Notes from the MLTI Leadership Meeting
Apr 18th, 2008 by Mark Spahr
Earlier this week, I went to the MLTI Spring Regional Leadership Meeting in Guilford, Maine. This was a good opportunity to meet face to face with the MLTI team, and share with other educators what has been successful and what just isn’t working with the MacBook roll out to all high school teachers in Maine. Here are some notes from the day that standout in my mind:
- One of the issues that high schools in particular have been having is that many of them previously invested a lot of money on Windows-based technology. There was a great quote from the Tech Coordinator at John Bapst HS (his name escapes me): “We are trying to stay platform agnostic.” What a thing to say at an Apple-centric meeting! To me, this is a great reason for students to have access to Web 2.0 technologies and sites. If it is web-based (and not blocked by your school’s firewall) it usually doesn’t matter what OS you are using.
- I sat at a table with Rich Ruggeri from Schenck High School. He is using blogs and wikis in his classes now. It was great to have a chance to exchange ideas with him. You can view his classroom blog here and his wiki here. Also check out the great Culinary Arts wiki put together by one of his students.
- Probably the coolest part of the day for me was sending out live updates from the meeting on Twitter, and the live interaction with @rmbyrne and @hshawjr. They were sending me questions to ask at the meeting. I was able to relay the questions and then send back responses. Cool! And what was also interesting was some of the looks that I got from the room when I said that I was asking questions sent in from Twitter. I might as well have had two heads. I’m not sure if they a) had no clue what I was talking about, or b) thought I was completely nuts, or c) a little of both. Either way, Twitter proved its value to education on this day.
All in all, the day was a productive one. Now I just have to get busy with the task of collecting artifacts from every teacher in my school, showing how they have been using their MLTI laptops in their classes.
Cool blog entry. I went to the Augusta MLTI HS spring training this week and found the conversation lacking the very thing you pointed out. Far too many schools were arguing the “Mac vs. PC” arguement but failing to see the Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 argument. They are too focused on the hardware and software but no one is talking about the webware. We need to have collaborative conversations around how to safely and effectively allow teachers and students to access those tools.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here but I think it needs to be brought up loud and often.
Jeff,
Wicked Decent Learning