come together…

…come together is something we as a learning community have many opportunities to do both online and offline with the ECIS ICT community. It is with these face to face and online gatherings that we each develop new capacities and learnings to grow and share further with our schools. This last month a group of IT Directors spent the day in two collaborative panels one with Heads of School and one with the ECIS Business Manager committee at the ECIS Leadership conference in Vienna. The representatives for the ECIS ICT Committee were: Jennifer Janesko IT Director,  Dresden International School, Johnson K. Jacob Director of IT , American International School of Bucharest, Roberto Baldizon Technology Director, Benjamin Franklin International School, Barcelona and John Mikton Director of IT International School of Prague. I have shared here the two presentations we used to frame our conversations for each session with you. The two areas of focus: IT Directors and Heads of Schools INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOL WHAT IS NEXT? based on three guiding questions: Why do we do technology in schools? Information Technology in school — does it improve learning? Information Technology in Schools- what next? and then in the afternoon the same panel of IT Directors meet with the ECIS  Business Manager committee and Business Manager from the ECIS region. The focus of this session was on Tech Directors explore 21st century education and technology advances and Business Managers seek to answer the question: After this large investment in IT which has largely been additive to the budget, when will schools start to see a payoff on the bottom line?  Two viewpoints come together to develop mutual understanding.

The format, venues and topics provided all three groups with an excellent opportunity to share, discuss these issues. The feedback from both groups was extremely positive, and the general consensus was that we should continue to develop these kinds of sessions with IT Directors as part of the yearly ECIS administrators conference. I would like to extend a big thank you to JJ, Jenn and Roberto for their time and expertise during the sessions and with many of the off line conversations we had during the conference with Business Managers and Heads of School.

As the ECIS ICT Committee we look forward to again facilitating more of these sessions and if you are interested in participating please drop us a note.

Switching topics, this month we are sharing a thought provoking Tedtalk by MIT professor Sherry Turkle Connected, but alone? As all of us see more and more devices enter not only our schools but homes, there area growing number of articles being shared around on the topic of balancing ones online time with off line time. Sherry Turkle explores what this means to human contact and relationships. Please feel free to share this with your own school communities. The topic is something that many of us grapple with, and as we move towards every child with an iPad or laptop in our schools, supplemented with a Smartphone in their pocket and then a game console at home, how do our learning communities build the capacity to balance their connected lives.

ECIS ICT Committee Update

A quick update regarding the ECIS Conference Fall of 2012 Nov 21- 25th 2012 applications for proposals to present. There was a huge interest
this year and the number of applicants to present hit a record. You will be contacted by ECIS on the status of your application in the following months.

Professional Development

1 to 1 Laptop Institute Frankfurt International School September  27, 28 and 29/9/12 2012

Google Apps for Education European Summit will be at the International School of Prague
Saturday and Sunday October 13-14 2012
For full details : http://www.praguesummit.org/
Registration: http://www.praguesummit.org/

Learning 2.012


October 11-13, 2012 – Western Academy of Beijing
Registration opens May 1, 2012.
What will Learning 2.012 look like?

Learning 2.0 is a trans-formative, challenging experience for all participants; it is the conference that leads the change. We want to ensure that the learning continues after the conference is over by facilitating network-building opportunities through both face-to-face experiences which are then extended, sustained and supported online through this site.
http://www.learning2.asia/blog/conference/learning-2-012

Bytes of the Month

Hunger Games mini-unit engages students in brainstorming about world’s problems
http://www.ernweb.com/public/Hunger-Games-curriculum-mini-unit.cfm

There is a war coming: Cory Doctorow on the future regulation of general purpose computation – video
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2012/apr/19/cory-doctorow-regulation-computation-video

ITL: Change the way we learn.
https://sites.google.com/a/dresden-is.de/ecis-it—it-s-all-about-learning/-itl-curriculum-documents

Google Earth Lessons
http://gelessons.com/lessons

Reconceptualizing Teaching and Learning in a Technocracy
http://education.ed.pacificu.edu/aacu/workshop/reconcept2B.html

 

Your words, your input…..
Please remember your links, your thoughts, your resources are important to this blog if you have something you wish to have featured drop into our wiki area on iSkoodle and add it there, I will make sure it is featured in our June issue edition.

have a good month!
John Mikton
Chair of the ECIS ICT Committee

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