It Truly is About the People -Part 1 The Trip itself

I finally decided to write about our summer trip, but have also decided it needs to be broken up a bit to make it palatable. Part 1 is the trip to the destination of Washington State and the people we visited along the way. Part 2 will be the trip home and the people we visited and part 3 will be about the people themselves.

This past summer Diane and I took a two week car trip. We like seeing the country, I truly hate flying because now I get TSA'd every time at the airport, but that is a story that doesn't matter. We love seeing the country.

If we had been flying over the country we could have looked down on the fields of grain but instead, because we were driving, we were able to see this cross made of wheat at the Cathedral of the Plains in Kansas.

Our first night of travel we went from Dallas to Salina KS and spent the night. We talked with several people in my network but none were in Salina. We could have easily had a meal and a roof if we had diverted out destination some. So the next morning as we traveled along I-70 we saw the twin towers of the Cathedral rise along the landscape. Then the cool thing of car travel was a simple "let's go look."  This article written about the Church in 1972 tells a beautiful story about the Cathedral.

A few hours later we were on our way and heading toward Colorado. Talking (AKA tweeting) with people along the way when I wasn't driving of course, we tried to visit with people along the way. In some cases we were successful and in others schedules didn't work out. In Colorado as we skirted Denver, it was hard to tell what was smoke and what were clouds and it went on for miles. It was sad to think about all that was being destroyed.

In Wyoming we were surprised to see that interstates could actually be shut down due to snow. For us Texans, that was hard to imagine, so much snow that you block an interstate highway. Our problem in Texas is not being allowed to drive as fast as we want on the interstate. Signs such as this one added humor to the trip.

Through the northeast edge of Colorado near Estes Park which brought back memories and discussions of ISTE10 and the Estes Park family(You know who you are). Then into Wyoming and on to Utah.We made it to Utah in time to watch some high school baseball with Kelly Dumont and his family as his son was on the team. They won that game and went on to bigger and better things afterward.

From Utah we traveled through Idaho, Oregon and Washington to our home base so to speak courtesy of Julia Fallon. Julia was leaving for ISTE12 the next day and had offered us a place to stay while she was gone. Thus our home base in Washington State had been established.

While based in WA. we went to Yamhill and had lunch with Luann Lee, we went to Portland and had pizza at "derLauer house" with Tim Lauer, we spent an evening with Jennifer Dalby and her lovely family. Truly about the people and the experiences. Part 2 soon.

So much to learn and so little time.

Tonight I Connected Some Dots

Each year I have many opportunities to attend conferences. One day, two day, week long, travel, local and yet, I still feel there are so many I would like to attend. As people get ready to attend ISTE 2012, I can either be sad that I am not there or I can be happy for all those who are going. I choose to be happy for all those going.

For those going to ISTE12, do turn to someone and greet them and introduce yourself. Don't use the usual line of "I follow you on Twitter" instead take a moment to introduce yourself and tell them why you follow them on the Twitterz. Was it something they said, something someone said about them, who recommended them, just something other than I stalk you.

So that being said, how did I connect some of the dots. Diane and I went to Memphis this past week for a conference called The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence. This is a wonderful, collaborative effort between a philanthropic family, The University of Memphis and Presbyterian Day School for boys. These three organizations bring together public, private and charter school teachers alike, for the sole purpose of trying to help them become better educators. Professional development. Come learn, come teach, come see what others are doing in their classrooms.

This is the third year for this Institute and this year the keynote was John Hunter. Many may know Mr. Hunter from his TED talk back in March. Maybe you know Mr. Hunter's fourth grade students and the game John started called the World Peace Game. Somehow Diane and I had missed any news about John, the game and his fourth grade students. However, due to the Martin Institute, we were able to see and learn as well as talk with John and hear all about the World Peace Game.

On the way home from Memphis, Diane and I did things like listen to the TED talk that John gave back in March, talked about what we had seen and heard at the conference, and I also got to meet many new and seasoned friends from Twitter. Today I listened to John's talk again for there was something tugging at me. I knew the town name, I knew people there, but how? In what context did I know them? Albemarle County, Virginia. Wait, Pam Moran, Paula White along with several others in my network are from that area and work in those schools. This is where John Hunter is from?

So I sent Pam Moran a tweet asking if she was the same Pam Moran that John speaks about in his Ted Talk? She said she was and I was immediately flooded with feelings of joy. Someone out there who has been talking about what we need to do in classrooms had someone talking about what he got to do and how it helped his students develop wonderful, critical, thinking skills. I was blown away. Someone who trusted one of their faculty members to do the right thing, somone who treated another person with true professionalism and it all worked. Pam's simple response to me was "...make sure paths stay open and permissions remain in place to create, design, make, engineer, build, compose learning." How beautifully simple is that? All coming down to relationship.

While I realize this is somewhat scattered, trust that I will be writing more about all of this.

So much to learn and so little time.

A New Year

Happy New Year to you all. It has been an interesting year to say the least. That being said, I have returned hoping to add to the conversations through my blog. It took me a bit to get all the dust off and think about what direction to go now that I am here again.

