Mark Carls’ Blog

What an incredible collaboration at High Schools New Face from  JMT of the Western New York BOCES.  Held at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, NY.  There are way too many people to thank and acknowledge here, but I will talk about our cohort and some of the national presenters.

First of all if you’ve neve been to Ellicottville, NY and to ski, golf, or just stay at Holiday Valley, I highly recommend it.  I would also suggest treating yourself to a nice dinner at Dina’s, or any restaurant in the town, they all seem very good.

We started off the week with a keynote from Ken Kay who talked about 21st Century skills and how nine states have adopted them and more are on the way.  I will say, for all of the national presenters I was ‘trying’ to run a camera, so it was hit or miss.  The link to most of their presentations is here!

Ken Kay’s PowerPoint is there as well, and he really laid the groundwork for the week.

I had the opportunity to work with Steven Bartholomew from the MET School in Rhode Island for the “Personalizing the 21st Century Teen” cohort. 

Steven was engaging, very knowledgable and maybe a little crazy!  He did a get out of your seat activity right away and had us on the edge of our seat for both days (4 hours Tuesday, then a 3 hour and a 4 hour session Wednesday).  The people in our cohort seemed to really enjoy his thoughts, and he left the second day very open so that they could direct their own learning.  The majority of the resources are posted on this wiki.  It was an excellent time with Steven! 

What does happen to a styrofoam cup when left 1000+ feet below sea level for 10-12 hours???

Other highlights…again, I don’t have much detail to add, running the cameras used up most of my brain tissue, but:  Richard Ognibene  NYS teacher of the year from Fairport High School where he teaches Physics and Chemistry.  Richard was very nice and easy to talk to as we were able to talk over a few things during the Major League Baseball All-Start game Tuesday night.  Richard’s speech touched on some of the things that Steven did in personalizing education and he talked about his experiences with students.  He is able to let each student know that he cares for them and is there to help them succeed.  He received a very deserving standing ovation.

Tony Wagner from Harvard and his new book, “The Global Achievement Gap” which should be released by the end of the month.  He also talked about competing globally and talked about his visits to schools and keeping the students engaged.  Tony is also a Senior advisor for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and has his website here for School Change.  I was hoping to start on the book this weekend, but, well….there just hasn’t been the time.

 Any other thoughts from people out there?  This wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg!  We also had Thomas Payznat from Harvard, who started us off on Thursday about what America has to do to compete globally as well with his “Touch Choices, Tough Times” Power Point:  Thomas Payzant\’s Power Point

He was pretty straightforward and honest about how America is ranking against our global competitors.  Overall, I thought most everyone tied together the opening theme that schools need to develop and use 21st Century Skills to reinvent themselves to compete on a Global Market.

There were many others, including our other cohort leaders:

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Dennis Sparks

Giselle Martin-Kniep

Gene Couson

One last key for me, that I would have to mention was the ability to also build better relationships with other staff developers from Erie1, Erie2 & ON BOCES.  Looking forward to other projects in the future with them.

Thanks again to Holiday Valley, Rick Weinberg and the Tech Staff for letting me work the cameras (I will get better).  Thanks to Erie1, Erie2, ON and our CA BOCES for a great week.  Also, thanks to Tim Cox, our leader and the support staff (Linda, Kathy, Laurie & Mary) for pulling off a great week.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized and Tagged 21st Century skills, administrators, All star, baseball, Bill Gates, BOCES, camera, Chemistry, cohort, collaboration, Dennis Sparks, education, Ellicottville, Ellicottville NY, Erie1 BOCES, Erie2 BOCES, Fairport High School, Gates Foundation, Gene Coulson, Genesee Valley, Giselle Martin-Kniep, Harvard, Holiday Valley, HSNF08, JMT, Ken Kay, Mark Carls, mcarls, MET, MLB All Star game, national presenters, New York State, ON BOCES, personalizing, Physics, Rhode Island, Richard Ognibene, Rick Weinberg, Rochester, Rochester NY, School Change, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Steven Bartholomew, styrofoam, summer, support staff, teacher of the year, teachers, technology, Thomas Payzant, Tim Cox, Tony Wagner, video, wiki, Wikispaces, workshop You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.