One year ago today, I walked into a former elementary school. It had been re-purposed as the initial home for the new Canyons School District. I walked into a new job. I had, the previous day walked out of a job I thought I would have for the rest of my career. I was nervous, apprehensive, but more than anything else, excited for the challenge that would lie ahead.
It has been a whirlwind of a year. I can’t believe it has been a year. It has gone by so fast. There has been a lot accomplished and there is still a ton more to do, but I am so grateful for the opportunity that I was given to come and work here. To build something new was not something I was planning on 18 months ago or even 15 months ago. But, here we are building.
I have to thank my directors for allowing me this opportunity and for having the courage to blaze this trail. I also have to thank my team and all of the teams in the department for the tremendous work we have all done together over the past year
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I am psyched for what lies ahead in the coming year.
I feel a pull and based on things I see, like the 365 photo projects (of which I just suck at) and those in my PLN who get involved, I think a lot of you do as well. I continually feel my self pulled or sucked into the world of photography. I am a horrible photographer, but I love taking pictures. So I keep trying to learn in fits and stops how to do it better.
To that end, yesterday I attended Photocamp Utah 2010. I follow a few local photographers on Twitter and when I saw the announcement of the event in January I signed up immediately. A good thing because they ended up with hundreds on the waiting list. Many times over the past couple of weeks I thought about just bailing or selling my ticket to someone on the waiting list. I knew I would be way in over my head and didn't know how much I would enjoy it. I should have known better, and yes I was in way over my head. The audience was probably 99% professional photographers as were the speakers for the day.
I did learn a lot and have already forgotten much of what I learned. However,I think the reason I like to hang out around photographers is because their craft comes from their heart. Just like I believe a teacher's craft does. In fact I see a lot of corollary between photography and teaching.
Before yesterday, I had never heard of Zack Arias. He is a new hero of mine. Zack was the closing keynote for Photocamp and he was inspiring to me. Zack is a music photographer in Atlanta, GA. He failed in the photography business once, but came back and has done very well in this iteration of himself as a photographer. Besides the beautiful images in his presentation, he gave a few great words of wisdom and encouragement. I think the advice he gave is very appropriate to education and educational technology as well with just a few word substitutions. His presentation is available here. I will also embed it at the end of this post.
1) Know Your Camera - In educational terms, know your tools. He talked about being so knowledgeable about the equipment that when you are actually using it you don't have to think about it. I think this is an area in which we have not done well recently. We throw a lot of stuff into classrooms and never give teachers the opportunity or they never take the opportunity to master using it. When I talk about stuff, I am not just talking about technology, but curriculum, texts, management strategies and on and on. Teachers have to know the tools they are working with before they can use them effectively to teach.
2) Know Your Glass - In photography this means your lens, how you focus. In education I think it means pretty much the same. It is important to know which tool will achieve the desired effect in your classroom. To a photographer, that means knowing which lens is going to give the desired effect in a photo. In education right now a lot of the focus is on testing, particularly this time of year. But I am pretty sure this is not giving us the effect we want.
3) Knowing Light Gives You Options and Control - A huge part of photography is about lighting. How does that apply to education? I see it as a lot of the external forces that impact what happens in our classrooms. If a photographer tries to use only natural light achieving success in a photo can be difficult. So they bring in other light to enhance or diffuse what they are given naturally. In knowing what the deficiencies are in lighting they again can select the correct tools to make adjustments. In the classroom there are a lot of external things that impact what goes on. But the more we understand those forces we can use the tools we have to grant us more options and controls.
4) Nothing Matters More Than Trust - For someone to feel comfortable with a photographer they have to trust them. It is the same in our classrooms. Teachers have to develop trust for many different people. The must develop the trust of their administrators, their peers, their parents, but mostly their students. We have to earn the trust of our students so that they know we are there for them, collectively and individually. If we can build and maintain that trust the students will learn and succeed.
5) Fear Nothing: Gear, Locations, People - This comes back to some of the previous points about knowing and if we know, we shouldn't fear. We need to be fearless in the education of our students. We need to let them know that the should fear nothing as well. That stumbling blocks are just that, they don't need to fear them, face them, conquer them and move on.
6) Ask for Help, Grow Your Network - Those who are reading this already understand it. I see so many requests on Twitter every day from teachers and technology specialists and principals and many others. I never see those requests go unfulfilled. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Others are waiting. As you seek help and provide help for other teachers, your network will grow tremendously. Don't just grow it outside of your immediate confines though. Reach out and develop the network around you as well.
and finally...
