Monday morning thoughts

Add my thanks for this blog. My Monday morning thoughts are fresh from last week's eighth annual school improvement institute. There were more than 700 middle and high school teachers and administrators at this two-day event in Columbus. Just a few thoughts for communicator sharing:
Technology -- I attended an awesome session called "Eight Things That Your Students Know in Cyberspace that You May Not." It was conducted by Professor Gerry Davis at Bowling Green University (gdavis@nwoet.org). His topics ranged from wikis to second life, which is a virtual (online) community operated by people known as avatars in their virtual second life. He suggested that marketers should do more "crowd sourcing" by using wikis to put out and to obtain product knowledge. I admit this is pretty much all I know about it, but I am interested in knowing more if any of you can share. I also understand that Miami Valley may be launching the first high school/career center second life site soon and would love to know more about that. If you want to check out anything at Bowling Green, the URL is www.nwoet.org. I understand the campus has a "second life" site in which students can virutally "fly" (haven't we all wanted to do that?) to classes and where art students are virtually posting their work.
From the Governor's Office -- A new term to add is "positive deviant." Frances Strickland spoke at the Institute and said it is a term that she and the Governor are using to describe educators who aren't afraid to try new things. The First Lady and Governor Ted Strickland are "trying to change the public view" of education and to remove restrictions that keep teachers from using new strategies to help students learn. This is a previous switch, she said, from "scaring the public" into action.
From higher education -- Chancellor Fingerhut -- He reminded us that Google was created by two students in a dorm...and that the limits of our students have no ceiling. He was using a positive spin with colleges and universities. This may be a turn from our previous state "reality check" of emphasizing the hard-to-swallow facts. Stay tuned...

Post submitted by:
Pat Huston
Ohio Department of Education
pat.huston@ode.state.oh.us