I just returned from NECC yesterday, the long flight coupled with the intensity of the conference sent me straight to bed for several hours to recoup sleep. So today I thought to return to my computer and participate in Leadership Day 2008.

I am convinced that I drove St. Raphael’s Chief Learner nuts (and I mean NUTS) by saying, “Either you get it or you don’t.” I always put her in the ‘get it’ category. That particular statement started two years ago when I took a group of teachers and the principal to Oak-Land Junior High to look at integrated technology instruction. The view of teaching and learning changed instantly, as that evening in my voice mailbox the principal left me a message that effectively launched SRS from a 20th century school to a 21st century school.

The post could get lengthy if I decided to write out the entire story, but in short there are 10 things that explains how after two years I figured out what I really meant when I said,  “you get it.”

1. Try the tools as well.
2. Allow time for sharing.
3. Celebrate the success and recognize the times it doesn’t work.
4. Be innovative.
5. Share excitement and enthusiasm with others.
6. Research, read, and blog too.
7. Take risks.
8. Encourage creativity and collaboration.
9. Enjoy the moment.
10. Mold the teacher’s wings and let fly.

Like a good leader, my wings were molded and I was released to fly to begin the next stage in life. So thank you to the Chief Learner and all innovative leaders who ‘get it’.

In February, St. Raphael’s Catholic School hosted their annual State of the School. As I was assisting the teachers on their presentations and talking about various topics regarding educational technology, a nagging thought kept coming into my mind, “What is Global Contribution?” We talk as educators that we want our students to contribute to the community, but is today’s community larger than our local neighborhood? In fact, it truly is a global community, here are a few examples:

• I studied abroad at Oxford University and on my Facebook page, I am able to connect with friends from my time there.
• I joined a Ning and am networked with individuals around the world who have the same vision.
• My blog has been visited from every continent except South America

and a multitude of other things showing me that the world is much bigger than when I was a child.

Whether we know it or not little things have the potential to be contributed globally.

How did I ever come to this conclusion? What very few people know is that I speed skate. I picked up the sport during college, it was due to the fact that Bemidji was literally the “Ice Sports Capital of America”. I also tried playing hockey, curling, figure skating, but speed skating stuck. Over the past few years I have been so busy with other things: student teaching, writing my thesis, buying a house, getting married, that I reluctantly put my skating on hold.

This year I made a promise to myself to take my speed skating seriously and devote as much time as I could. However, the speed skating world changed in the past few years. With changes like: boots that are interchangeable from ice blades to inline blades, the Nike swift suit, and the fact that world record times are dropping. I felt like I had literally been moved to another planet, bad crossovers and all.

As a true millennial all of my answers to life should be found online, right? However, speed skating is not as popular here as it is in the Netherlands but rest assured this is the 21st century and I could connect to someone, somewhere that had a connection to speed skating even if it was in Danish.

Then I found a blog, Zen and the Art of Speed Skating (www.andrewlove.org/blog). Who? What? An American a speed skater who decided to keep track of his preparations for the 2006 Olympic Trials and just posted his 500th post on February 29th. I learned that over 1,000 visitors come to his site daily, has had close to 3,300 comments, and will crack 500,000 visitors this year alone. He writes in his blog:

“I never intended to create something like this. I just wrote and photographed what interested me, and the world showed up.”

I could only think about how it is such a profound statement. Connecting to something I once saw in a picture, “From personal knowledge, to global contribution.” This is so true.

Finally, I just want to send out a thank you Andrew for helping me come to the conclusion about global contribution.

This year I am going to be challenging myself during the month of November. I will be challenging myself to write an entire 50,000 word novel as part of the National Novel Writing Month. I hope this will be a challenge that will help me explore other avenues and interests, since my friends are on a search for a “hobby”.

So far I have 234 words. I am a bit behind in the challenge, but I hope that I get a chance to complete that task.

Over the past few weeks I have been working on getting ready for the first two weeks.  These first two weeks are jammed pack with many projects, programs, and upstarts.So what is up in Room 11? We started NWEA testing, yes even though it was hot in the computer lab we were able to begin collecting the data necessary to provide an excellent direction for the school year.  We are also issuing the STAR reading test- this will help students in direction to find materials in the library. The data is archived so this should help us make the best decisions for the most amazing students.

