The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,200 times in 2010. That’s about 17 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 22 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 2 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 209kb.

The busiest day of the year was February 11th with 350 views. The most popular post that day was Compiled List of Independent School Bloggers.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were annualconference.nais.org, netvibes.com, twitter.com, digg.com, and stumbleupon.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for nais conference, wil richardson nais quote, ruth huyler glass, nais conference 2010, and wordpress conference 2010.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Compiled List of Independent School Bloggers February 2010
1 comment

How to Participate December 2009

About AC Community December 2009
2 comments

The Daily Find: April 26, 2010 April 2010
1 comment

The Daily Find: April 5, 2010 April 2010

The Power of Connections

Hello, my name is Bernadette and I’m a Twitter-holic.  First step is admitting it, but 6 months ago I was anti-Twitter, anti-Facebook, anti-just about everything along those lines.  From my perspective, I had too much to do to bother posting the minutia of my life.  Besides, who would really be interested in what I was saying anyway?  But my school faculty just wouldn’t let social sites go away…MORE

Ruth Huyler Glass

Shuttering a School

On Thursday evening, the Board of Trustees of Calmont School, which I joined as Interim Head at the end of January, voted to close its doors at the end of this academic year, following a 30-year history. While the decision was the only viable choice and…MORE

Jim Heynderickx

Library Design Research

Based on visiting seven independent school libraries in the New York City area last week, here are some of my takeaway ideas and notes about library design, use and…MORE

Tami Brass

Innovation vs. Economy: How long before you implement innovation?

We’ve been having a debate lately tied to budget.  I get that budgets are tight and that we need to be very cautious in spending money as thoughtfully as possible to get the most bang for the buck.  Usually I’m the preacher on this one, not just a member of choir and rarely sitting in the congregation.  Here’s my quandary…MORE

Sharon Peters

Schools that Work

This year I experienced a sort of existential crisis of my faith in educational systems. It may have been a result of some kind of re-entry culture shock after spending two summers in Africa working with teachers and visiting many rural schools. But I don’t think I am alone in this…MORE

The Lawrence School

Beware the Ides

As the Head of Lawrence School in Northeast Ohio, an independent school designed for students with language and attention challenges, I read the March 15 issue ofNewsweek with a deep sense of sadness and gathering dread. It inspired, no, provoked this return to blogging after an eight-week hiatus…MORE

Malcolm Gauld

Is this my issue?

Maine radio stations and newspapers have been buzzing this week with discussion about an incident involving a Yarmouth High School student found to be in violation of the school’s athletic honor code.  After photos of her holding a beer can were posted on…MORE

The death of education as we know it may be the birth of learning as we need it

I’m more than a bit late with my NAIS annual conference round up but then …excuses, excuses…what with returning to Poughkeepsie with a rotten cold,  the remaining effects of a  mega storm that closed school for three days (ably dealt with by Steve Mallet and the division heads) and then all the catching up….MORE

Failing is essential

The ratio between success and failure remains pretty constant. To succeed means we must fail. And the more often we fail the more we succeed. The key is to fail frequently and fail fast. Then move on and try something else…MORE

Jason Kern

Progress slowly happening

I thought I would share the successes happening at school and how I think as minor as they may appear on the surface that they are hopefully a sign of a more substantial change…MORE

Elisabeth Abarbanel

Diigo presentation for CAIS, Southern California

This is the Diigo presentation I gave at CAIS last month. Or, I gave most of it, but then the projector broke.. oh well! I enjoy using Diigo, and I am modeling using it for a 3 week mini-class I am teaching to seniors this week about ethical decision making about food. All the short YouTube videos and websites I want to show them are in my…MORE

Steve Taffee

Unlearning

As an educator I spend a great deal of time thinking about learning, when perhaps I should be thinking about unlearning as well. All of us carry around misinformation, misconceptions, biases, and unexamined assumptions. Unlearning these can be very difficult, especially when they have been held as truism for a long period of time. But sometimes before we can learn something new, we must first…MORE

Tami Brass

EtherPad Alternatives

[Comment: I use EtherPad and have found it to be a wonderful tool for collaborative notes at conferences and in workshops I do and have several teachers using it at Greenhill. I noticed that Google purchased the tools and one can only guess what is going to happen to EtherPad. I am pleased to have run across the following from Tami. At least Google hasn’t purchased the entire Internet…Yet] I was talking w/an English teacher last week about Etherpad and did a demo w/my yearbook kids. Great tool, but going away, right?
Fortunately, I put a call out for help to my Twitter peeps and got a number of responses w/alternatives…MORE

Chris Bigenho

Storytelling through Digital Threads- Story of the Iranian Elections as Told through Social Media

This is a story that I have told multiple times over the past nine months. However, this version was updated and refined for a 45 minute session at TxDLA. It was also recorded and repackaged so that it would include video, audio and the slides. You can read and view the story… MORE

