Sunday, July 29, 2012

Tech Boot Camp -- here we go!

After a month of preparation and anticipation, we begin our training with staff this week. We have nearly 200 staff registered to attend this week and it is going to be excellent!

We have conducted a couple of "practice" trainings over the past couple of weeks to try and work out the agenda and pacing of the introductory three hour workshop. This proved worthwhile as we learned some things that will be very helpful as we move into training sessions with as many as 60 teachers involved.

Many thanks to Northfield High School Media Specialist Rebecca Glassing and Technology Specialist Cindy Samuelson for their work to inventory and prepare our iPads for distribution. Network Manager Nate Knutson has done a fantastic job of installing our new wireless solution and we are excited to see it handle these devices this week.

As I was preparing for the sessions this week, I came across former Tech Boot Camp schedules and documents. This will be the 17th Tech Boot Camp that I have had the fortune of leading across three school districts during my career. It is always a great week and it is clear proof that Northfield educators are life-long learners. This is such an important thing to model for students -- that learning is a continuous effort that should never end.

In addition to our iPad sessions, we are also offering workshops about using SMART Boards, Google Apps, personal learning networks, and others. You can see the entire list of offerings by clicking here. These workshops are all taught by our own teachers. Over the years, I have found colleagues teaching colleagues to be one of the most powerful professional development tools we have as a district. I am sure there will be challenges this week, but we will learn from them and move on.

So -- here we go!