Along with The World is Flat (http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/), the book A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink (http://www.danpink.com/aboutwnm.php), was recommended by Alan November at his keynote yesterday. These books explore global competency and how behind the U.S. is and will become in this type of economy. Relating to the brain drain from the U.S. and recognizing the importance of changing student learning, Alan made some compelling statements about the state of learning. These were keypoints:

• Every school should consider students taking at least one online course as a requirement for graduation
• Because of massive information readily available, focus on what students really need
• the capacity to be self directed
• global communication skills (i.e. skype.com)
• students should be (co)owners of their learning
• the job description of students should be rewritten to a collaborative end

In thinking about where to begin, ask these questions:

1. What do you love to teach?
2. What is the most difficult part of the curriculum?
3. How can you build more motivating and demanding assignments?

Visit Alan's website at www.anovember.com for more information.

Reporting live from the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference: Susan Adams of NHPTV is at this very moment conducting a workshop on "Blogs in the Classroom." Her conference notes and resources can be found at http://www.nhptv.org/kn/conference.

Earlier, Alan November gave a keynote focusing on global competitiveness for our students. His keynote will probably be posted at the conference web site - www.nhcmtc.org, and later, I will be writing more comments regarding his thoughtful insights.

Yesterday afternoon was really nice. It started with a delicious sandwich from Good Life :-), followed by an excellent tech integrator meeting. Every time I go to a TI meeting I learn so much. We are using Google Docs to create the Agenda and take the minutes - live (so other's can add what someone else might have missed.) All of the tech staff are accomplishing so much in many different areas, yet it is all interrelated and important to know about. Considerable and informative, take time to check out the TI web pages, blogs, and del.icio.us bookmarks. All can be accessed from the district web site and individual school web pages.

More exciting technology related happenings continue in our district including the K-2 teacher laptop roll-out and training in early December, and the addition of laptop carts at all elementary schools. Now every teacher in the district will have access to 1 on 1 computing in their classroom. It will be fascinating to see what teachers use them for in their instruction and of course I have lots of ideas and resources to share.

Grade 5 students just completed Power Point presentations addressing "How the Earth is Constantly Changing" using topics ranging from Pangaea and Sea Floor Spreading to Earthquakes and Volcanoes to Maine Rocks and Earth's Structure. The hardest part for them was citing sources. Even though they were given notetaking papers with all of the information needed to write the citation, the students had a difficult time understanding the need for this in their presentation. It was also the first time they had to do it in a research project, so we will continue to stress the importance of giving credit where due. This will be a major focus of their next big project for Social Studies - Colony Quest. One positive note about these presentations was that students garnered the importance of presenting the essential information and having it look good (no grammer or spelling errors, etc.)