7) Know Your Craft, Know Your Clients, Serve Them Both - Sage advice for anyone who wants to make a living at photography. Critical for us in education. We need to know our students and serve them continually. We also have to know our craft, and contrary to the belief of some that craft is constantly changing. We may not want it to, but it is and if we can't or won't keep up we can't serve our clients.
I want to finish with a couple of other quotes from Zach, but I think you can see how they relate to education as well.
I don't want my clients to say I'm good at Photoshop. I want them to say, I'm a good photographer.
Photography has great rules to break!
Zack also did a video about a year ago that is pretty incredible. Here it is followed by his presentation from yesterday.
Due to ongoing problems with the current service I was using to host the blog and podcast and the fact that I am underutilizing my MobileMe account with more storage anyway, I have moved TheEducationalMac.com hosting to MobileMe. I am still working to get the old media off of the old site and will post it here eventually, but this is kind of a fresh start, once again. Yes, I still create a lot of run on sentences. Yes, I am still cross-posting at theeducationalmac.blogspot.com. So if reading there, carry on.
I open with a quote from someone whose work I admire quite a bit.
I'd like to see schools showcase the wonderful learning artifacts of students in the same way that school athletic departments do.
–Matt Montagne
Matt tweeted this out about 11 months ago. I kind of filed it away, but have thought a lot about it. As we have started this new district, I have tried to notice this more. I have come to a conclusion. Our schools really need to promote themselves and particularly their student’s work more. I know this is not particular to our district, but needs to happen nationwide.
Nearly everyday in the newspaper now there are stories about our athletic teams. How often do other accomplishments in our schools get covered by the mainstream media. I am not looking to disparage school athletics, and the coverage they receive, but isn’t that really some of the least important work that goes on in our schools.
Now once a week or so another program or a student from a school may get some coverage in the media, (and I am not even going to start on about all of the negative press our schools and education in general receive) but there isn’t a lot of coverage about 95% of the great things that go on in schools. I am talking about old school, old media type coverage of course.
The crux of the matter and the purpose of this post is to emphasize that schools don’t need this old school, old media coverage. They can create their own coverage and promote a lot more of the great things that happen in their buildings. That was the point of Matt’s tweet. The showcasing of learning artifacts should be and is more important than showcasing what happens on the field or court. Also why in today’s landscape would we want the media to be the ones shaping the public’s view of our schools (like they currently do). Why would we not want total control over that. We have the avenues to do that now.
A couple of examples. A week or so ago, one of our schools was featured on a local news for a stranger danger type program they are running. A nice piece, but a couple of problems. Problem number 1, the name of the school was not mentioned until the piece was nearly over. Earlier in the report the referred to the school twice by the name of the city it is in. Problem number 2, we have another elementary that carries the city name. Therefore anyone not paying close attention would think that the program was being run at the other elementary. I have seen this kind of thing happen many times over the course of my career. A school gets some good push for something they are doing, but not identified well.
One of the best examples of this that I have ever seen is the PS22 Chorus. This elementary chorus has exploded into notoriety. If you haven’t heard of them, where have you been. This chorus from an inner city New York School have been invited to perform at the White House, and all over New York city. They have sung songs to the artists who originally recorded them and had them it tears. They have recorded with artists . Their videos have been viewed on YouTube over 15 million times. 15 MILLION! How have they done it. They put the great work they were doing out there for people to see. They put the videos on YouTube and celebrities and others used Twitter to get the word out about them. I think this is an incredible story.
Now I am not saying that every school needs to have this kind of push, but shouldn’t they at least let their patrons and communities have the ability to see what kinds of great things are going on in classrooms. Wouldn’t we want people moving into the community be able to see the great things the students at the school are doing, so that they choose our school.
So what should schools do. With an online presence I think schools need to be tapping in to the myriad of resources that are out there. Where are more and more people going to find out information? Wherever those places are those are places that schools need to be out promoting the great things that are going on in their learning communities.
I believe every school needs is a dynamic, growing website on which they promote the heck out of everything great that is happening there. Too often our school websites give basic information, that tells us how to get there, when the kids will be there, when they’ll eat lunch and so on. They don’t really tell us much about what goes on in the school, what the kids are doing. This should be the starting point for our school showcases. The new problem now becomes how do you drive traffic to the site so that the showcases are actually viewed.
