May 272011

#FOSSED11

Conferences, Presentations No Responses »

I am honored to again be presenting at FOSSED July 6 – 8, 2011. We will meet at Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine.

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This year I am concentrating on Moodle 2.0 with two 1/2 day sessions:

  • Teaching on a Moodle 2.0 Platform
  • Administering (front end) your Moodle 2.0 Installation

Collaboration and Learning are the main themes for this “Free and Open Source in Education” Conference.  I am always pleased to be able to contribute.

 

Oct 162010

Maine Educational Technology Conference 2010

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This was an exciting conference for many reasons.  As part of the planning committee again, I felt partially responsible for the presentations and days.  The innovative Collaborative Keynote by Angela Maiers and Vicki Davis was superb; and I was honored to be selected as the Maine Technology Leader of the Year Finalist.

I led a Panel with the assistance of Page Lennig, Waynflete School, and Maya Crosby, Lincoln Academy, on the implementation of Google Apps for Education.

Video clip courtesy of Cheryl Oakes, Seedlings

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Jul 092010

FOSSED 2010

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Just finished two days of presenting at FOSSED 2010.  Groups of educators from the world of “open source  and free technology believers” met at Gould Academy in the mountain region of Bethel, Maine for 2/5 days (and nights) of learning and collaboration.

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I presented in four three hour sessions, which was exhausting but extremely rewarding.  My topics this year were:

  1. Successful implementation of Google Apps for Education (not open source, but no cost to education)
  2. Using Google Apps in your Classroom (with Maya Crosby from Lincoln Academy)
  3. Establishing a Personal Learning Network
  4. Web 2.0 Tools for Transforming Learning

This is a Conference that I have been part of since its inception eight years ago. I am always astounded at the devotion and desire of the attendees to make a difference in education.

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Mar 072010

National Center for Educational Statistics Winter Forum 2010

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Last week I had the privilege of representing the Maine local school units at the National Forum on Educational Statistics winter session. http://nces.ed.gov/forum/
What is this forum?
Overview from their website:
The Forum is sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education and is committed to improving the quality, comparability, and usefulness of elementary and secondary education data, while remaining sensitive to data burden concerns. Forum members include representatives from state education agencies, local education agencies, the federal government, and other organizations with an interest in education data. Our purpose is to plan, recommend, and implement strategies for building an education data system that will support local, state, and national efforts to improve public and private education throughout the United States.
During the two days, we had presentations from key planners and implementors, for example:
  • Common Data Standards Initiative by Nancy J. Smith, NCES, U.S. Department of Education
  • Linking Early Childhood and Postsecondary Education to PK-12 by Elizabeth Laird, Data Quality Campaign and Hans L’Orange, State Higher Education Executive Officers
  • Linking Student and Teacher Data  by George Noell, Louisiana Department of Education
  • State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) Metrics and Race to the Top Pane:l Cathy Solomon, Office of the Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education; Kathy Gosa, Kansas State Department of Education; Irma Jones, Tennessee Department of Education
The forum addressed may issues, such as common data standards, the linkage of PK-12 data with early education childhood and postsecondary education, the linkage of student and teacher data, Race to the Top and State Fiscal Stabilization Fund data requirements, crime and violence data, data privacy, elementary and middle school course codes, website accessibility, NCES’s recent work, and more. It seeme, to me, that the topic that rose to the front during many discussions was the “linking of teacher performance to student achievement”.  This is one of those items that sounds great until you get to the knitty-gritty of gathering good data.
I serve as a member of the Tech Standing Committee and am always overwhelmed with the wealth of knowledge and deep thinking that comes from their meetings.  One of the Committee working groups will be publishing their next guide: Section 508 Accessibility.  This should prove to be extremely useful to all in the field.
Looking forward to the summer meeting at the end of July in Washington, D.C.

Complete agenda of this year’s forum here:  http://nces.ed.gov/forum/pdf/2010_Winter_Forum_Program.pdf

Looking forward to the summer meeting at the end of July in Washington, D.C.

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