I’m writing this as Lesa and I return to Texas, after spending a week working in the Boston area. Since this was our first time in New England (by the way, it is well worth the visit), we took advantage of every bit of down time to sample the history, sites and culture. Our travel tool of choice? Our I-Phones.
Using our I-Phones, we researched where to visit, when to visit and how to get there. Our phones guided us everywhere, so we never got lost. After visiting someplace or seeing something if we wanted to know more about it, we would research the topic on our phones. When deciding where to eat, our phones pointed us to the highest rated (by customers) restaurants in our immediate area. And when our trip was commencing, we checked in to our flight home on our phone.
Our smart phones freed up us up from basic organization and knowledge based tasks so we could focus on exploration, analysis and evaluation based learning activities. In short, our bootleg technology not only ramped up the rigor of our adult learning, but also allowed us to extend our time at those higher levels of rigor. Embrace bootleg technology on your campus and in your classroom and before long similar opportunities will present themselves to teachers and students.
A number of you in the LYS Nation are now using your own bootleg technology devices to follow Twitter. If you haven’t done so yet, we want you to join us. To let you see what you are missing, here are the Top 10 LYS Tweets from the week of April 22, 2012.
1. Great audience at the NSBA Conference. Many stayed after the presentation to learn more about LYS Campuses!!!
2. School Reform / Improvement can be summarized in one key concept: Adult practice drives student performance.
3. President John Adams’ first job out of college – Public School Teacher
4. Read yesterday that 3% of the voting populace will decide who goes to Austin. (By @cheadhorn)
5. Government investment in education, science and infrastructure has declined as a share of the economy since the 1970s. (By @FareedZakaria)
6. MIT essentially runs a four period trimester with the smartest kids is the world. Why do you still have your weakest students on an 8-period day, semester schedule?
7. To say PowerWalks are useless to education is like saying a tachometer is useless to a car. Both statements show complete misunderstanding. (By @txschoolsupe)
8. Dallas ISD superintendent will make $300,000 per year, manages 12,000 employees, 156,000 students. By comparison, the CEO of Hershey manages 10,000 employees for $3.4 million per year. (By DrJerryRBurkett)
9. MIT students who pass fencing, archery, sailing and pistol earn a degree in Pirate. No joke.
10. MIT is 100% WI-FI accessible. Use of bootleg technology is expected. What is the expectation on your campus?
Think. Work. Achieve. Your turn…
- Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com! http://tinyurl.com/4ydqd4t
- Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation
- Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
- Confirmed 2012 Presentations: TASSP Conference (multiple sessions); Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)
