Maine ASCD Weblog

Greetings from Boston

The planning committee has arrived in Beantown and was busy this afternoon setting things up to be ready for a long day at the 11th Annual Northeast ASCD Affiliate Conference.

Tomorrow, bright and early, we will welcome about 535 educators from around the country to the Pre-Conference sessions – five in all.

Will Daggett will be presenting “High School Redesign - The Need for the Four R's - Rigor, Relevance, Relationships and Reflections,” a workshop that will provide an in-depth look at the Rigor/Relevance Framework, created by the International Center for Leadership in Education.

Rick and Becky DuFour will present “Making the Case for PLC Practices” which makes the case for PLCs by both highlighting the quantitative research and celebrating the stories of educators throughout North America who are bringing the PLC concepts to life in their schools.

“Unleashing the Power of Collaborative Inquiry: Connecting Data to Results” with Nancy Love and Susan Mundry is our third Pre-Conference offering. In this presentation participants will learn about a structured approach to collaborative inquiry known as the Using Data Process that is contributing to significant gains in local and state assessment results in diverse schools as well as increased collaboration and data-driven dialogue and instructional improvement.

Our fourth offering on Thursday is “The Skillful Leader II: Confronting Malfunctioning Groups and Building Accountable Communities” with Andy Platt and Caroline Tripp. In this session participants will consider and apply a framework for assessing how well professional groups are functioning to help students learn; learn about leadership skills and strategies for confronting toxic, laissez-faire, and congenial communities who block or contribute little to improved learning and teaching, and; examine the difference between good “collaborative” teams and great “accountable” ones.

And in our fifth session, Mike Schmoker is presenting “Results NOW! From “Brutal Facts" to the Best Schools We’ve Ever Had.” In this workshop, participants will learn about the simple elements most essential to substantive, measurable improvement: effective, targeted teamwork, manageable, measurable goals, and simple, ongoing use of student assessment data.

It should be a great day in Boston and stay tuned to hear all about in the upcoming blogs.

~John Brandt

Happy Thanksgiving

On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Staff of Maine ASCD, we wish you a Happy and Peaceful Thanksgiving.

~John Brandt

Coming up for air...

...briefly.

It has been a wild month with registrations for the 11th Annual Northeast ASCD Affiliate Conference breaking all records. Our current totals are just shy of 900 making this by far the largest NEAC in history, and clearly the biggest event I've been directly involved with.

Needless to say, we have been very busy with fax machines humming and phones ringing off the hook. But the good news is that we are still accepting registrations and would love to have you join us.

If you have not seen the line-up of speakers and presenters, you'll quickly understand why we've been so busy. Our speakers include . . .

• Rick & Becky DuFour
• Pam Robbins
• Mike Schmoker
• Willard Daggett
• Chris Dede
• Doug Reeves
• Andy Platt & Carolyn Tripp
• Nancy Love & Susan Mundry

There is still time to register, so come and join us for the 11th Annual Northeast ASCD Affiliate Conference as we collectively make history!

~John Brandt

Technology and 21st Century Skills

There has been an increased amount of discussion in recent weeks regarding the need for students in Maine, and elsewhere, to be educated to meet standards that include what is often being referred to as “21st Century Skills.”

The Maine Department of Education recently unveiled a new campaign which emphasizes the importance of 21st Century skills and links the idea to the Maine Learning Results and other initiatives such as High School Redesign (formerly known as High School Reform). This comes about at a time when a new report has been released which suggests that America is falling behind in the big technology race. The report, "Maximizing the Impact: The Pivotal Role of Technology in a 21st Century Education System," published by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, urges renewed emphasis on technology in education.

Following these inputs, there has been an increased amount of discussion about how we are doing in Maine. After all, Maine was one of the first states to embrace technology in the form of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars equipping schools with laptop computers.

Somewhere in all this, the question of efficacy has to be asked and a nice written piece by Patricia Deubel an education consultant and the developer of Computing Technology for Math Excellence at http://www.ct4me.net, does just that.

Entitled, "The Great Debate: Effectiveness of Technology in Education," the article is published on-line in the THE Journal. Deubel lays out a nice summary of the arguments and questions associated with this discussion. She cites a number of works that challenge some of the quick, off-the-cuff thinking we often hear about the issue and she pulls no punches. Everyone who is interested in this topic needs to read, think about, and discuss this article.

~John Brandt