This year I have taken on more responsibility at school.  I became co-department chair, started a technology study group, and have become a PLC facilitator in addition to other committees and of course, teaching.  Because of all of this I feel like I have been overwhelmed by the amount of things I have had to remember.  From meeting times, to checking a students grade, to ordering supplies, my new responsibilities coupled with everything that I was doing before have left my mind full.  In order to get on top of everything and to make sure that I don’t forget anything, I have implemented GTD.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is a book by David Allen.  He is a personal productivity guru.  The system depends on identifying all of the projects, tasks, and other things that you have to do, and writing them down so that you can use your brainpower to do your work and be creative rather then to remember all of the things that you have to do.  It is about creating a system to do this that is efficient and easy.

You would think that because I am a technology guy that I would have some high tech way of implementing this.  Truth is there are lots of gadgets that I could use, but I am going to go totally low tech with this.  Instead of a PDA or a smart phone, I am going to use what has been named the hipster pda (personal disgorgement aid).  It’s basically a bunch of 3×5 index cards and a binder clip to keep them together.  With this I can keep track of all of the tasks I have to do in one place, that will be with me all of the time.

Since this is only the beginning, I don’t know how well it is going to work for me, but I am going to give it a try.  Check out some of these links if you are interested in learning more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTD
http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda

Since the Learning 2.0 conference in February I have made a concerted effort to increase the size of my professional learning network. It has been great! I have seen the fruits of my effort in the interactions that I have been having with people I have never met and may never met. By posting on Darren Kuroptwa’s blog A Difference I met someone who is helping me with blogging in my classroom.

I had almost decided to scrap my BC Calculus student blog, but now am going to redouble my efforts to change things to make it work. I was using the scribe post model to have students post the notes and other events of the day so that we could have a running online “textbook”. I figured it would run itself and that student buy in would be high, but because we didn’t have an outside audience, it was difficult. I will let you know how it goes.

It is wonderful to feel connected and have support from the people I have met online. People who share my enthusiasm for technology and teaching.

I always like parent teacher conference nights. Especially when the student comes and is part of the conversation. It typically happens though, that the parents (and students) who you want to be there, aren’t there. I have tried emails and phone calls, but there are some parents that don’t come. Now I know there are issues around when they are held, and jobs or child care can get in the way of some parents coming. But we also know the correlation between parent involvement and student performance. So how do we get parents involved? Not just in conferences, but in their children’s education.  I wish there were a quick fix, but I haven’t found one yet.

Could technology be an answer?  Would more parents do conferences by phone, chat, skype, or some other technology that we haven’t come up with?

It’s March, I can’t believe it.  It seems like just yesterday it was new years eve.  When I was growing up in New Jersey, I hated March.  We had a winter break in February, and spring break in April, but March was just a big long cold month.  After moving to Colorado, I have changed my tune a little about March.  For me now, I start to plan out how the end of the school year will go, and what new stuff I will be trying in the future.  I think because I we are on the doorstep of spring in March, I start thinking about rebirth.

I also have pretty much planned out my professional development for the summer.

• NECC
• TI Navigator and Nspire training
• Math training on creating a student centered classroom

It will be pretty busy, but I am always excited to learn new ways to incorporate technology and best practices into my teaching.