Here is a very nice blog entry about the Five Traits of Successful Ideas. Very motivational entry with some great inspiration.
http://stephenobasun.blogspot.com/2011/10/ideas-and-solutions.html?spref=tw
It is great here at Valley Park! It has been very busy lately with working on new hardware, testing educational apps and hardware, and exploring some emerging technology tools that might increase student and teacher application. I spent most of winter break coming up with great things to do, but now is the task of working those plans, which is time comsuming! Fruitful, but time consuming!
Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter, I try to post items about leadership, technology integration, and my doctoral coursework… @pjj21
After completing the recycle event, MRC recycling received tons of equipment to recycle from the community… Literally… 5 tons, or 10,000 lbs of equipment was diverted from landfills. Thank you to the Valley Park Community for making this event a success for the 2nd year!
Here is the flyer for the recycle event!
Valley Park will be hosting a Community Electronic Recycle event on campus on Wednesday April 14, 2010. MRC recycling will recycle electronics and appliances. The only cost is associated with recycling TVs or Monitors, where there is a $10 fee. Everything else is recycled free of charge! In fact, recycling of cell phones actually will earn funds for the school district!
Looking forward to another great event!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
9am-4pm in the Valley Park Middle School parking lot
Thank you Valley Park Community!!!
I am intrigued by implementing sharepoint. Fort Zumwalt runs sharepoint on a Novell network, so I may have to check with those guys on how the back end looks. But talking with Rockwood, who use sharepoint, there are possibilities that this can meet several district needs… Definitely worth looking into!
I am attending the Midwest Education Technology Conference in St. Charles. It started yesterday, and even with the snow day the conference still went on.
Sitting in many great sessions while I am here and learning a lot! I facilitated a session yesterday regarding implementing wikis in K-5 writing classes, and came away with several resources I can’t wait to play with and share.
Vendors were very busy trying to give pens away 
Learned a lot of info about new products though, and figured a thing or 2 about some of our future plans from our vendors we use often.
Also met and collaborated with several peers. Spoke with Music teacher from Rockwood that I worked with and she talked about many of her cross-curricular lessons she is doing with 5th grade teachers, oh, and also integrating technology skills! She described many of her desires for her web pages with her kids. Inspired me to see if we could do something like that to encourage some of ur teachers. The new resources out there require new tools to access and embed them, such as this blog. Makes me want to look deeper into rolling in Sharepoint for a web solution. Nothing tomorrow, but something to explore how it would work (or even if it would work with our current network).
Other than that, it has been very cool here. Susan Evans and Lois Jacobs are presenting right now, but I am facilitating another session. Would have loved to stop by and offer encouragement! Then my session to present comes up next, with the directors from Rockwood, Ladue and Parkway. That should be fun!
Back to learning!
Just completed a meeting for planning the upcoming Midwest Education Technology Conference (METC) in February… This are looking smooth as we get rolling to the event…I will be presenting with Rob Highfill, Director of Technology at Ladue, Tom Swoboda, Director of Instructional Technology at Parkway, and Will Blaylock, the Director of Instructional Technology at Rockwood. We are presenting a roundtable discussion about technology leadership… Valley Park also has another session, with Susan Evans (5th grade teacher) and Lois Jacobs (ES Art teacher) talking about the Art project last year where they used video during a field trip… Valley Park also has several teachers planning to attend, to learn more about tech integration into their classrooms for student achievement… Battery dieing, more later
Patrick
The snow days last week were a great surprise! Lot’s of un-interrupted time to remote in and do some work from home to catch up a bit (and get ahead in some instances!).
In fact, one of the things I did to catch up was finish off a great book by Michael Fullan, called The Six Secrets of Change. Michael Fullan is renowned as a change and sustainability expert for organizations and institutions. The book was enlightening, and very reassuring. As I read each of his secrets, I reflected upon how I see several of those traits in our organization already. I could relate to his insight from our experience and organization. I would definitely recommend picking it up!
Patrick
