Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Submit Your Questions/Feedback

Please submit any questions you'd like to see addressed in our presentation as comments to this post. Simply click on "0 (or whatever number) comments" at the bottom of this post, then follow the directions. You'll need a Google Account - which is free - to submit a comment.

Also, if you have any feedback or additional questions for Anne or me, this would be a great place to provide that as well.

7 comments:

Karen said...

As we begin our own laptop initiative we would like to learn from your mistakes. Are there any teacher training pitfalls we can avoid? Thanks for your wonderful videos for your faculty. I have shared them with many others around Flordia. I will be at the Palm Beach Tech conference tomorrow and look forward to your presentation.

Unknown said...

Karl--

It was great having dinner with you and the Inimitable Ann before the show. I've got all sorts of ideas bouncing around in my head this morning, as you'd hope would happen after some stimulating conversation. Thanks for being here!

Lee Kolbert said...

Karl and Anne,
Thank you so much for coming to our conference and stimulating some much needed conversations about how we are raising our 21st century students. The feedback I've been hearing (and only 15 hours out) has been awesome! You guys are terrific and it was an honor to work with you.

Karl Fisch said...

Karen - since we were traveling when you posted your question, we didn't see it before our presentation. Hopefully we answered at least some of your questions but - if you check back - please feel free to leave any specific questions you may have.

In general, our recommendation would be to focus on the staff development first, and the technology second. Focus on the learning, not the technology, then see how you can use the technology to facilitate that learning.

I'm a strong believer that the tech tools we have available to us today can help us foster a more student-centered approach to instruction; a more meaningful, relevant and useful education for our students - but we still need to be careful to focus on the skills and abilities and habits of mind we want them to grow, not on the tools.

So, this is really hard to address in a comment, feel free to give Anne or me a call if you'd like to talk about this further.

Karl Fisch said...

Lee and Kim,

Thanks for the feedback. We had a great time and learned a lot - I hope we fulfilled the mission you set out for us. Let us know how those conversations go and send any more feedback you receive our way.

Lee Kolbert said...

Your names are buzzing around our district... I posted briefly on my blog if you'd like to check it out:
http://macmomma.blogspot.com/

Recent conversation (yesterday) between me and a high-ranking IT Security person, usually our superhero, in fact. We were discussing why, from a management standpoint, we must ban/block so many things.

IT Guy: We just want to do what we can to save a kid's life.
Me: We don't care about saving a kid's life, what we care about is saving a kid's life while he's on OUR watch. If we cared about saving his life, we would teach him differently, to use technology appropriately and use good judgement instead of making him pretend the technology doesn't exist during school hours.
IT Guy: You're right!

It's nice to be right, but more so, It's nice to know I've made someone consider a new angle.

Thanks for the inspiration!

Karen said...

Dear Karl,

Thanks for the sage advice for our faculties. Our teachers really are seeking a way to inspire the next generation even if they can't verbalize it. You have a great model for getting us started. We are about to empower 200+ teachers to become those teachers who can inspire other teachers on their campuses to move our teaching practices and thoughts to a more meaningful and applicable approach. Thanks.

As to the Lee and IT struggle, it seems to be a universal approach across districts, but it's refreshing when there are break throughs. We must continue to be the advocates for curriculum running the technology and not the technology running the curriculum. Thanks, Lee.