Rob Camner

The 32-Million Word Gap: Rob shares with us an article from The Atlantic that looks as the gap between those who grow up on word rich environments and those who do not…MORE

Rick Campbell

Explore 70 Online Tools in 70 Minutes: This one will keep you busy for a while (I am sure…more than 70 minutes) We know that you will get bored during your Spring Break at some point and, as a public service, we are inviting you to explore these 70 Tools in 70 minutes, organized and…MORE

Pat Basset

The Seven Seals: For many, the past year has seemed — to one degree or another — like evidence that “the end is nigh.” The signs of the Apocalypse, as forecast in The Book of Revelation, seemed upon the world: religious conquest and false prophets; conflict and war; famine and drought; large scale death; martyrs; cosmic disturbances — all prophesied as the prelude to “The…MORE

Rob Camner

Geography is All Around Us: Here is a new twist on ways to teach geography. From storytelling and reading through Google Maps to “around the world with 80 schools”, there are some wonderful new ideas to explore in…MORE

Kirstie Truluck

Publication of Student Fiction: Wyoming by Emily S. Rose…Out the window I could see the sky, changing colors like tie-dye from the horizon up, with clouds like whipped cream along the skyline.  I got up and put on my clothes from yesterday, my drawers were empty and my…MORE

Jonathan Martin

In Schools of the Future, Students Learn by Vigorously Doing, Digitally: It’s not about the computer; it’s about the learning.  Our students today both want and need to be active, engaged, collaborative, on-line, vigorous, empowered, creative,  solvers of real-world problems.   They need to be skilled and informed to do so, but they need to be…MORE

Gordon Rode

Failure: “Many years ago, as a young physics teacher,  I took great pains (and enjoyment) in designing all physics tests for my students after a particular lesson.  I was not much for using the tests that come with the textbooks, but would rather cut and paste (literally) different test questions from different sources to make my test. Knowing that the 15 to 20 students in my class had grasped the knowledge to all different levels, the goal was to design a test that…”MORE.

Chris Bigenho

Lack of Risk Puts Nation at Risk: This is a post I wrote several months ago but is in the same vein as the one above and connects nicely with the article referenced by Gordon. “Lately, I have been frustrated by the lack of risk taking I see in the U.S. education. I am not talking about financial risk or personal risk; there are plenty of examples there. I am talking about intellectual risk taking. Our educational system has done a wonderful job of preparing students for more school. School leads to school which leads to…”MORE

Patrick Woessner

Citizenship in Digital Age: Last week I shared a few weekend reading suggestions, including the 2010 State of K-12 Cyberethics, Cybersafety and Cybersecurity Curriculum in the U.S. Survey. The results illustrate that across the nation, students aren’t receiving adequate instruction to use digital technology and navigate cyberspace in a safe, secure and responsible manner.  Web filters, acceptable use policies, and student information sessions alone are simply not…MORE

Patrick Woessner

Spanish Blogs: Speaking and writing in the target language are two fundamental goals of the World Languages Department.  To that end, our 5th grade Spanish students maintain a class blog (hosted by MICDS and powered by WordPress MU) where they can showcase their language skills.  For their first exercise, each student posted a letter that included an audio recording created using Audacity. These posts will, over time, become a portfolio of the students’ progression in Spanish…MORE [COMMENT: Very cool idea here and easy to duplicate at your school]

Jonathan Martin

New Technology High School & 21^st c. Skills-The Video: Often I write here about my appreciation and enthusiasm for New Tech High Schools and the way they effectively educate students via a problem-based learning methodology and with an excellent use of technology integration.   In my continuing effort to feature more videos on my blog, here is a nice video overview of…MORE

Jonathan Martin

The Significance of Sleep-time for our Secondary Students: Every study done shows a similar connection between sleep and school grades—from a study of second- and third-graders in Chappaqua to a study of eighth-graders in Chicago. The correlations really spike in high school, because…MORE

Vinnie Vrotny

Technology, Cognitive Tools to Change a School’s Ecology: Pat Bassett, the president of NAIS, refered people to an article recently published in the Journal of Technology Learning and Assessment, “The End of Techno-critique.” (http://escholarship.bc.edu/jtla/vol9/6/) This article presents research into the criticism of…MORE

Hiram Cuevas

Celebrating Our Faculty’s Accomplishments: A few months ago, our tech department launched a new technology blog-St. Christopher’s Tech Central Got Tech?! Now a blog itself is not a new concept but rather than having posts written by the techies, we’ve been soliciting teachers to share their successes. In addition to those posts, we post information about training opportunities, tech tips, and controversial articles…MORE

Anthony McGrann

Home Learning: There is research out there that shows that the time a child spends reading outside school hours increases a child’s performance in school. The same with time spent practicing skills. In fact you can find research to support…MORE

Bernadette Roche

The Mini Computer in Our Student’s Pockets: Do you realize how many computers you use in your daily life?  Count them up – your computer at home? Your computer at work? A laptop?  A child computer or two?  But which computer do you use most often?  For most adults and teenagers, it’s the computer that is occasionally used to make…MORE [COMMENT: What a wonderful list of applications for phones.]