This is where social networking comes in. Twitter is fairly simple to set up and more and more people have heard about it. So set up a Twitter account for the school and get your patrons using it. Then when you have something happening tweet it out. Tweet often about updates to your school website. How about a podcast talking about or showing great things that are happening on your campus? A YouTube channel? A Facebook fan page? The opportunities are many. What if these services are blocked in your district or school. Then start a campaign to show the value of unblocking them.
Coming back to Matt’s quote, the trophy case is an anachronism today. Who even ever sees those things anymore. We have the ability to shout from the rooftops as it were the accomplishments of all of our students. Why don’t we do it? We need to do it?
I am a little slow on getting this post done, but I did not want the experience to go by without some comment. Two weeks ago this morning we convened our newly hired Educational Technology Specialists and Media Technology Specialists in a week-long retreat. It was something I had been looking forward to ever since I started working in the Canyons School District.
I had worked hard on getting an agenda put together and as we hired people we invited them to prepare some training to share with the group. We planned to get people oriented to what they would be doing and who they would be doing it with. Darren also had a great idea. It was to invite several of our PLN from across the world to come in and speak to our group for a few minutes. This turned out to be genius. These wonderful, giving people (and you know who you are) spent much more than the requested 5 minutes with our teams as they offered valuable insights. I can't thank these friends enough for what they shared with us. We ended up not being able to get to many of the items that the teams themselves had planned (but we will get to them), but the experience of having these guests come to our retreat via Skype was invaluable and helped set a tone that will serve us throughout the coming year.
The retreat also served as a great lesson for me. I had been agonizing over branding for our teams for a couple of months. I was really struggling with coming up with anything. Yet within 2 hours of all being together on that Monday we had come up with our branding, and I think it is genius. The branding will help the two teams work together and be viewed as symbiotic in their work. I will save the unveiling of that branding for another post, but this experience really showed me once again how much better we are together, than separately.
I am grateful for the teams we have been able to put together. Each member brings great strengths and we will be able to shore each other up in areas, where we may not be as strong. These are individuals who are foremost great teachers, some very veteran, some slightly veteran, but a great mix. They have a great desire to help other teachers learn how to best use technology to help students learn and achieve. I have no doubt that we will do great things together in the coming months and years.
The retreat was a great starting point for us, but just a starting point. Now we will move forward and help build this new district. We will do so with a common vision and desire to to the best we can for our students and our teachers. To quote the great philosopher Stan Lee (okay he's a comic book creator) With great power, comes great responsibility, as teams we realize the opportunities we have been given and will go forth to fulfill our responsibilities to the district.
Saw the following on Twitter today and it struck a chord.
It's part of a larger post by TeachPaperless.
I get dismayed with people being worried about what teachers will do with laptops or other technology at home, even if the equipment is provided by the employer. In my experience 98% of the time they are using it to learn. Take pictures with a digital camera at home, upload them, or edit them or whatever. Use a digital video camera to take video of their kids baseball game and edit into a movie for the grandparents. Use the web to find great interactive sites for their students, and on and on and on.
Now the teacher is ready to take the next step and do it with students in the classroom. Whatever the technology, the more they use it, the more they will be likely to use it with students. It opens up avenues of creativity for them and their charges.
Is there potential there for abuse, certainly there is, but you handle that on a case by case basis, as it happens, not expect it as the norm. Having worked with teachers directly for 9 years now, I am convinced that the above statement is utterly true and even in difficult financial times we need to work as hard as possible to create more opportunities for teachers to do this not less.
Our district was featured in a small pullout (spadea) today in our local newspapers. It highlighted some district opening events and then had a section on What's New in the District? This section featured three district initiatives; the Dual-Immersion programs that will be starting this year in 4 of our elementary school's (one more started a couple of years ago), an Art Consortium that we will be involved in, and finally Educational Technology and Learning. This section reads as follows...
Canyons is ramping up technology education and support to create cutting-edge learning experiences for students and teachers alike. The service side will be adequately staffed, including one technical support professional in every high school. Well-maintained equipment will free up education technology professionals to provide a more relevant educational experience to the Internet generation. Education technology staff will be working in the schools, partly teaching students, partly teaching teachers how to integrate technology, including new social media, into their lessons, from Spanish to special education.
Since I can't seem to get to doing my own podcast, I'll at least link to this presentation. This is from PodCampSLC held on March 27, 2009. It was great rubbing elbows with other podcasters from the area. Whoa, there I go calling myself a podcaster again. If I am going to keep doing that I should probably start doing it again.
My thanks to Thom Allen for inviting me to participate at PodCampSLC.
