Adventures in Administration

Day 28 of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge from TeachThought... Respond: Should Technology drive curriculum or vice versa? This is a great question to reflect on in this day and age of "more technology, more technology, more technology"!  I have thought long and hard about this question over the past two years and have had to answer it countless times for faculty, parents, students and other stakeholders.  In my opinion, curriculum is always the focus and technology is meant to enhance the delivery, application, and/or acquisition. Photo credit: http://goo.gl/ZC7tao We are a 1:1 school where our students bring their own laptops.  In addition, we have iPads available for teachers to use in their classrooms when a mobile device seems more appropriate.  We have done a lot of training of our faculty; we have a Tech Committee made up of teachers who have participated in the visioning process and provided a sounding board for me as the Administrator.  We h...

Well, here we are with Day 2 of the reflective teacher blogging challenge.  Our topic for today is ed tech.  One of my favorite topics!  This year we have some huge changes with respect to the use of technology on our campus and I am super excited about all of them.  So, in no particular order: 1. we are a BYO-Laptop school this year 2. we are fully using GAFE, including several teachers who are utilizing G+ communities for their classrooms, students who GHO to class because they can't navigate the stairs on crutches (we are an old building so so not have elevators) or because they are home sick 3. every department has ah inventory of iPads to use with their lessons 4. we have a brand new Innovation Lab The newly renovated Innovation Lab!   For me, the Innovation Lab is the biggest learning curve as we are all exploring together.  Later this semester, the entire faculty will be trained in Design Thinking thanks to a number of conversations that I...

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdecomite/499144126/in/photostream/ Some schools are more willing to embrace technology than others.  Quite frankly, this is beginning to puzzle me deeply.  I understand the concerns that many adults raise regarding their fears for student safety, the inability of many students to comport themselves appropriately in the on-line world, and the lack of a clear understanding of how to meaningfully integrate technology.  After all, it is the teaching  that is important, not the tools, right? As a Catholic educator, I understand all of this.  However, I would like to counter all of these reasonable concerns with the fact that as Catholic (you can actually insert any religious denomination here that is in the business of education) educators, we are in a unique position to do more than just simply bring technology into the classroom.  We have the amazing ability to teach morals.  We get to talk about God (yes, I said...

http://goo.gl/hN3wJH The Renaissance is perhaps the most popular example in the western world of creativity  And why not?  Just think of the art, architecture, and literature that we have inherited from that time.  We marvel today at the ingenuity and originality of the times.  And we sometimes long for just a smidgen of the talent represented by that era. I believe that technology is presenting us with an opportunity to reclaim some of that creativity and originality.  I believe we are living in a new renaissance.   However, because it is driven by technology I think many discount the potential. When Brunelleschi figured out how to complete the  duomo  atop Santa Maria in Florence in the 15th century, he was creating.  He saw a problem and took a risk.  The result?  A spectacular piece of architecture that is still marveled at today.  He had some tools at his disposal and with some design thinking, built a structure ...