Stephen Downes

Three Models of Knowledge Production: While Stephen is not an independent school blogger, he maintains a wonderful blog and this post seemed like a great addition to this list. “Harold Jarche weighs in with a much improved version of the model describing personal knowledge management, which now has these as intermediate stages between gathering and distributing…”MORE

UC Google

This is an interesting post that looks at how many communication devices are coming together into single devices while allowing cross communication (text to voice, voice to text etc). “No, Google has not taken over the University of California system. (Though there are some who may argue that they should. After all, Google has money and the UC system is broke!) No, what I mean is Unified Communications and Google. Unified Communications burst upon the scene in…MORE.

Jonathan Martin

Youtube video: A Vision of 21^st century

This is nice, a response to the very powerful A Vision of Students Today video about which I have blogged in the past…MORE

RicK Campbell and Stephanie Oberle

The Nearly Now- A New Digital DNA

This blog entry presents three videos. Our intent is this: take a close look at these videos because they point us in the direction the world and students are going [Comment: These three engaging videos look like a great stimulus for more conversations]…MORE

Tami Brass

Hands on with the New ClassmatePC Convertible

I’ve had the new ClassmatePC Convertible (10.1″) for about a day and will be reluctantly giving it back tomorrow (bummer!).  Lots of people have been asking me for thoughts, so here’s what I’ve got to share: Kids’ reaction – My 6th & 7th graders have had…MORE

Norman Maynard

Nationwide Standards

Could these standards be coming to an independent school near you? This short blog post introduces you to this budding issue with a link to “Core Standards”…MORE

Gary Stager

Hey Mom! Look What I Made in College! (2007)

David Warlick is the latest person to go all “digital immigrant” and proclaim that we should all take a good hard look at the hugely popular YouTube video, “A Vision of Students Today. Fantastic. A college class with far too many students in it (200) attempts to revolutionize the educational system by whining in a five minute web video. I’m sorry, but count me unimpressed[Comment: This should also stimulate conversation. This is also interesting when also taken with the videos presented in the posts above…MORE

Peter Gow

The Intentional Teacher, at last

I’m pleased to mention here that The Intentional Teacher: Forging a Great Career in the Independent School Classroom is at last available. Although the book can be ordered by phone directly from the publisher, Avocus Publishing (800-345-6665; their website is undergoing renovation), the best way to purchase at…MORE

TEDxNYEd- Brain Dump 1.0

On Saturday, March 6th, I had an opportunity to experience and live the future conferences. For eight hours, TEDxNYEd provided an opportunity to focus on learning, education and transformation, rather than being at a conference focused on tools and skills. This difference is significant and should become the standard for which we aspire too. Technology needs to become an eco-system, not a thing. EduCon seemingly has the same focus, but so far, I have only been able to experience EduCon…MORE

Hiram Cuevas

Reflecting on the Google Teacher Academy for Administrators

Having had some time to take in all the information from the GTAdmin, I still find my mind swimming with the  multitude of ideas and possibilities this forum has provided.  I was surrounded by fabulous educators from “venti sized” school districts to small public and private schools and every possible combination in between.  But the most impressive aspect of this group of educators was their…MORE

Poughkeepsie Day School

If a School Fulfills its Mission there must be Constant Evolution…

I’ve discovered an absolute treasure trove of fascinating material: Popular Science has put its entire 137 year archive on line. In this same edition there’s a piece on how immigrants are inspected at Ellis Island, cacti, Galileo and an argument in favor of adopting the metric…(There are some great items in this post for future reflection)…MORE

Participation=Engagement on School Sites

One of the sessions I attended at the NAIS conference which I didn’t blog about until now was “Building School Websites Around Participation” which was presented by Proctor School and Travis Warren of Whipple Hill. I was happily surprised by this one because I’d come across Proctor’s site in a different context last month and was really impressed with how engaging it is. The premise of their site, and of the presentation is…MORE

Bill Fitzgerald

Deadweight

In education, as in music, there is an Education Industry that has differing goals and interests of the people upon whom they depend for their continued existence. While the goals of the education industry do not need to diverge from the actual needs of students and teachers, in practice the needs of the education industry require that organizations spend money that has little or nothing to do with student performance…MORE