I have had several discussions over the past few weeks both online and face to face about change. So the topic has been on my mind a lot lately.
“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” – Karen Kaiser Clark
Sometimes we choose change, sometimes change is thrust upon us. Sometimes we resist change, yet it still comes. Sometimes change happens and we don't recognize it for awhile.
In the past 7 months there has been a lot of change in my life. I gained a new daughter-in-law that I wasn't expecting. That was a good change. In January my mother passed away unexpectedly. That was not a good change. In March I chose to make a job change. That was a great change. Also in March I found out that I will become a grandfather again, twice. That will be a great change, twice.
As I think about the changes that have come about in my life over these past months, I ponder about the growth that has come about because of the changes. Have I grown and will I grow through these changes?
With respect to my family, my mother's death has brought me closer to my siblings. We certainly were not estranged, but 3 of the 4 of us live within a 3 mile radius and we seldom saw each other. I can truly say I am grateful for the time we have spent together as we have grieved my mother, and worked together to take care of her affairs. I have often heard tales of siblings being ripped apart during these times because of greed or jealousy. It has helped our family to grow closer.
Gaining a new daughter-in-law has been a delightful experience as well. I am so grateful that my son found someone to love and who reciprocates that love. Now they will bring a child into this world and share that love with him/her (we'll find out in about 3 weeks). I don't think I have mentioned it in these writings, but I love being a grandpa. My oldest daughter will have her 3rd son early in September. She and her husband are such good parents. My grandsons are the funnest. When my 1st grandson was born I wasn't ready for that change. However, the moment he was placed in my arms, my heart grew. I worried that I could never love another grandchild as much as him. But as my granddaughter and two more grandsons have joined the family my heart expanded plenty enough to love them as well.
What does this have to do with education or educational technology? Well I think it has a lot to do with it. If you dislike, loathe, or despise change, then education is probably not the best field for you. Getting involved with educational technology or technology in general with make change loathers cringe. For me though, my involvement in education has caused me to grow tremendously.
When I changed jobs recently, many people questioned why. It seemed to them a lateral move. What I saw in the change though was a new opportunity for growth. The Canyons District is providing and will provide a great deal of change to allow growth among all of the stakeholders. At this point I would like to focus my thoughts on the teachers in this new district. Right now they are finishing the school year as employees of Jordan School District, an entity that has been around for over 100 years. On July 1st they will change and become employees of Canyons School District. Some will feel that it is an opportunity for growth, others will feel that it is just change that has been thrust upon them. For those that resist change, the changes may be very difficult.
I don't know that teachers in general, are any more or less resistant to change than people in other professions, but it feels like it to me. I often wonder if it is true, why that is. I have seen up close the past few weeks great resistance to change on the part of some. It seems to me that without change, growth is actually stunted. That doesn't mean that everything has to change, but we have to be willing to accept needed changes and use them as opportunities for growth.
I am excited for the teachers that will be a part of Canyons School District because I see such opportunities for growth. I will work this year on helping them to see those opportunities and that in turn will help me to continue to grow. I love working with the people that I am working with as they are willing to change and grow. I am so looking forward to the next few weeks as more people will join us. In fact, about 3,000 of them. For those who welcome the change it may be easy, for those who the change has been thrust upon them it may not, but through the change for all, growth will come, that I am sure of.
It is exciting to be a part of change and to have the opportunity to grow, personally, socially, and professionally. In the end that is why I made the change.
This photo is of my elementary school. It has since been replaced by a new South Jordan Elementary, but the building still stands for now. South Jordan Elementary is a part of the Jordan School District. This is significant to me, because of my 49 years 33 of them have been spent in Jordan School District as a student or as an employee. Beyond that someone in my family has worked for the district for nearly the past 70 years. That has made the decision that I have been struggling with for about a month all the much harder. I have decide to resign from Jordan School District and take a position with the new Canyons School District that is being created because of the split. I have talked about the split here and other places for awhile. I still struggle with the fact that the split is happening and the causes of it. However I have determined that the best place for me is in Canyons, so I have accepted a position with the new district. I look forward to new challenges and the opportunity to help build this new district.
There are many who may feel and believe that I am betraying Jordan by going to the other side. School board comments indicate that is the perception from the highest levels of the district. I have struggled with that myself particularly with my history in the district and the fact that I live in Jordan. In the end, I had to choose what I felt was best for my family and my career. So it will be onward and upward.
