As the births of living creatures are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time. The teacher should “take his seat not on a platform or pulpit, but on a level with the rest.”

What to do until we all have all the support, resources and direction we wish we had

 Not about bits, bytes, speed, or keeping up  It’s going to happen anyway

 The Dumbest Generation

◦ eneration/ eneration/  Is this how we think (or should think) about our students?

 Three Golden Ages ◦ Renaissance Florence ◦ Elizabethan England ◦ America’s Founding

 Dumbest Generation ◦ Problem of decontextualized learning  Three Golden Ages ◦ Innovation/Experimentation ◦ Tradition

 Struggling for Balance Between ◦ Experimentation  Innovation  Need to know  21 st century skills ◦ Tradition  Baby/Bathwater  How good can we be at predicting what matters

1 Willing to fail 2 Objective for kids & for you Big picture Small excuse 3 Gather resources & allies 4 Small bites 5 Lead by example (Brag) 6 Ask for more

 Life experience. ◦ Psychiatric Aide – Geriatrics Ward ◦ Purchasing for manufacturing ◦ Financial Services ◦ Poison Control ◦ Sales, Marketing, and Data Processing (VP) ◦ Industrial Computer Sales ◦ And at 43 an educator

 Computer Skills OJT ◦ Paper tape to a teletype 1969 ◦ Commodore ◦ Cobol Coding – Late 80s ◦ Personal Computing ◦ Client Server Networking – 1990 ◦ No games or breadboards at home

 Social Studies

 English

 Long Term Sub Spring 1996  English – Freshmen, Freshmen SpEd, Poetry, Creative Writing

 Home Office – used LC III  School Lab – Disk & Printer

 Got the lab whenever we wanted  Did a little troubleshooting, but it basically worked  Writing, and re-writing, and re-re-writing  And rethinking everything I thought I knew about teaching writing

 District Technology Coordinator

 140 PCs  70 Macs  5 servers   Website  District Office  Staff Development  Class in Field Engineering  Tutorial in Poli Sci  Information Systems  Umpire Baseball & Softball

 State of NH Dep’t of Ed – Co-founder NHEON  TERC – Mathematics & Science Education

 2003 Dir Inst Tech High School ◦ Teach Comp Sci ◦ Ass’t Coach Softball  2005 Dir Inst Tech K-12 ◦ Teach Ethics  2007 to Present add Dir Info Systems ◦ Teach Ethics ◦ Remember to breathe

1 Willing to fail 2 Objective for kids & for you 3 Gather resources & allies 4 Small bites 5 Lead by example (Brag) 6 Ask for more

 Not plan to fail ◦ Have Plan B  Choose to teach something you already do pretty well ◦ Don’t pick a central curricular component for your first try  Low stakes

 Why is this essential?  Why not next year?  Tools of their time ◦ Don’t teach harness making when tractors are cheap  Have a big rationale  Choose a small objective

 Liberal from Latin liberalis – appropriate for free people  Quadrivium (where 4 roads meet) ◦ Mathematics, Geometry, Music, Astronomy  Trivium (where 3 roads meet) ◦ Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic

Rhetoric Information Technology Logic Computer Science 3 Domains of the New Trivium Grammar Information Literacy

 Information Literacy ◦ Incorporates Media Literacy ◦ Use the Big 6 ◦ Learn from librarians

 Algorithmic Thinking  How tools are designed and deployed  Return of what was lost in the 1950’s & 1960’s

 Laptop one example of a generic tool  Use technology as a tool  Presentation tools  Web tools  Data collections

3 Domains of Tech Fluency Information Technology Computer Science Information Literacy Philosophy Logic Problem Solving (Tactical) Innovation

 For students & for you ◦ For them, so they’ll tell the story ◦ For you, so you’ll have the energy to do it

 Wetware – people to help you  Software/Applications/Web Tools  Hardware  Read grants  Use district & state resources (sometimes waiting to be asked – outreach funding is first to go)

 People like to be asked ◦ Community ◦ Corporate ◦ Former students ◦ Parents ◦ Other staff

 Exploit the free resources  Go to the sessions today  Don’t resolve to be an expert

 Don’t start with the year long portfolio  Know how and where the backups are  Have Plan B

 Success draws resources  Don’t wait to be discovered  Showcase the kids work  Know your teacher’s room culture  Be willing to brag  Present at conferences

 Offer to help write grants Send proposals to conferences Read Grants

 Comes from everywhere  Distributed computing leads to Distributed Learning  Requires Distributed Leadership