Edina Digital Age Learning

Jaime Casap , Education Evangelist with Google was the Monday Keynote at the 2018 TIES Conference .  Jaime helped launch Google Apps, Chromebooks and helped found the Phoenix Coding Academy. He also teaches Communication to 10th graders.  He authored the book, " On Our Street ," a children's book about poverty. He grew up in Hell's Kitchen in the 70's, so he knows a little about the topic. Education disrupts poverty!  All of the milestones he has achieved were based on Education. He was invited to speak at the White House to help launch Michelle Obama's Reach Higher initiative . What we sometimes forget is that the impact we have on students goes on for generations! Since he went to college, her daughter just assumed that she would go on to college. The life his children have comes from the educators that impacted Jaime. The State of Education Casap doesn't think education is broken, because it worked for everyone in this room. AND it has changed...

White Bear Lake Technology Director, Mark Garrison  gave the opening keynote at the Minnesota Google Summit . Here are my live blog notes from the session.  He talked about growing up in Minnesota idolizing Will Steger and Paul Schirke. His goal: Embrace change and be a beacon for life=long learning! Interesting times with some hanging on to 20th century pedagogy with others moving forward in the 21st. There is a professional acheivement gap today between these two practices. IWB's went into teacher's classrooms, but the training was around using the product instead of changing pedagogy. Great change requires vision, skills incentives , recources and an action plan to acheive lasting change. Filling the gap between these two pedagogical realities requires a bridge of these NOSTR model, via the strategic plan of the district, building and classroom. All of us are responsible for improving and honing our skills.  Elliot, Minnesota is "all carrot and no stick....

The districts that participate in Project Blueprint shared the state of Tech in their district. I've highlighted what I think were the important points. Edina 3,210 desktops and laptops (PC now, but may support other soon.) LCD in each classroom Fiber, 1 gig between buildings 50 meg connection to the Internet. (Buying roughly 10 meg per year additional.) Network (IP phones, digital video) Wireless: 90% coverage at Secondary, 20% coverage at elementary Aligned to mission and vision of the district, promotes curriculum and instruction, encourages innovation Improve efficiencies and effectiveness in the delivery of technology services ITIL framework Providing access Allowing personal devices Student Centric Learning: Cloud based, Universal Design for Learning, Easy wireless access, Anytime-Anywhere learning opportunities, rich multi-media content. Clayton, MO 10 gig between the building 1 gig within 50 meg connection for 2500 students, but seeing that be tapped out. Looking at 100 meg...

Adam Garry , a former elementary teacher who is now Manager of Global Professional Learning at Dell shared a conversation on how Information is Changing Learning: Meeting the Needs of 21st Century Learners. It happened to be at Target Field! There were folks from South Washington County, Mounds View, Chaska, Duluth, Centenial school districts represented. The focus was not about Dell, or technology, but more about learning . He used a tool called Today's Meet for the backchannel, but no one participated. The first question he posed was " How are you defining 21st Century Learning? " One participant said, "I don't think we are defining it, it's being defined by the students!" Adam mentioned another conference where a participant said "It feels like we have 19th Century teaching techniques done by 20th Century Teachers for 21st Century Students." He then showed the Simpsons Cell Phones at School episode it's no longer available for viewing...