The uncertainty of the past couple of years with the prospect and now the realization of the split has in many ways kind of frozen me in place. With the decision made I feel that I can again move forward and am ready to take on the challenges that helping to build the Canyons School District will bring. I will be leaving behind many people who have had a great impact on my life; Principals, supervisors, fellow teachers and specialists. You have all given me so much more than I could hope to return and I am grateful for it and for you. So while this may seem a little melancholy, I am so excited for the upcoming challenges and am ready to face them head on.
Still it is hard to believe that in little more than two weeks I will be leaving JSD. I do look forward to continued relationships with those who remain in Jordan and am grateful that I am able to make an astonishing change in my life without having to leave any of my life behind.
In other change news, those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know I have been on a rather extreme diet. The extreme portion ends on Tuesday and we start into a more moderate phase. But I have lost 35 lbs. in 30 days and it has been an amazing experience. I have learned a lot about myself. I have spent the last 15 years spiraling out of control with my eating habits and lack of exercise habits. I have used every excuse in the book to avoid losing weight. I have been on several diets, but just could not stick to one.
When my wife presented me with this diet plan, my first reaction was the same as always, no way. But as I thought about it, I realized a lot of my habits were based around my own selfishness. I also realized that I am getting to the stage in my life where if I don’t make a change I am going to cause myself serious health problems. I had gotten into a habit of not really checking my weight, so when I started the diet and got on the scale I was even a little surprised. I had thought I was hovering around 280 lbs. When it read 289.5 I was a little shocked, I really knew it was time to go after this.
This phase has been hard, but it hasn’t been as hard as I expected. When you weigh every day and you are seeing results it makes it a little less hard. (Note: I didn’t say easy!) The diet has made me a little tired and a little weak, but as I go into the next phase I am looking forward to getting into a regular exercise program and losing more. My goal weight right now is 200 lbs. by the end of the year. Right now, despite the diet restrictions I do feel better than I have in years and I look forward to feeling even better as I get through Spring and Summer.
I know I will need to feel better to face the challenge of helping to get this new district up and running. A challenge I look forward to.
Finally, some changes we created some are heaped upon us. This will be true as far as the most fun change comes about this summer. My first daughter and my daughter-in-law are both expecting. So by the end of September I will have two new grand-children. Now I love my grandsons, but I would love to have a couple more granddaughters to even up the score at 3-3. Actually it doesn’t really matter, I will be excited either way. I love my grandkids, and I love my kids. I don’t tell them often enough. That needs to change as well.
Yeah, it has been months since, well anything. I am making plans to relaunch, The Educational Mac, both the blog and the podcast. I will be anouncing those plans early in January. So the hiatus, unplanned as it was is just about over. Stay tuned!
I arrived in St. George, Utah (about a 4.5 hr. drive from home) this morning. I am in St. George to do a couple of workshops for this group tomorrow. When I finally was able to get into the motel room this afternoon I checked Twitter and tweeted about where I was. About 2 hours away in Las Vegas, Cory Plough was monitoring Twitter and noticed I was in St. George and responded about being a couple hours away. I replied and told him what I was doing and told him he should drive up and present with me in the morning. Now the offer was genuine, but I wasn't holding out hope that he would be available and willing. Turns out he was both and Cory will be driving up to present with me in the morning. Want to know the power of the network, as Bill Engvall would say, "Here's Your Sign!"
This one has been festering for a few days. It has been said to me that one of my best qualities is that I don't jump to conclusions. I listen and let things simmer before reacting. One of the problems that I find with having people tell me this is that I now do it more consciously and I think that has hurt the process for me. But the formulation of this post has been more natural as I have thought about events starting with EdubloggerCon on Satuday.
I am not going to spend time stating and restating the different points of view that arose on Saturday. Although, I will admit that initially my reactions went in different directions and were pretty extreme. I even said a few things to others that I wish I wouldn't have said. I don't like saying things on first reaction but I did. For that I am sorry.
However the feelings and conversation that arose from that and during the week got to me a bit. The indirect conversation throughout the week seemed to be all about status. The A list, B list C list, etc. as it relates to the educational blogging community. Is there really a class division going on here. Maybe, maybe not. What I do see is people being in this community for different things, different reasons. I don't care about that either. The fact is that all that choose to be in this community are here. I can choose to take from and give to the community what I want and no one in the community has ever asked about my legitimacy. So I am choosing not to see those in this community as A or Z listers.
