Clairvoy

Service Request

April 26, 2013

We have about 25 systems. One of them is possessed (and by “possessed” I mean in the technical sense). When the wall unit is turned on, it intermittently emits a wailing sound like a small child got a hold of the mic and was pulling our leg – but that is not the case. It plays music when we want it to correctly, but when all inputs are turned off, it emits sounds like the underwater mating call of a sperm whale, or perhaps the amplified whimpering of a child ghost from the Victorian era who died tragically of diphtheria. I’ve done all the usual stuff, rebooted it, dusted the equalizer, tried other mics and input devices (including direct wiring). Got any ideas?

[audio http://www.whaletrust.org/audio/HIJ1704.mp3]

Managing & Leading

by Mark April 23, 2013 instruction

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” Less often quoted, King followed that line by uttering, “Where there is no consensus, there is no leadership.” The ITRT’s job has grown at the exponential rate of technology. As Moore’s law has it, doubling every [...]

When creative adults make things inspired by kids

by Mark March 4, 2013 instruction

What’s the Point of Common Pacing

by Mark February 4, 2013 instruction

1) Common Pacing can’t be defined as a rote act, and you’ll never get a schedule of how to common pace from any teacher worth their salt. Because the act of Common Pacing includes the whole “act of teaching” which defies a day-to-day lock-step schedule. But the whole “dialog” piece we keep hearing about is [...]

It’s not the amount of data, it’s if the data is useful in teaching.

by Mark February 4, 2013 instruction

1) More data is not necessarily a good thing. Useful data is given to teachers about their students in a time frame that allows them to do something with it to help students learn. Navel-gazing about SOL data from last year is not very much help in a school with a 25 percent [...]

Little Brother

by Mark October 25, 2012 instruction

In the novel 1984 George Orwell outlined a dystopian world in which government cameras monitored all of us, coining the term “Big brother is watching.” In our modern world the power has shifted and it’s “Little Brother” (or your students) that have all the power.

← Previous Entries