The 5 Year Technology Plan

The 5 year technology plan: Focus on your INFRASTRUCTURE! If you think you know what tools you will need in 5 years, you are probably wrong. If you are budgeting so that you buy sets of an item over several years, you’ll have a dichotomous challenge: the item will become both cheaper AND less desirable. […]

A Conversation Starter

My goal: Create a three minute video that tells it’s own story, using other videos. My hope is that this will invite further exploration, conversation and learning. Here is what I came up with: (Watch on YouTube) For ease of use here are the links. I hope that some rich conversations will emerge from watching […]

Transforming Education – K12Online Conference 2011 Presentation

A few minutes into this presentation I demonstrate that I’ve been a fan of the K12Online Conference for 5 years now. So, it was wonderful to be able to participate this year and share a video of my own. [Link to K12Online video page]  |  [Link to YouTube version] I’d rather let the video speak […]

Broken or Transforming?

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I […]

Slowly By Slowly

A while back I read a great article that I found in the December 2007- January 2008 edition of Focus on Dalian, “Slowly By Slowly” by Rob Giebitz. This was the first piece Rob wrote for his monthly column, ‘The eXpat Manager’. The article starts: “I first heard this phrase from our Chinese production manager. […]

Unstandardized

My father passed this on to me, (thanks dad). I love that the venue was a valedictorian speech, by someone who graduated at the top of her class. This is probably one of the best arguments I’ve heard against standardized testing and perhaps against standardizing education for the masses for that matter. It starts with […]

First Day of School 2010 – a Google Search Story

I had some fun this morning creating a Google Search Story. The tag line (description) for this video is, “If you are just looking for activity worksheets, then you are missing the point!” I took advantage of my own high search-ability to do a little self-promotion in the search results, but the link that shows […]

Parents as partners

I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be […]

The Role of a Principal

(You probably won’t find these in a job description, though you should!) – Hand-holder – Zipper-fixer – Tear-wiper – Peace-maker – Pants-buttoner – Ball-retriever – Nose-wiper – First-aider – Firm-talker – Cheer-leader – Toy-mender – Toy-confiscator – Mouth-wiper – Rule-implementer – Ice-provider – Argument-settler – Wrapper-opener – Photo-taker – Hallway-monitor – Coat-zipper – Skip-rope-holder – […]