Seth Battis

A Fairly Usable Framework for Fair Use

As teachers, we are perennially swap the hat that we wear: lecturer, confidante, counselor, coach, security officer, parent. With the ability publish work instantaneously to the entire globe with a single click comes a fresh and daunting hat: copyright lawyer. The Gordian Knot of copyright law raises…MORE

Bridget Janicki
Catherine O’Neill Grace

• Building Schools for a Digital Age Defying Gravity: Imagining the Schools of the Future
• 2010 NAIS Diversity Leadership Award Presented to Reveta Franklin Bowers

COMMUNITY BLOGGERS

Jonathan Martin

• NAIS AC: 10 Takeaways, the High and the Low from NAIS Annual Conference 2010

Jamie Baker

• NAIS: Annual Breakfast Meeting with Pat Bassett
• In Tough Economic Times, Heed the Trends

SBS Middle School

• And so the NAIS Annual Conference 2010 is winding down. Normally, when I attend big conferences with thousands of educators, I grow sad and wistful as I contemplate leaving behind the stunning energy and synergy that is created at such gatherings. Intriguingly, I feel more so this year even though I am not on site – partially because people did such a good job of sharing the…More

Paige Lennig

• Following NAIS: I was unable to attend the NAIS Conference last week but I was able to follow much of the conversation thanks to Chris Bigenho.  Chris set up a blog, Twitter, and Diigo accounts to help us follow the action in San Francisco.  In the NAIS Conference blog, Chris did a fantastic job summarizes blog posts and twitter posts every day.  He was supported by many conference bloggers and tweeters – the coverage…More

Lorrie Jackson

• This isn’t High School. Fans, Followers and Social Media Success…1,000 fans on Facebook?…500 followers on Twitter… Think your school or organization is hot stuff because you’ve got the numbers to prove it. Think again…MORE

Matt Scully

• Scaffolding Love with Romeo and Juliet: Take one part Vygotsky, two parts Dan Pink’s Drive and mix gently. Fold in Shirky, Richardson, Ted McCain – you can substitute Ian Jukes if you don’t have any McCain. Wrap mixture firmly around your curriculum. I prefer some Shakespeare especially Romeo and Juliet. Sprinkle a liberal amount patience and exploratory spirit on top. Serve warm to Middle Schoolers. Be prepared this is a messy meal best eaten with…MORE

The Future of Teaching- Extending our Imaginations

Jenni Swanson Voorhees

Thursday at NAIS ended with a stimulating panel discussion focused on students in the digital age and how they learn. Four “thought leaders” gathered to present their perspective on how children learn: Megan Smith V.P. at Google, Milton Chen of the George Lucas Foundation, Wanda Martinez president of the New Tech Network, and Shelley Goldman, professor of ed. at Stanford University. The panel was ably moderated by Wanda Holland Greene, head of the Hamlin School…More

Enhancing Learning with Digital Practices (scroll down)

Jenni Swanson Voorhees

Whenever I am asked to speak about what we do in Technology classes, I always say we try to engage students in authentic work that is enhanced by the technology. The listeners always nod approval, but I doubt they have a clue what I’m talking about. On Wednesday I got to hear students articulate how having access to digital tools has enhanced their learning as they engage in a challenging, yet innovative high school curriculum…More

False Profits: Expertise and Educational Computing (2001)

Gary Stager

Terms like school reform, change, child-centered education, professional development and authentic assessment have become meaningless in an educational climate favoring systems, buildings, ideology and processes over children. Lingo-slinging administrators, politicians eager for the quick fix and educators too beaten down and overwhelmed to take a breath and reflect upon their best practices, have irrevocably devalued the currency of such terms. Textbooks, curriculum software and high-stakes tests deprive students of experience with primary sources…More

Hyperthreading vs. Multitasking

Demetri Orlando

Recent research seems to validate that humans can only focus on one thing at a time. This comes up in response to the assertion that “digital natives” learn differently and by doing many things at once (e.g. studying while instant-messaging, texting, and listening to music.)…More

1:1 Laptop Programs as Part of “Embedded Design

Jim Heynderickx

Pat Basset forwarded a link to ISED-L about the research article about 1:1 programs:… It’s an interesting article on several levels.  It addresses criticism of 1:1 laptop program, but it also defines laptops as cognitive tools that should be part of larger whole school change initiatives in pedagogy and curriculum.  This is something I’ve advocated for many years….More

Comprehensive Learning Spaces

Jim Heynderickx

I wasn’t able to fly to San Francisco this week to attend the annual NAIS conference, but I’m still doing my best to follow the blog posts from Demetri and others about the events.  I’ve been impressed by the ideas and quotes from the sessions so far…More

Checking Out the New Classmate

Tami Brass

Late this afternoon I was checking Twitter and found a stream about the new ClassmatePC Convertible.  Confession time…  I knew this was coming for a while and saw rough specs and such before Christmas.  Had to keep my mouth shut until now…More