Students will get their mobile lab assignments on Friday. To make sure that I can assign the laptop to our 5-8 grade students make sure all the annual technology forms are submitted. The forms are found here.

And my professional development? Well, I have to finish testing first. Then I will start looking at my direction.

When I first started at SRS, I really was not nervous. I was told by a coworker to get these teacher’s to use technology I would have to work with these teachers non-stop, that made things a little uneasy. However, I started by upgrading much of our school’s infrastructure; new computers for the teachers and students, a n all campus wireless network, and programs to help make the teacher’s job easier.

So over the past two school years we have done some amazing things. I enjoy calling our teachers “digital pioneers”. So now I am entering my 3rd year at St. Raphael’s and I am actually more nervous than I have been in the previous two years. We are working together to further benefit the 21st century learner and my goal is to reach the “tipping point”, in which the efforts in technology integration will spread like wildfire throughout our school. We are getting close so I guess it is “wait and see.”

So what is in store for the teachers this year? Well, each teacher will have a blog in which they will detail their assignments, class information, etc. check out my blogroll for more information. We improved our student to computer ratio 1:2.4.

h yes, I do recognize that this will also be the place in which I give curriculum updates for classes they will be under the “Tag/Category” of “SRS TinT”

This summer I have been working on preparing many Web2.0 tools for our school.

WordPress: I have had so much fun over the past few weeks blogging with WordPress. The ease of the program and the fact that it is embedded in our web server, makes it so much more manageable in my eyes. Probably the best feature is the fact that students can be contributors as well. I just sent one of our teachers her log-in, hopefully she will find it as exciting as I do.

Moodle: I had learned about moodle last summer at NECC in San Diego, but I was constantly running into problems when installing on our server. Finally our web hosting company offered moodle as a “Click and Build” application. Simple enough I had Moodle installed within 10 minutes and the students enrolled in classes an hour later. I began playing around with the program and am so excited to start using with our upper elementary and middle school students.

Wikispaces: Last spring one of the teachers asked if I could research how to use a wiki in her classroom. After some research we decided to use WikiSpaces for her middle school students. The students took the the program instantly but sadly the school year ended. I have been developing ways to use in the classroom as a study guide, research guide or a million other options.

We also use Google Apps, del.icio.us, and OnlineGrades to give students many tools to give them the most authentic 21st century experience. We are always searching out new options and avenues to make learning more meaningful for students. We also welcome new ideas so that we can continue moving forward.

I called my boss this morning to talk to her about the ideas for SRS 2.0 and in true millennial and digital native fashion, I multi-tasked. On the cell phone while at my house I finished my small chores, then entered my car switched to my bluetooth headset and talked on my hour drive. By the time I got to my destination, our conversation was still going strong. Took care of the small business at my location and finally hung up. Yes, the digital native who is now in the workforce is still a social butterfly.

So what did we discuss?

• Using a blog to communicate assignments (all teachers have a wordpress account ready)
• Journalism Club
• 1st Annual SRS Film Festival
• Spring Fling/Fall Ball- after the great success last year …why not?
• Setting up the calendar for better communication
• Google Apps
• Using Moodle/ATutor
• Workshop Week Training
• Technology Refresher/Handbook
• Preparing Grading Program

This weekend I will be working on my action plan to detail the professional development for our teachers. It will be a time consuming process but in the end even better for our students.

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.

So I was asked, “SRS 2.0, what are you going to do?” I thought about this, how might I prepare our teachers to use tools that are Web 2.0. So today, I worked on setting up all of our teacher’s with a WordPress account on our website- I’ll put their links on a blogroll. Each of them will have access to their own blog and can use the blog to their own content. The ideas of using this blog are endless. Last year, we had political debates and book talks using blogs. What will this year hold?

Last year we dipped our feet into the Google Apps for Education and we just scratched the surface. This year each teacher will have access to the SRS Calendar where they are able to add important items onto the the calendar. The ways grades are posted will be revised …and a whole slew of other things.

Lastly, I think SRS 2.0 means to me the further step of us going paperless by 2009. All of our technology forms will be online for parents/guardians to submit. No long line in the computer lab to complete the signing. I’ll keep updating as the summer progresses forward.