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Every now and then there is one of those books that seem to leap off the shelf into my hands because the title captures the spirit of the moment in the world of public education. Earlier this year, Diane Ravitch’s book The Death and the Life of the Great American School System was one of these books. Milton Chen’s The Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools is the second book...

I have been principal at the Newton Conover Health Science High School since January, and I have spent a great deal of time learning the culture of the school. The “Newton School” as it is fondly referred to by students and community members was established five years ago as a high school redesigned based on 5 Purposeful Design Principles delineated by the North Carolina New Schools Project. These...

My apologies for the change in my blog design. I realize I just changed it a month or so ago, but for some reason I was never happy with that design. This weekend, I decided to try a new design that I thought more fitting. I hope it works much better than the other design....

This past weekend, I spent several hours trying to rid my family desktop computer from a particularly nasty trojan virus. This particular virus posed as antivirus software which someone in the family inadvertently installed when a pop-up came up warning them that the computer was infected. What made it extremely difficult to eradicate was that whoever engineered this particular virus apparently had...

I have started to write this post several times. A few of those times, I began trying to write a well-written reasoned argument to what's wrong with the LA Times releasing test scores of individual teachers, but others say it much better that I could. Larry Ferlazzo does a great job tracking all the posts on the Internet focusing on this issue. There are also those who do a much better job at...

Before this book was published, I looked forward to getting a copy with anticipation. I have been fascinated with what researchers are saying about the effects of the Web on our brains and and thought processes. Disappointingly, this book offers no groundbreaking insights in this topic, and for that matter any other. Carr opens the first chapters of this book with a long tedious history of the printed...

Recently a comment from Miguel Guhlin (@mguhlin on Twitter) made to my post about My Five Favorite 21st Century Administrator Tools set me to thinking. His question seemed to be a time management question regarding how is time for testing new tools balanced with the other priorities in life. I know the answer to that question for myself, but I can’t possibly answer it for others. I do spend a great...

Today I stumbled across a blog post from Instructify that described Google Moderator. I must confess, I had not heard much about it until I read that post here. I was intrigued enough to give it a try. I went to the Google Moderator page and created what it calls a “Series” on New Technology Use Ideas for the 2010-2011 School Year.” I sent invitations to my teachers, and bingo, it is up and running....

I have been feeling more and more pressure to post to my blog every single day. I see these other education bloggers posting three or four times a day, and I just begin wonder if something it wrong with me. I just don’t often have that much to say. Well, that’s not exactly true. I always have plenty to say. Sometimes it’s best just to not say it, especially in an open forum. But for me, it is real...

My essential technology tools package does change quite often. In the past several months I have found myself using these tools more and more, in the order that I introduce them. Dropbox What a powerful tool! I use two different computers to carry out the business of being an administrator. In times past, I used a flash drive to capture those working files that I might need at any location and...

Could it be that President Obama and Secretary Duncan displayed a bit of hypocrisy this weekend? The media has been making a big deal about the basketball game played by our President and his educational sidekick at the Fort McNair military base in Washington, DC. NBA participants in the game included Joakim Noah, Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Bill Russell, amd Earvin "Magic"...

On Friday, my wife dropped at the animal shelter a pregnant cat abandoned by neighbors who moved away and left her behind. The animal shelter informed her that they would probably have to put her asleep, but they would not do it for twenty-four hours. This morning, my wife called me in tears while she was at work and asked me to go get the cat. I went to the shelter and picked the cat up and took...

This past Saturday, I received a phone call from the Democratic Party. I don’t recall the caller’s name, but he launched into a speech about how they needed my help to fend off the Republican take-over of the House of Representatives. I let him continue for some time  to try to instill in me the fear of what having a Republican majority in Congress would look like. Then he stopped suddenly and...

Netvibes advertises that users "can personalize their web experience" which is done by choosing and placing objects known as widgets on tabbed pages. When I set up my Netvibes account about a week ago, I had some difficulty at first with how to manipulate the pages and make use of the widgets that were offered. In fact, I deleted my first Netvibes page after I had some minor trouble trying to figure...