David Truss's Page

Hi,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this classroom20 network is no exception. (I've also sent this out on other Ning networks you may be a part of.) My name is Marco Morales; I am a 20 year old college student from Olin College of Engineering. I am a part of a group of 6 Olin College students (we're in Needham,MA, and engineering students) who has taken a year off to work on an education related project. I found you when I searched for middle schools on classroom20, and since our project is specific to middle schools, I thought you might be interested! Our project is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

Under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum and other web tools, we hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2008, continuing to develop and coordinate with our users to create a product that other schools want to pilot and use at their schools, while allowing individual teachers to implement this tool in their own classroom.

Our project, titled Alight Learning, is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975. We would love your support in the form of a vote within the next couple days, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving, but at least it's a start.

Feel free to email me back, check out alightlearning.com, anything you like!

Thanks,

Marco Morales
marcotuts@gmail.com

David,

Thanks.

David,

Hi, this is Kevin. Hope your summer is going well and you had some time to relax.

I've started a new Ning network for Middle School Science Teachers and I thought you might like to join as you are also a m.s. science teacher. I thought it would be really good to have just middle school science teachers share some of their labs, demos, concerns, what works and what doesn't about teaching this level. Hope to see you there.

Thanks, Kevin

David,
Thanks for the response. I really do have a lot gong on. My life seems to be on the net. My teaching job keeps me real busy as you know.

The non-profit is new as of last year and I'm trying to make things happen, but everything takes time. I'll be in the Philippines this summer to visit family and try to build the shelter. I'll post updates on the spcshelter site.
Take care, Kevin

Hello from Pennsylvania. I'm also a mddle school teacher.

Hi again, Dave,

I tried to post back to your blog, but the box wouldn't expand, and gosh, your response made me want to say more!

"Perhaps our delivery of the message needs to change."

I agree with every point you've made, Dave, but especially the last one. Who is helping teachers to use Google Maps--and how: is it a one size fits all approach to pro-d (the fire hose method)? My observation is that the best tech pro-d (pro-d that sticks, and changes how one teaches) is small group or one-to-one, occurs at the point of need, and has follow-up when a teacher gets stuck. So much of what I observe in tech pro-d has been subtlety underpinned with a message of, "you mean you don't know how to...". So disrespectful. Doesn't win friends or influence people.

I know you've done your masters in leadership, so you've probably read Deming on quality (I just re-read this),, and Wheatley on organization--if teachers who use tech sparsely or poorly are the outliers, what must the system do to address them, and so address the needs of students? I think tech training needs re-visioning; I would love to see examples where meaningful, respectful teacher in-service is happening.

Hi Dave,

You look like a busy man with your priorities straight. Put you on my aggregator--looking forward to reading your thoughts.

I saw the Wiimote on TED talks--now THAT's creativity! How great that a student made it for you.

About Middle Schools thing: we've been k-6, 7-9ish 10-12 for a while. We are in the midst of a reconfiguration, with all the pain that goes with that kind of change. I am optimistic that good teaching & learning will still take place, and although we've closed some schools, we are keeping programs that matter (like elementary music, which some districts have had to cut).

Take care, good luck with the move, and nice to meet you!
Jan

Dave, Of course it's all right with me. I'm honored that you've posted my blog on the home page of the site. I'll mention the site today on the Classroom 2.0 blog. Thanks again!!

David, Thank you very much for your very kind comment about my blog. I really appreciate it and am honored to accept your friend invitation.