This will be probably be the only time I will ever promote another blog. But check out the story on twentypointfive.blogspot.com These two guys are going to be doing a kidney transplant 1 week from today (on August 31st). So how did I find this blog? While my husband (Agent #170) works with these two guys in the Geek Squad in Minneapolis. My husband’s boss, Derek (Agent #18), was in need of a kidney transplant and Ryan (Agent #23), his coworker, offered to give his kidney. A true show of giving yourself to others.

This subject is so important to me as well. My aunt, was a recipient of a double lung and heart transplant in 1994. She passed away earlier this year.

So how does this relate to technology in the classroom? While at NECC 2007, Dr. Tim Tyson showed this video during his closing keynote. The video is from Mabry Middle School about Organ Transplants (it is the last video in the set). The movie is absolutely amazing- I actually would recommend watching all of them if you have a chance.

As the team of teachers sent by SRS left the 2007 NECC, we talked about how we could next year contribute to the energy of the presentations. There is an interesting dynamic at SRS in regards to the teachers. There is a few of the mature generation, large number of baby boomers, a few gen-xers, and a one millennial teacher. However, we are educating the millennial population (our students) and understanding how the millennial operates will continue to help SRS move forward.

So, this past summer we have been looking in depth to the idea of the generations. Born in 1980 to baby boomer parents, I identify myself to be a millennial. Even though I am part of the earliest wave of this generation. However, I see the defining characteristic of the millennial generation is the need for “communication and connectedness”. As I was enjoying an afternoon with my friends from school, we all sat around with our cell phones most of them were the “smart phones” with non-stop access to our email and the internet. Our cars are equipped differently than our parents, they include iPods and GPS with real-time traffic updates. The need for cigarette lighter adapters is at it is greatest.

Today my principal and I prepared our submission to the NCEA 2008 conference in Indianapolis. We talked about a more simple dynamic: digital immigrants and digital natives. As a digital native do I present an interesting dynamic to the workplace, I find technology as the most integral part of student learning. How can I help the digital immigrant become comfortable with technology? How can an administrator prepare their school to hire the digital native? I will be interested to see if our presentation is selected as one of the programs because I truly believe that this dynamic will begin “rearing its head” in the coming years.

Big ideas I guess at one point start small. I just finished working on a draft of our school’s annual report. The report’s goal was to highlight the accomplishments of our students which I believe it did. I could have written a small magazine on the success of our students but for printing and time sake I was limited to eight pages. In those eight pages I talked about our major improvements, our elementary school, and our middle school. All of this was done to move SRS to SRS 2.0

As I was finishing this I realized there were a few other projects that needed to be finished before the school year starts. I still need to go and take my notes from NECC 2007 and transcribe them for summer professional development for our teachers and teaching how to blog using Wordpress is one of the major topics.

So what else is on my to do list:

•     Read 1 technology article a day and comment on it.
•     Prepare our web based tools for student use.
•     Look at how students will use our new website srsonline.org
•     and finally …Enjoy the rest of my summer.