VT LEAD-IT

I have spent the last two days really thinking about how we can make technology seamless in our school district. We started by going back and looking about what vision we had for our district. This brought us to the Essex Design for Learning and what do we want our students to know. We have worked on our technology plan and changed some of our original goals. We are focusing on differentiated learning and how to use advanced learning technologies with our students and staff.

We have had the opportunity to hear some great speakers over the past couple of days. Jim Moulton spoke to us about making the network accessible and giving teachers the opportunity to teach and showing responsible use of the Internet with students. He said "If principals and superintendent's don't step up to the plate put the pressure on teachers to use technology in their curriculum, it won't happen." David Warlick showed us some of the Web 2.0 tools and how to use them with our staffs. He talked about the difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0 and how much more participatory Web 2.0 is. He shared with us the many ways to make it easier to keep up with all the resources online using Aggregators. Bernie Dodge spoke to us on Tuesday evening at Chalkboard 2017 and how technology has changed and how we can't sit back and let it pass us by.

The trick is going to be keeping the momentum going after leaving tomorrow and not lose the focus we have had over the past couple of days. Key players in this will be administration and staff. We have to focus on how it can't be an add on, but just something they do as a regular part of their curriculum.