Two weeks ago, I attended the February meeting of the New York Consortium of Independent School Technologists (NYCIST). We meet monthly face-to-face and for an annual conference at Mohonk Mountain House. This year’s Mohonk experience was especially community-building after a norovirus plagued many of us and inspired the hashtag, #Mochunk. It was awesome to gather at Little Red Elizabeth Irwin School (the host for last month’s meeting) and get a demo of Kandu from one of the creators. Equally awesome was to continue the discussion at a local watering hole afterwards. NYCIST was my first Personal/Professional/Personalized Learning Network (PLN), and the conversation, collaborating, and camaraderie from the group has proven to be invaluable over the years.
At the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) annual conference last week, I was honored to be chosen to co-present with amazing ladies I met via Twitter and face-to-face conferences. I knew Liz Davis (@LizBDavis) before I met her at a NYSAIS Education and Information Technology (NEIT) conference in like 2007. Hadley Ferguson (@HadleyJF) and Kim Sivick (@KSivick) were also people I knew via Twitter before I first met them in person at EdcampPhilly in 2010. I’ve since seen them online and in person many times, and it was a pleasure to talk about our own professional development and growth to two really nice audiences at NAIS in Orlando.
This week, I led two conversations at The School at Columbia University about GoogleGlass and wearable technologies. The first was for parents as part of the monthly TechTuesdays series I launched last year in order to build community and a common vocabulary between the Technology Department, the faculty, and the parents. For this month’s parent talk, I invited Rachel Klem (@Klemify), music teacher here at The School, and A.J. Jacobs (@ajjacobs), prolific and witty writer/author, to facilitate a discussion about their experiences with GoogleGlass. I was so glad to see a large turnout and hear lots of questions and anecdotes shared. I gathered resources on a GoogleDoc linked here: http://tinyurl.com/TechTuesdaysTSC
This afternoon, Rachel and I hosted another conversation for educators and technologists as part of an ongoing series of grassroots Professional Development (PD) afternoon offerings for our faculty that I help facilitate. In attendance were:
Me (@KarenBlumberg)
Rachel Klem (@klemify), music teacher here at The School
Katy Gartside (@KatyGartside), 5th grade teacher here at The School
Paul Shirk (@alert_soulful), 1st grade teacher here at The School
Marko Pacic (@MarkoPacic), Director of Technology at Convent of the Sacred Heart
Colin Samuel (@workplacehobo), Director of Technology at The Green Vale School
and joining via GoogleHangout:
From Boston, Andy Marcinek (@andycinek), Director of Technology at Groton-Dunstable Regional School District
From Austin for SxSWedu, Basil Kolani (@bkolani), Director of Technology at The Dwight School
For the record, here’s Sergey Brin‘s TED Talk where the co-founder of Google shares some possibilities for GoogleGlass:
Karen Blumberg 