Why WOW Conferences are Necessary to Our Continued Success

I, along with David Greenfield, and my principal, Dr. Beken, recently visited the Vistas Program in Klein ISD. Vistas is an alternative program within the Klein District which has made headlines in year's past due to their successful implementation of 1-1 student to computer ratio. Klein ISD has followed up on Vistas's success by distributing laptops at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year to at least 2 other schools, including Klein Collins High School. They have made plans for the 2009-2010 school year of distributing laptops to 3 more schools, including Klein Forest High School. I transferd to Hauke from Klein Forest at the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year. My principal at the time, Bill Lakin, mentioned the future proliferation of computers at our closing staff meeting of the 2006-2007 school year. I was a little skeptical at the time of the district's philosophy, but I have since come to realize that they are serious about implementing technology in the classroom. In the coming months Klein ISD will have distributed nearly 10,000 laptops to thier students.
SIDE NOTE(Do you have any idea how much money Klein ISD will spend in software licensing, computer technician needs, and other related costs? I don't think I want to see that bill.)
I mention all of this in order to distinguish Klein ISD's philosophy from Conroe's. While they are encouraging more technology use in the classroom, they are also maintaining the status quo by sticking mainly to Microfsoft applications. In other words, while every student might have a computer in their hands, they are using it like a fancy word processor. In many ways, they are stuck (and I fear they might remain for some time) in the 20th century. On another side note...while I was at Vistas, and therefore under the auspices of the Klein ISD server, I discovered to my horror that many of the Web 2.0 applications that we use (i.e. Animoto, Blogger, etc.) are blocked.
This reminds me in many ways of Amy Mayer's adamant feelings about worksheets, and how doing a worksheet on a worksheet on a computer is not a successful implementaton of technology, nor does it increase learning.
I emailed Amy Mayer recently to let her know how grateful I am for all she and Jan Robin have done in shifting my technology paradigm. I think back to that day in May 2007 at Klein Forest. I was really excited at the prospect of flooding the high school ranks with laptops. While this sounded like a great idea in principle, it needs careful consideration when the idea is put into action. The fact that we as a district are moving away from expensive software applications and computer technician repairs is a testament that we as a district are looking for ways to thrive in the 21st century. I credit Dr. Barret and all the rest of the IT staff for their careful and steady implementation of these WOW laptops. IT has done an excellent job in getting these WOW carts into the hands of those teacher who can (hopefully?!?) successfully implement a technology-rich curriculum into their classrooms. Thanks to our summer (or fall) training, and our recent update and refresher course at the Conroe High Library, I feel we WOW teachers are in a position to spread our wings and truly implement this technology into the classroom. To follow the analogy, our mother birds (Amy and Jan) have taught us all they can about how to theoretically use the laptops and cloudware in our classrooms. The only problem with this scenario is that neither of these great teachers still practices their art in the classroom. WOW teachers: it is time to leave the nest. In order to promote best practices, enhance WOW lesson plans, collaborate cross-curricularly, and have a good time doing it, we WOW teachers are going to have to meet together on a regular basis to learn from one another in a practical application setting. I don't know about the rest of you, but I learned an amazing amount of information in a short time this summer from my own trial and error as well as the excellent presentions from my fellow WOW teachers. Because we have come so far since then, I feel that we are in a position to continuely enhance our learning through similar insightful presentations. I invite all of you to come to next month's WOW Let's Go the Distance II Conference to learn from your colleagues how to best implement your WOW ideas into the classroom.