LHRIC Honors Local Educators for Innovative Use of Technology

The Lower Hudson Regional Information Center presented four teachers, one director of technology and representatives of the Bronxville School District with Pioneer Awards May 15 during a special ceremony held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor.

The Bronxville Schools tech team, from left: Mara Koetke,
director of Curriculum & Instruction, Superintendent David Quattrone,
Director of Technology Jennifer Forsberg, Brad Ashley, K-12 instructional
technology specialist, Tricia Murray, principal of Bronxville Elementary School,
and Lawrence Daniels, LHRIC network specialist.

The annual awards ceremony honors school districts, teachers and administrators who work collaboratively with the LHRIC and in particular, recognizes their efforts to go above and beyond in making 21^st century instructional technology available to their students.

The Bronxville School District was singled out for its efforts to instill innovation, leadership, critical thinking and engaged citizenship by way of a framework called The Bronxville Promise. The initiative is designed to guide students, help teachers organize teaching and learning activities, and engage parents and the larger Bronxville community around technology issues.

Jesse Lubinsky, center, pictured with his award, along with Irvington
Superintendent Kris Harrington and other administrators
from the district. 

Jesse Lubinsky, director of technology for the Irvington School District, received the Director of Technology Pioneer Award for his work on Project Lead the Way, a STEAM initiative that incorporates instruction in computer science, engineering and biomedical science.

He was also recognized for helping teachers develop “20% time” projects in their classrooms, similar to a policy that Google uses in its workplace where employees get to work on projects outside of their official job descriptions. He has also been responsible for introducing students to immersive game-based learning platforms and helping to redesign a middle school classroom into a flexible learning space.

The teachers who received Pioneer Awards included:

• Marcus Eure of Brewster High School who has successfully blended various technologies into his English instruction, including student-run subreddits, which is an online bulletin board system; Google Apps for Education; Medium.com for student publishing and collaboration, as well as Twitter.
• Amanda McArthur-Gawron of the Lakeland School District who was recognized for taking the lead on a Chromebook one-to-one laptop initiative that started with her third-grade class and spread to all five of the district’s elementary schools.
• Jill Rogovic of the Ardsley School District who successfully integrated technology into her second-grade classroom, including iPads and other digital devices.
• Patricia Satalich, a technology teacher at Pelham Middle School who has taken the lead on several STEAM projects at the school. 

This year’s event began with a keynote presentation from the Los Angeles-based Apple Distinguished Educator and Google Certified Teacher Kenneth Shelton, who talked about ways that technology can be used to enhance learning and how proper usage, voice and the appropriate amount of responsibility on the part of teachers and parents can help accelerate learning.

Photos of the event can be viewed on the SWBOCES/LHRIC Flickr page.

TLI - Tech Summit 2014 Highlights Trends in Education

An array of inspirational talks, workshops and networking opportunities provided local school district leaders and instructional technology professionals who attended the LHRIC’s Tech Summit earlier this month with much to discuss.

The annual event, which was held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor, is designed to highlight the outstanding technology vendors who work with the RIC throughout the year as well as focusing on the various products and services that are transforming learning.

Dr. Maria Langworthy delivers the keynote presentation.

Dr. Maria Langworthy, founder and principal of Langworthy Research, kicked off the day with a keynote presentation on the emerging new trends in education that are bringing teachers and students into a partnership that fosters deep learning and leverages the digital technology tools that many schools are currently using.

Dr. Langworthy, who has co-authored a new book with Dr. Michael Fullan called, “A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning,” said young people are becoming increasingly disengaged as standardized testing and other pressures take their toll.

“Outside of the classroom there are tremendous opportunities and tools for students to use, which creates this kind of push and pull on their minds,” said Dr. Langworthy.

But purchasing more tech gadgets is not the answer to this challenge, she noted. “No device will fix the problem; something much deeper, much broader needs to happen.”

Through their research in classrooms across the globe, Doctors Langworthy and Fullan discovered that schools were lacking in certain areas, including a shortfall in adequate professional development for teachers, an insufficient teacher performance strategy and the outdated practice of layering technology on top of traditional teaching practices.  

In an effort to address such issues, Dr. Langworthy said the research team decided to “go beyond the numbers and dig down to see what was happening.” Their efforts were focused on what new pedagogies look like in practice and how a system of deep learning could be implemented in a school system-wide.