What I am choosing to see are the people and my opinion in this regard is that they are all A listers. Everyone of us out there busting our butts to try and make things better for the kids and others we work for and with. I personally did not have an interaction with anyone this week that was not respectful and friendly. In you the community this week I saw many "Pay it forward" moments this week. On Tuesday morning I had the opportunity to help someone out. Tuesday afternoon I got the same treatment from others in my crisis situation. I was constantly greeted with a "Hi, how is the conference going for you." Even when busy in other conversations, people would stop and say hi.
This week I got to spend time with distant friends, many whom I had not met face to face before. Yet I feel like I have known them for years. that was the power of this year's conference for me. It was amazing to sit on a panel with several other people, of which last year at this time I only really knew 2 of them. Again everyone of them "A listers" as far as I am concerned not because of technorati ranking or groupies or whatever, but because that's who they are by nature. They share with me constantly in their writing and their actions.
I am grateful for the time I got to spend physically in my personal learning network this week. It will keep me going for another year. The likelihood of me going to NECC next year is probably not great. But the avenues of attending virtually have been opened and I know that I will be able to still get a lot out of the conference even if I can't attend physically. So for all of those made it happen for others this year, and that will make that happen next year and for all of you in my network I say thank you.
I am ready to go to the Apple reception this evening. Part of the festivities will be Apple's big splash at NECC. That splash is iTunesU-K12. iTunesU-K12 should debut within the next few hours with content from between 7 and 9 states. Utah is one of the states that will be debuting on iTunesU-K12. I have been working with the Utah group that has been putting together the states efforts on this project.
I believe this project will be somewhat of a game changer. Here K12 ed will have a central gathering place for resources, be they audio, video, text-based, etc. Now I can hear the catcalls and boos coming already. "Here's Apple trying to take control of our content!" I don't believe that this is what it is about at all. Look at what iTunesU has provided for Higher Ed. There are many prestigious universities sharing their content. It is not under Apple's control, they are merely providing the vehicle. Such is the case with iTunesU-K12 as well.
Go to the iTunes store, click on iTunes U, then look for the K12 listing in the bottom left column.
I personally can't wait to see the resources gathered there.
On Monday, September 17, 2007, Google launched the Google Presentation web application to their suite of services. News of this new service spread quickly through the blogosphere and Twitter and soon more than fifty different people made over 500 edits in a twenty-four hour period to one Google presentation. Since introduced, this presentation has been used by hundreds of people to begin conversations centered on free online tools used to weave a web of connections between people around the world.
As a result of this transformational experience, educators begin discussing the importance of sharing the changing nature of professional development and documentation of best practices in VIRAL professional development. The proposal was written in Google docs and since acceptance, an expanded group of educators around the world has used a wiki, elluminate, and a variety of tools to bring a collaborative, immersive viral PD experience to NECC and to people around the world.
At 1:30pm CDT on July 2, we will be participating in a NECC panel discussion that centers on the power of the network. During our presentation we hope to demonstrate to all those attending our session in person (and virtually), just how powerful global collaboration can be. Hence, we are asking for your participation in our presentation as well.
1) Join our Ustream
We will be streaming the presentation live on the Open PD Ustream channel at 1:30 pm CDT on July 2nd. You may watch here and participate in the conversation (and even ask the panelists questions).
2) Leave a comment on our voicethread
One way that you can participate now is by adding your voice to the VoiceThread below. Please take a few minutes and add your thoughts about the different tools depicted through images in the thread. We would truly like as many voices possible, offering a wide range of thought on the usefulness of the common tools we all use in our collaborations.
How do you use these tools? How are they important to your professional development? Please add your voice.
Macworld/IDG has a site called Macworld Encore which has several sessions from the 2008 Macworld. I am not sure I like the format, which is, they basically recorded the audio from sessions while capturing the Keynote or PowerPoint slides. But there is some good information in some of these sessions. Give them a look.
See You in a Few!
Take a Listen
I would like help from my network (that's anyone who reads this) for the next podcast. Rather than give yet another review of Leopard, I would like to know what your most favorite and least favorite features are in Leopard. If you would like to participate in the show I would love it if you would send me an .mp3 or other audio file with your most and lease favorites along with your name and blog, wiki, podcast or anything else you would like to plug. Send them to kdumont@mac.com. I would like to get the show out by next Wednesday so if you could have them to me by Tuesday I would appreciate it.
One year ago today, I walked into a former elementary school. It had been re-purposed as the initial home for the new Canyons School District. I walked into a new job. I had, the previous day walked out of a job I thought I would have for the rest of my career. I was nervous, apprehensive, but more than anything else, excited for the challenge that would lie ahead.
