Jeff Utecht – Educator, Consultant, Author
Posts tagged SAS
Preparing for the worst = opportunity
Sep 21st
There is more than one way to get a school to start looking at online learning as a way to reach students. As an international educator, I have found no greater motivation to get the conversation started around online learning than planning for the worst…..school closure.
In 2003 it was the attacks on the compound in Riyadh that led my school to think about how we were to educate students if we were to shut our doors. The following year we implemented Moodle and started training teachers.
In 2005 we moved to Shanghai, China and within weeks of getting my feet on the More >
Blogging Bits – June
Jun 2nd
I reach a point where I have so many things I want to share that I need to do a dump of information. So once in a while I’ll be sharing blogging bits. Little things that cross my mind, that I’m thinking about or have seen or have been apart of to share with the community.
I’m pretty proud of this….and at the same time it freaks me out. This book Wired for Learning: An Educators Guide to Web 2.0 was just released and I was fortunate enough to be asked to write a chapter for it. So chapter 19 Planning for More >
True E-Folios for students
Apr 30th
A couple days ago I shared how the 1st grade here at ISB is creating Portfolio’s for students using iPhoto. They are simple Quicktime movies that kids can start and stop with their parents as they talk about their learning.
This is a great solution for teachers in primary grades who have a digital camera in their room with them to document learning throughout the school year.
But what about true E-Portfolios that students create and reflect upon themselves? Last year as Shanghai American School we started with a vision of every middle school student having a blog as a e-folio to More >
Schools: Take control or forfeit your profile
May 21st
Who is controlling your school’s online profile?
In my presentation to educators I usually say:
You need to take control of your online presence, because if you don’t…someone else will!
Do schools have someone looking after their online profile?
Do we need to create a new position in the communication office?
I just got done editing my school’s wikipedia entry where someone had put false information on the site. It was brought to my attention today by a teacher who was told by a student about the edits made to the article.
Funny enough as I’m writing this blog post I go back to the page to More >
The wheels are spinning at SAS
Apr 16th
We all know what happens when you get administrators that understand this Web 2.0 stuff. Shift happens!
Andy Torris a good friend of mine, fellow Gourmet Geek, and oh yeah Deputy Superintendent at our school has the wheels a spinning on what Web 2.0 can mean for a school community.
We had a great conversation starter today. What Andy and I really need is a day or two to talk through how this stuff will/can work….and we both believe it can.
“I know there is power in Twitter!” he says has he starts talking about the Twitter account he set up for our school. We have some More >
Blogs in Student-Led Conferences
Apr 11th
Let me start this post with a disclaimer. There are a million ways to use blogs in education. The following is just one way we are using blogs at SAS.
As my time winds down here at SAS I find myself reflecting on the past three years and keep asking myself:
Did I leave a mark?
I think we all go through this and we all want this on some level. We want to know that our institution is better off because we were there. That somewhere we left a mark on a student, on the organization, or on fellow teachers. I think More >
Moving from Consumer to Producer of Information
Mar 12th
(A blog post I wrote to 11th graders and to myself)
Some interesting research has come out in the past couple of months that looks at the use of social networks and blogging and the trends that are happening in society today.
Nearly half of 18-24 year old social networkers (45%) told Future Laboratory researchers that if they had 15 minutes of spare time they would choose spend it on social networking sites rather than watching TV, reading, talking on their mobile, or playing video games. The impact of this trend is so significant that a quarter (25%) of respondents state that the rise in More >
Student Information Online
Mar 4th
I share with you and e-mail I sent out to the staff at my school today. Yes, I know that most of what I write would not fly in your school/district. But then again, we are a private international school…things just work differently here, and that’s a good thing! I strongly believe that international education will change and adapt faster than any public system. What slows us down is the larger educational system (colleges, SAT, IB, AP, etc).But I do believe we are the front runners for change because at times we’re allowed to out run ourselves.Question: What is the More >
