Leadership
Once again MassCUE had its Board Retreat (July 2018) which I was invited to attend. The organization continues to maintain its edge by thinking about its mission and planning for the future. It is well situated financially which is very impressive for an educational organization.
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The last two weeks of October 2017 have been challenging: First was the panel at BC mounted by ASCD. Then came the MassCUE/MASS annual conference at Gillette Stadium panel. Amazingly we had 30 people in the room during the next to last session on the second day…My topic was again civility. Kim Rice from the Office of the Secretary of Education and Anne DeMallie from DESE were the other two panelists…Many questions from the “audience”!!!
Then the MASS/MASC conference in Hyannis: a panel with Carol Woodbury, John Provost, Steve Herschel and Larisa Schelkin.
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On May 22, 2017 I presented at ASCD’s Leader to Leader Conference on the subject of affiliate collaboration: L2L 2017 PPP_7_15_17 pdf
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On May 8, 2017, I had the pleasure of giving a keynote for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Second Annual Civics Conference at the Edward M. Kennedy Center for the Senate in Boston (next to the JFK library in front of which we parked a few weeks ago for the Diplomat’s Seder.)
It was a challenge to prepare the talk which I am attaching here in two parts: The Power Point Presentation (which interestingly I spent a lot of time working with color and font but which became an entirely different looking PPP on the screen in the Senate Chamber, and the accompanying text which I spoke: Civics PPP May 8, 2017 at EMK Center Civics and Commentary_5_8_17. Ironically, they left the last slide (Paine’s comment) on the screen during Senator Harriet Chandler’s keynote and she referred to it as very appropriate!!
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An event looking for a classification on this website (so I chose this sector) is the Boston Pledge presentation on October 8, 2016: Education at the Point of Inflection at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. I was asked by John Hodgman and then later to organize a panel. The PowerPoint Presentation:Technology, Education and Civilization. covers quite a bit of ground.
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Not new ideas but still useful as direction setters: eSchool News The 7 pillars of today’s digital leadership | eSchool News
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Some good observations: We need leaders and we also need followers, especially thoughtful ones who will question, in a respectful manner, why something is happening the way that it is.
This article in Ed Week on March 28, 16 contains a statement which is finally true: “Technology is not a curriculum,” said Davis Eidahl…Superintendent… “It’s a tool to enhance the curriculum to better engage students and to access more information and resources.” This is the full article: CAO & CTO in one person and in Iowa.