Jeff Utecht – Educator, Consultant, Author
Int. Education
Finding Common Ground
Aug 7th
One of my biggest challenges this year is going to help the High School as a whole find some common ground on expectations for class work and interaction using our Moodle site. We use Moodle as an extension of the classroom. A place to handout work, to turn in assignments, and to have discussions via forms and chats.
This will be our third year using Moodle at ISB. Up until this year teachers had the option how they set up their course, if they used Moodle at all, what type of documents and resources they places there, and how they interacted More >
Celebrating Teachers – Jim Fitzgerald
Apr 24th
As I mentioned in my last post what I love about this COETAIL program is it allows me to see education across the grade levels.
Earlier this week I was in Jim Fitzgerald’s Higher Level Year 1 IB English Class (11th Graders), where students were working on a Semester Long Unit on Ekphrasis.
Students are using their blogs as a way to document their learning (creating e-portfolios). We have a few teachers in the high school using blogs with students and I had an opportunity yesterday to chat with them in Mr. Fitz’s class about their blogs.
You have to love an English teacher who More >
Conference Week
Mar 17th
So let me cut through the smoke and mirrors and really tell you why this coming week is important to me.
Simple….on Tripit.com I’m trailing David Warlick in the number of countries I’ve traveled to this year. As an International Educator….that’s just wrong!
I won’t pass David this coming week but I’ll tie him going into the opening of Baseball Season and we all know from there it’s a whole new ball game.
This coming week I’ll start my travels in Singapore where I’ll be brainwashed attending the Apple Distinguished Educators Asia Institute. I was suppose to attend here in Bangkok last year, but thanks to More >
The Next Phase of Technology at ISB
Mar 4th
ISB 1:1 Timeline
Last week our IT Director, Chad Bates, gave a presentation to the ISB School Board outlining the next phase of technology use at ISB. The phase includes a plan to go 1:1 starting next year with grade 6 students.
It’s an exciting time to be at ISB and I for one am looking forward to rolling out the 1:1 program over the next couple years.
As part of his presentation Chad went over the history of technology implementation at ISB over the past 10 years. As I sat there reflecting on how far we’ve come with technology in just the past More >
Learning 2.010 Conference: Where do we go from here?
Feb 3rd
For the 3rd year David Gran has created the logo for the conference. This year taking inspiration from the World Expo which will be happening during the conference in Shanghai.
In a world where content is continually changing, and you can learn almost anything for free, what’s the point of going to a conference?
This is the question we started with in designing your Learning 2.010 Conference experience. The content is free and easy. If you want to learn how to use Facebook in your classroom, a simple search on Google will bring you back many hits on how teachers are finding ways More >
Managing Tech in the Classroom
Dec 3rd
As our fourth COETAIL course (Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy) here at ISB is drawing to a close. The students (33 teachers at our school) have one more course to complete next semester. The last hurdle in getting their certificate. The last course calls on them to overhaul one of their units of study and embed our TAIL (Technology and Information Literacy) standards within the unit in authentic ways. During this fourth course we talked about ways to manage technology in the classroom and had the teachers add their thoughts to a VoiceThread to share with others. So I thought I’d share the More >
One Bad Twitter ‘Tweet’ Can Cost you 30 Students
Nov 29th
Well….maybe not yet, but in the coming year if you are a private or international school you better be monitoring and using these new social tools to engage new students and families.
A Bloomberg report came out earlier this week titled: One Bad Twitter ‘Tweet’ Can Cost 30 Customers, Survey Shows.
A negative review or comment on the Twitter, Facebook or Youtube Web sites can lose companies as many as 30 customers, according to a survey by Convergys Corp.
Word of Mouth (WOM) is enigmatic - fairly straightforward and simple to understand yet elusive and difficult to engage, spread and sustain. Flickr ID: Intersection More >
Why Facebook is Unblocked at ISB
Nov 13th
I thought I would share an e-mail that was sent from our department today to a parent who had raised a concern about Facebook being unblocked at school. A very well thought out e-mail from the group. Chad Bates did most of the work with Dennis, Kim and I adding our two cents in as well.
Dear Parent,Thanks for your email, you raise an issue that schools, teachers, parents and workplaces are currently grappling with i.e. weighing the benefits of social networks against the concerns. When considering the relative merits of Facebook, there are some very obvious negative uses as well as positive More >