The school semester has been one of attempting to get everything settled in as this summer we shifted from a Novell network to a Windows server based structure. With the switch to Windows, we also gave the students and faculty web based storage and eliminated some of the additional servers that were used to store student work. The students also have their own email accounts as well. Our students don't need to hit the servers at all. With web storage, our LMS and their email accounts our students can progress very well.

The faculty also has a couple of different ways to store their work. Our LMS has unlimited storage for our faculty and the faculty also has web storage with the same company the students are now using.

We still continue to work with the faculty and staff on the student use of their electronic textbooks as we are 95% all electronic textbooks. Many of the Diocesan schools have been meeting with us and looking for ways to move that direction as well. It is interesting to me to see some of the changes people look to make in their systems based on the direction we have moved to and progressed.

The New Year looks to be a good one and off to a great start, of course that is easy to say when you are only 3 days in to the New Year. My hope will be to talk about some of the things we have done to help make changes in our educational efforts as opposed to merely talking about what I think is wrong.

What changes have you made that are leading your students and faculty to educational success? I would enjoy hearing about them.

So much to learn and so little time.

Some Post ISTE11 Musings - with more to come

It is always interesting to me to see the buzz build the closer the ISTE conference gets. Then I am at EBC11 and the conference has started and then all of a sudden it is over. Time goes by so quickly once the conference gets started. Yet, there is so much to absorb that I will be pouring over the ISTE website to look at videos of different presentations and keynotes over and over again to try to absorb even more. Of course there is always the #ISTE11 hashtag to take me to other areas of learning as well.

There is never just one take away from this conference because there is always so much to learn to try and do things better. To listen to people and how they make things happen at their schools or districts and to try and figure out how to tweak that to make it happen in my own. So many ways and so many ideas. It almost becomes overwhelming. Overwhelming until I remember one simple thing - it is about the kids.

Many of the discussions that I had during my time in Philly and the ISTE 2011 conference kept bringing me back to the idea of relationship. Relationship with admin, faculty, staff and students. Along with the idea of relationship, we have to TRUST for that relationship to grow. In order to trust we have to let go of some of the things that get us where we are today and part of that letting go is the death grip on ego. Trusting our students allows us to open our networks. Trusting our faculties and staffs to be the professionals they truly are allows us to be about what they need to teach and our students need to learn.

Relationship is so very important in all we do, that this conference continues to be an important encounter for us all. Trust yourself to learn something new with each and every encounter you have even if it is a social encounter, trust that the presentation may well have something you need to hear or know and if not then quietly and respectfully move to another one. Trust that being quiet allows you to hear from someone else, trust that you are here for a reason and you make a difference. Trust that thought you have that has been marinating in your mid is useful and needs to be put out htere. Trust that the feedback you get is important and valuable and not a personal attack.

Thank you to all the people I met for the first time face to face and my sincere apologies to those I missed. Thank you for the time you spent sharing and caring and most especially for the work you do each and every day. You all continue to teach me a lot and for that I am truly thankful and I hope to continue to learn more from you each and every day.

So much to learn and so little time.

I Like to Drive

As a young boy growing up I always looked forward to vacation and the ride we would take to wherever. The big station wagon and the road newly being constructed on the way to San Antonio or the west Texas heat on the way to New Mexico. Either way we were going to see relatives and we got to travel. No ipods, no TV's built into cars or dvd players for that matter. Merely a book, non-tinted windows and the incessant cries of "are we there yet" or "how much longer" from any of my 4 other brothers and sisters or myself.

The landscape seemd to go on forever, games in the car helped to pass the time and yet as I grew older I couldn't wait to be able to fly wherever I wanted to go. I could get there quicker and see more, do more and not waste time. I could look out the window of the plane and see all of the land at once.

However, last year my wife and I decided to drive to NECC/ISTE. See the country again for a change. Relax in the car. So we packed not only our things but some from our friends as well since we were going to meet them at the same place. New Mexico, Colorado, Estes Park, Denver, the ISTE Mansion, Amarillo and home again. 10 days. Lots of sites and new place to rediscover.

This year with Philadelphia being the goal, we went through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, the Smoky Mountains, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania and on the way back we added Tennessee and Arkansas to the list of states. The ISTE Mansion aptly renamed the ISTE Row House was the destination for yet another ISTE Conference. With some of the same folks a memorable trip was had yet again.

I was aksed if I didn't like to fly and I would have to say the answer is no. The joy of the road is a simple one - we have a beautiful country. We also have a great deal of freedom to move about the country. No matter what the politicians decide, we are living a great life with wonderful freedoms and abilities. The cool thing about traveling in that manner is that with the available technology, we can look up anything we see and decide if we want to go and explore more. We have that freedom.

Today as we celebrate the birth of our nation, know that we have all been placed in this time and this place for a reason. But along with that, we have many wonderful men and women that have fought and defended the right we have to move about the country whether by plane, train or automobile. My prayers on this day will be for all the men and women who are put in harm's way and for their families who also have sacrificed much. Be safe out there, come home soon and I will continue to pray for peace. Thank you all for that you continue to do day after day and for all those who have gone before you.

So much to learn and so little time.