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2007/2/23/a-lucky-perspective.html


Common sense tells me that we all need to raise this question again with our politicians and ascend the conversation beyond what they all believe are the "basics" and look to letting the professionals be just that.... and more!



Technorati Tags: Child Welfare Survey, School Resources, Back-to-the-basics

13 posts, 1125 page views...

13 posts, 1125 page views...



This was the content of the email from my friend and blog helper Scott McLeod in Minnesota giving me some information about my page hits for my school blog, Elementary and Middle School Pudong Express. I have been participating in the 100 Principals/ 100 Blogs project, and Scott had me all set up and running like the wind in a short few days. I have since added this blog to give me someplace to personally run with some space to do my own reflections, and less about what is going on in the classrooms and playgrounds.



So... why am I so interested in my school blog stats? Frankly it was common sense for me to think that given the opportunity to EASILY post information that is EASILY found and read by a community members would be a popular mode of communication. Skeptics were common, and frankly quite annoying but.... 13 posts and 1125 views means that a lot parents are getting their information from this blog!



Thanks Scott for getting me off the spot and into this world of information sharing. It really is all about the conversations!

Technorati Tags: Elementary and Middle School Pudong Express, Blogging, leadership, 21st Century Literacy, Principal's Blogs

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David Warlick Visits Us on Pudong- Session 1 in the PM 2/16/2007

This afternoon, I am blogging from the live presentation from David Warlick currently being presented here on the Pudong Campus.



I dropped in a bit late, and man.... am I sorry I did!



He is now speaking about how information has changed-



In the past 10 - 15 years:



- we've added networking,

- digital media

- it is overwhelming

- flowing without containers.... information that is!



In the past 3 years:



- Conversations have been added worldwide

- Informaiton is reader controlled

- People are connecting with infromation.



CONTENT is Conversation-



Blogging is the best example of blogging 2.0. This is the most popular model of digital communications. What's special about this simple, simple technology is the way it has changed the way we communicate and view the world.



Most interesting to me is the effect that Blogging has become a great way for kids to communicate and write. Kids are begging for writing assignments and that their audience is now expanded beyond the teacher and student (with a few parents added for good measure).



Shanghai American School is really encouraging blogging for teachers and students. What a wave of enthusiasm for our kids and teachers and thanks to my friend and colleague Jeff Utecht thanks to his work with our own blog pages! Hurray, Hurray! We are building a community of learners both in our buildings and on our blogsphere at SAS!



It is common sense to see that an audience of our colleagues (and peers) brings us to be 1) VERY careful with our verbiage and 2) Very motivated to write to a high level---- current blog entry is probably immune from these two points (ha!).

David just noted that 8 million editors of Wikipedia are very powerful. One must believe that this certainly must not be for the faint of heart, but there does seem to be millions of brave folks out there!



RSS- REAL SIMPLE SYNDICATION!

I have not setup an XML or RSS feed button on this blog yet. Ok... you can click the link above, but that is not as fancy and cool. I am going to work on it today and see what I can do to damage this site more!



RSS is causing a major shift to find out information about our world. Information is finding us (if we ask) and we can train the web to do stuff that we have been doing ALL BY ourselves. The staggering thing is the tool del.icio.us which the connections of interests and other's connections and links made. We are making what David is calling "personal learning networks". This PLN will help us learn and do our jobs better! I agree with David when he says that he believes teachers should be using this to learn.



His final example www.wearenotafraid.com... when else in our life time is something like this possible. Common Sense would tell me that this will change our world and that of our children!



Thank you David!







Technorati Tags: redefining literacy, David Warlick, techfest, SAS, Shanghai American School

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