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Oct 2008 (3)
Guest Summary of the "Focus on the Future" Conference with Ray McNulty   (Archived)
By Bob Lungrin on October 15, 2008
So as the school draws near, I am taking this opportunity to share some positive thoughts from a conference that Bonnie Hansen, Patty Wolfe, Tiffiny Widdifield, Bill Pinkelman, Randy Koch, and myself had the privilege to attend. Those of you not wanting to waste your time reading a pie in the sky email should read no further. However if you are interested in hearing some thoughts from the keynote speaker then you should read on. The speaker is Ray McNulty, a former teacher, principal, superintendent, State commissioner of education in Vermont, who has also worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation studying the impact of teaching on school improvement and now heads the International Center on Leadership in Education. The focus of our workshop was Change in Action, and how to make small changes within a school to effect positive change over time.

The premise was not that our schools are broken and in need of being fixed, but just the opposite. Our schools are doing exactly what they were designed to do many decades ago, ie. Meet the needs of Most of our students. Ray's message included a perspective on the flattening of the world and how that has & will continue to impact our students as they work and live in the 21st century. With the advent of technology we are faced with very different challenges and demands from our world than we were just 10 years ago. Don't want to believe that? Then check out this link to the "Did you know" powerpoint. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

For those of you still reading or who just finished viewing that powerpoint you quickly see that focusing of the same ol same ol is not cutting it in preparing our students to learn, earn & live in the world as it evolves. Here are a few profound statements that I hope will encourage each of us to question how we teach and what we teach will foster the creative thinking, creativity, innovation in our students today and tomorrow so that we can remain a competitive source of knowledge and innovation in the world.

To me this first one sums it up best and really hit home:
  1. No law will ever be passed or administrator or staff member hired that will be an epiphany. There is no magic pill in education. Each of must be the change agents of our domain.
    1. It is absurd how in education when the going gets tough we circle the wagons and fire inward.
    2. No amount of simply of complaining will provide respite from our problems. Research the problem & find a solution.
  2. We need to keep in mind these false proxies of education
    1. High test scores do not mean proficiency
    2. Listening to a lecture does not equate to learning and understanding
    3. Finishing a textbook is not necessarily accomplishment
  3. What got us to where we are in education will not get us to where we need to be. The world is changing and we must change with it.
    1. In other words: In terms of change Learners will inherit the Earth, while the Learned will find themselves beautifully equipped with a world that no longer exists.
    2. In the beginners mind there are endless possibilities, while in the experts mind there are few.
  4. There is much of talk of Rigor and Relevance. The precursor to improvement however lies in the relationships with our students. Taking the time to care about your work and the work of students must take place before increasing Rigor and Relevance will make a difference in test scores or academic engagement. Consider the following:
    1. Let us say that you don't like broccoli. Doubling the amount of broccoli on your plate will not make you like broccoli.
    2. A kid with a home life that you and I can not imagine who is struggling in any given subject more likely needs an advocate in a safe and caring environment more than they need double the homework to improve their knowledge or skill base.
    3. This is not to say that there is not a time and place for an increase workload, but keep in mind your own proclivity to work harder for someone you like, respect, & trust than you would for someone you dislike or distrust.
  5. Rigor is not making a test harder or longer. Instead Rigor is increasing the level of thinking and engagement of the student through more complex or sophisticated methods.
    1. This should cause each of us to ask ourselves the following:
      1. Is my desire for my students success strong enough to prompt me to change my thinking?
      2. Am I unleashing the enthusiasm of "Possibility Thinking" to find solutions to the things that seem impossible?
      3. In the face of adversity will I remain steadfast in keeping what is best for our students at the center of my decisions?
    2. What truly makes a difference in a school is a change in the culture and within that culture there are two invisible differences:
      1. Passion for what we do
      2. Commitment to doing what is best for our students
  6. Leadership within schools or organizations is about Action not position. We each have the potential and responsibility to be the agents of change in our schools to develop continually improved methods of helping students learn.
For those of you who would like to see the entire 2 days of the presentation feel free to access it at http://nis.esu10.org/ray

If you made it this far then I ask and challenge each of you to help me become the best I can be for our school.

Dustin Favinger, Counselor
Cozad Public Schools
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How do YOU spell relief?    (Archived)
By Jason Everett on October 1, 2008
by Jason Everett, Systems Engineer

Let me start by telling you what happened to me recently.