“We saw many examples all over the world of how this concept was starting to explode,” Dr. Langworthy noted. One example was an entrepreneurial project that involved a group of middle school students in Michigan. The initiative, explained Dr. Langworthy, not only taught them about fundraising for a good cause but how to develop a sustainable relationship with groups on the other side of the world.

Dr. Langworthy suggested that to create that type of learning in schools, students must have mastery in a topic as well as the ability to handle projects on their own with little guidance from teachers. 

“It really boils down to a somewhat different model of leadership,” she added, with principals and others willing to learn alongside students and teachers and to share a common vision with other members of the school community.

“Our argument, and lots of research supports this, is that technology won’t solve the problems we see in schools today,” stressed Dr. Langworthy. “But what we have found is that when pedagogy shifts, there is a transformation in student engagement.”

The day’s other keynote presentations included “Creating Your Google Apps Classroom” and “Moving Forward in the Face of Change,” both from Catlin Tucker, a Google certified teacher and English Language Arts instructor based in California.

For over an hour, Ms. Tucker described the tools she uses in her classroom, including Google Plus communities, Google Hangouts, Google’s Blogger, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Search, Google Drive and much more.  

Paige Johnson, an education strategist at Intel, led the day’s other spotlight presentation. In “Leading Edge: Key Traits of Ed-Tech Visionaries,” she talked about the leadership qualities that are needed to successfully provide students with a 21^st century education.

A number of breakout sessions were also held throughout the day on a variety of topics, including data analytics solutions for schools, installing the proper surveillance systems, evaluating technology use and success with the software program Clarity, as well as information on the Smart Schools Bond Act and more.

Vendors who participated in the Tech Summit included A+ Technology & Security, Achieve3000, Aerohive Networks, Annese, Aruba Networks, Atlantic, Castle Learning Online, CDWG, Centris Group, Custom Computer Specialists, Inc., Day Automation, Dell, Edgenuity, Forecast5 Analytics, HP, K12alerts, Infinite Campus, Pearson Education, Renaissance Learning, Stratagem Security, Sungard, TTM (Think Through Math) and Vandis.

LHRIC’s Pioneer Awards Celebrate Region’s Innovative Educators

An innovative community gardening project, a trailblazing group of instructional technology leaders and a hardworking director of technology were among the winners of the 2014 Annual Pioneer Awards handed out May 16.

The ceremony, held at the Edith Macy Conference Center in Briarcliff Manor, is a chance for the Lower Hudson Regional Information Center to recognize the advances that teachers and others are making with technology in the region’s school districts.

The half-day event also included a keynote presentation from George Couras, a division principal for the Parkland School Division located in Alberta, Canada.

Mr. Couras, who is also an innovative teaching, learning and leadership consultant, travels the country and the world inspiring teachers and others to make effective leadership changes and to create more transparent environments within schools.

Before deciding on the winners, a group of judges review each candidate’s application, including information on their innovative use of technology among colleagues as well as in the classroom.

Port Chester's Pioneer Award Winners

This year’s winners included Adam Schoenbart, a high school English teacher in the Ossining School District, who was celebrated for his innovative use of Google Apps for Education, and Craig Mantin, an instructional technology specialist in the North Rockland School District, for his professional development efforts with teachers and as the district’s resident expert in technology matters.

Two new Pioneer Awards were handed out this year for collaborative efforts in technology. The recipients included a team of fourth-grade teachers from JFK Elementary School in the Port Chester School District (Kate Albero, Jenn Curti and Kara Purcell), who helped spearhead a community garden project that involved the use of digital technology.

The “Special Recognition for Collaboration and Innovation Initiatives” was also presented to Jennifer Cronk, an instructional facilitator for the Clarkstown Schools; Jesse Lubinsky, chief information officer and technology coordinator for the Irvington Schools; and Sabrina Rich, director of instructional technology for the Ardsley Schools, all in honor of their trailblazing leadership efforts.

Jennifer Cronk, Sabrina Rich and Jesse Lubinsky

This year’s Director of Technology Pioneer Award was given to George Brady of the South Orangetown Schools for providing leadership and vision in relation to the district’s server and desktop virtualization platforms as well as its mobile learning offerings, among other accomplishments.

The Yorktown School District was chosen for its ability to connect students, staff and community through what Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano referred to as “this one YCSD digital world,” making reference to the 3,600 students in kindergarten through 12^th grade along with the 500 staffers who connect and collaborate through the Google Apps for Education platform.

The district integrates various technology tools into daily learning, including interactive Whiteboards, Smart responses, iPads, Chromebooks, Google Apps for Education, in addition to other smart devices, part of its Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) initiative.