Jeff Utecht – Educator, Consultant, Author
Posts tagged change
Why do I get a computer?
Dec 9th
Over the past couple of days I’ve had one simple question that I can’t get out of my head.
Why do we believe that every teacher having a computer on their desk will benefit teaching and learning, but giving one to students wouldn’t?
It’s a simple question isn’t it? I mean….when I started teaching in 1999 I walked into my 4th grade classroom with a computer sitting on my desk. Not every teacher had one at that time, but the next year, at a new school, every teacher had a laptop. We’re talking the 2000-2001 school year. Every school since has provided me More >
Amazon Kindle backs Textbook Publishers into a corner
May 21st
If you haven’t heard, Amazon has announced the Kindle DX. A 9.7 inch Wireless reading device with a larger screen made for reading textbooks and newspapers.
Now this is all great news for technology and e-books. But as I listened to the TWIT podcast episode 194 they talked about what this device really is about.
More important than the size of this device is that starting with the DX it will allow people to upload and view PDF files.
Now this might not seem like a lot but as they said on TWIT and what I agree with is that Amazon has just More >
How long does change take?
Jan 19th
Napster was started in June 1999 and for many marked the beginning of an era of free digital music.
For the next 10 years the music industry would try to stop people from downloading free, and what they claimed to be, illegal music.
In January 2009 the largest online music store in the world, Apple’s iTunes, announced it will offer all 10 million songs DRM free, allowing people to download and share their music without any Digital Rights Management.
It took the music industry 10 years to change to a new model, to understand a new landscape, and to learn to take advantage of it.
The newspaper industry More >
Systematic Change Part 2: Unlearning your community
Nov 18th
(As you can tell from Kim’s recent post. Systematic change at all levels is on our mind at ISB)
How much time to we spend helping our community understand the changing landscape of learning?
If we want to change the system, then we need to be prepared to change the whole system. We need to help our school communities understand that this isn’t the learning they had, and it’s not the school they had either.
The hardest part about changing a school system, is that we are all experts…and I mean all of us. We all went through the system, we all remember More >
Systematic Change: Part 1
Oct 23rd
(What follows is the thinking of many people that I have the pleasure to work with every day. It is my hope that I can put into words, for myself, how we are trying to bring systematic change to our school in hopes that you might be able to use a piece of it to bring change within your organization as well)
Systematic change does not come easy. There are many factors, people, and a history to overcome. Yet educational organizations find themselves struggling with the changes needed to stay relevant in a connected, digital world.
There are many ways to More >
Change is hard
Oct 9th
This morning before leaving for work I was enjoying a cup of coffee with The Thinking Chick (the new nickname for my wife by my colleagues). We were discussion a video created by one of Chad Bates‘ students in class.
Me: “It’s a great video! And think how much more she’s going to remember about Excel. Way more then she would if someone just told her how to do it.”
Thinking Chick: “Yeah, but it’s not really about Excel right? I mean you’re always preaching about the skill is more important than the content. That the process she went through to teach herself Excel and how to More >
Putting the I in change
Oct 8th
To often I hear educators make remarks about change. Either about that it’s too much, too fast, too often, or the more famous one, “Here we go again.”
For some reason, some educators do not see the I in change. The school can change, teaching can change, students can change, as long as I don’t have to change.
How do we put the I in change?
Should we even be trying?
Change is difficult, change is uncomfortable and honestly we, as humans, don’t like change!
But we are in the change business. We change minds, we change knowledge, we change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. If More >
Gapingvoid’s Three C’s Remixed
Aug 18th
I’m going to remix some ideas from Gapingvoid. I do encourage you to read the entire post with an eye on education.
It seems to me that in any school, large or small, you can divide the people into three broad categories.
1. The “Changers”. These are the educators who use their work as a platform to “Change The World”. They go into a school and try to change it, in order to create something better, both for themselves and for the students at large. They can be the Principal or janitor. Theirs is not a social position, it’s a psychological condition.
2. The More >
