New presentations and workshops for 2013-14

Kill the cash cows. This is the only acceptable perspective for both intrapreneurs and their upper management. Cash cows are wonderful—but they should be milked and killed, not sustained until—no pun intended—the cows come home. Truly brave companies understand that if they don’t kill their cash cows, two guys/gals in a garage will do it for them. Macintosh killed the Apple II: Do you think Apple would be around today if it tried to “protect” the Apple II cash cow ad infinitum? The true purpose of cash cows is to fund new calves. Guy Kawasaki

Our state technology conference organizer, TIES, has recently sent out a request for proposals for workshops and sessions. This a great conference, full of forgiving colleagues on whom it's great to try out new "material" so I am taking some time to review.

Each year I try to toss some old sessions and add a few new ones to my repertoire. Tossing the oldie but goodie (killing the cash cow, as Kawasaki puts it) feels like abandoning a beloved child, but a speaker's gotta do what a speaker's gotta do. I've seen too many speakers who could give their keynotes in the sleep - and maybe they are. 

These sessions are being removed (or seriously remodeled) 

• Is Technology Making a Difference in Your School? 
• If You Think You Can Do a Thing: Measuring and Improving Teacher Attitudes Toward Technology Use
• Dipping One’s Toes in the Educational Networking Stream: Using the Read-Write Web in Schools 
• E-Books, E-Gads! Promises, Pitfalls, and Practicalities 

And these are being added.... 

Workshop: The Responsive Classroom: Using Tech for Feedback, Assessment, and Discussion

In this hands-on workshop, we will experience using and creating technology-enabled interactive experiences in the classroom. Using online tools like Poll Everywhere, Socrative, Padlet, TodaysMeet, and GoogleDocs, participants will design activities that make the most of a classroom in which every student has a device.

Workshop: Teck Check: Evaluating Technology Use in Your District

Ever wonder how your district compares to others in its technology use? Using five checklists, participants will complete a short but comprehensive assessment of technology implementation in their districts. From infrastructure to student skills, we will examine where schools should be now and where they should be heading. 

Presentation: Everything I Know About Engagement I Learned in Kindergarten

Surveys show that engagement levels drop precipitously from elementary school to high school. What might secondary educators learn from their elementary peers about keeping students more interested in learning? Ten practical strategies and examples will be discussed.

Presentation: A Novel Plan to Develop an E-book Collection

E-books offer some genuine advantages over their print cousins, but many publishers are reluctant to provide titles to libraries for circulation. Students and staff are using a variety of personal devices to read e-content. Yet the demand for e-content is growing. This workshop offers a pragmatic approach to developing an e-book collection in your school that takes these challeges into consideration.

I try to remind myself that the role of a teacher is not in supplying answers, but in presenting problems in such a compelling way that the student want to solve them for themselves. Good workshops and presentations are about learning not just from the voice at the front of the room, but from all participants. And good learning experiences leave one confused - but confused at a higher level.