Mr(s). President, meet YouTube...the NEW media

In listening to NPR today, I was struck by one of the commentaries about how the "big announcements" for presidential exploratory committees were being done on the web. That's right - no more finicky press corps, just an electronic fireside chat by the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and others. Here's one reporter's take on the trend: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6944951

Sunnyslope Elementary

Congrats to Sunnyslope Elementary and principal Bob Leslie for convening a tech vision committee to look at how to prepare staff and students for the future! Kudos to Bob for starting to use del.icio.us and wanting to start his own blog!

Bob shared this article from Principal Magazine called "The Tech Savvy Principal"
http://www.naesp.org/ContentLoad.do?contentId=288

I'd also recommend a virtual visit to Meriwether Lewis Elementary in Portland (http://lewiselementary.org/), where Tim Lauer is principal. He's a definite Web 2.0 kind-of-guy as evidenced by his non-school blog (http://tim.lauer.name/).

Workforce Of The Future

As our district is in the throes of developing another 3 year tech plan, we're at the pivotal point of "what should kids know, and when". Obviously there's the NCLB 8th grade tech literacy component, but the most recent issue of TechLEARNING has a link to The New Commission On The Skills of the American Workforce.

I'm clicking with the first 8 pages or so of the Executive Summary, as it seems to reinforce some of Friedman's predictions about what the future holds for our kids. I'm still processing the overall recommendations, though. Reminds me a bit of my family's Christmas morning charter schools discussion around the breakfast table, it's not just my nieces that are hungry for more. How to build something that's flexible, accountable, well-funded and government-run all at the same time?

Anyway, the world continues to flatten...