About five or six years ago, we started using a web content management system from Frontier called Manila. Manila allowed us to provide web page services to teachers who otherwise would probably not have had a web presence. It has been a great addition and a tool that has helped countless teachers, students and parents. But it has not been without  its problems. Although we have experienced about every issue a Manila server could throw at us, there has been the occasional curve ball. The service grew and grew to the point we needed multiple servers and required quite a bit more maintenance. We have about 2000 accounts with I don't even know how many pages, files and other resources on these servers.

Well, about two weeks ago, two of my colleagues walked down the hall and into the workshop I was presenting in to inform me they were unable to access the Manila server. Although rare, it did happen that the server web service would die and we would need to restart it. So I informed our workshop participants we needed to take a little break while I assessed the situation.

As we walked down to our server room, the first words out of Marc Regenos' mouth were, "Just a flashing question mark on the server screen." That's when I knew we were in trouble. But that was only the beginning of my troubles. The drive was not responding to anything we tried. Booted from a recovery disk. Didn't work. Put the drive in another server. Didn't work. Took the drive out of the sled and put it in a desktop machine. Didn't work. Starting to sweat now. Need to get back to my workshop. I asked my colleagues to hunt for the backups so we could start rebuilding the drive. At least we would be able to get thing back on track by the end of the day.


That's when things really started to fall apart. After much searching, no backup was found. I had realized I was working with no off-site backup solution for the last three months. And the firewire backup drive that we were using also had hardware problems. I had NO data! My stomach turned. I started sweating. I felt the world crashing down around me. My head was in a fog. What could I do? There were many people who relied on this server to host their websites with very important information. Phone calls were coming in. "I can't get to my website. What's wrong?" "I'm doing a presentation that uses my site. When will it be back up?"

I was off to the boss to keep him abreast of the news. Crushed, I had to admit my failure to keep a good backup and ask him for permission to send the failed drive off to a data recovery service. That meant BIG BUCKS to fix my mistakes. Oh - I didn't feel real well. I had to face up to the fact that there were a lot of people who relied on this and it need to be fixed. ASAP!

The boss was great. He told me to get the drive off to the data recovery people and do whatever we needed to get the sites back. So to the UPS store I went. And to California the drive went. A week later, the data came back on another drive. All sites restored to full capacity. With the exception of a few uploaded supporting files, everything was back. A HUGE relief. (Contact DriveSavers.com if you happen to run in to the same problems. They were great and offered an educational discount.)

What did I learn from this lesson? Since this post, we have a redundant off-site backup for all of our Manila sites. I have two daily local backups with an archive copy going off-site to another city over our high-speed wide area network. With all of the nasty weather such as tornados, thunderstorms and flooding around here lately, I didn't feel we could be too safe.

Everything is back to normal and I feel much more relived since we have our automated backup plan in place. However I still had something bothering me. A nagging pang that just wouldn't quit. And then it hit me. What about my personal computer? Of all the stuff I have and everything that is now digital, what would it be like to have to recreate all of my data? What about all the documents, presentations, movies, music and everything else that is there? What would I do? CRY!

Last night a brown box arrived at our doorstep. Opening it revealed a new "Time Capsule" from Apple. After about 5 minutes of unboxing and setup, it was up and running. It took about two hours to do an initial backup of my 67.7 gigs of data (and that wasn't the system or application files.) Now, every time I open my laptop at home, it will have an incremental backup done in the background.

So how do you spell relief? I spell it B.A.C.K.U.P. What are you waiting for? Back up your digital life NOW. Don't wait until something happens. You'll regret it. Automate it with something like Apple's Time Machine/Time Capsule product. It will be worth every penny you invest.

Here is a "word cloud" depiction of this article. You can create your own at Wordle.net.



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Tagging   (Archived)
By Jason Everett on October 1, 2008
Tagging is a great feature of the new web. Back in the Web 1.0 world, we had directories where we stored our files and called it taxonomy. In the Web 2.0 world we tag items to help us find them. This is called folksonomy. Here is a good Wikipedia introduction to folksonomy. We are using the tagging feature to help us define articles and help our customers navigate the Connector with ease.

Here are the tags we will be using for the Connector:
  • Curriculum & Instruction (Instruction)
  • Assessment
  • School Improvement
  • Leadership
  • Focus on the Student
  • Even More Fun
  • News
  • Technology
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