About Us

THE GREAT EQUALIZER

2012-12-31T05:33:00Z

Universal access to technology will change the way we understand information and each other. It is absolutely essential to the continuing evolution of an informed, educated, global society. - Blanca E. Duarte, President

Access to information is the great equalizer in today's society. In a global economy and in a knowledge economy, the basics of information must be accessed in order to help people make informed decisions. We believe in the importance of having access to quality information through the use of technology. As parents, community leaders and board members of education, it is our right and privilege to advocate for what we believe.

Moving Along 21st Century Teachers

2012-02-29T06:34:42Z

I recently a good article geared towards teachers. The premise was how do you know when you're ready to lead? Coincidentally, not long after, I was asked the same question. I make a living teaching and leading. It's what I do and what I love. Since much of my work is focused on helping teachers "understand" the bigger picture, I thought I'd share with you some of my thoughts on how to help people move forward:

Assessment - Self assessment is important, but take note from others too. There's nothing wrong with admiting you're not perfect. In fact, it's those who are able to accept critical feedback from peers that continually move along in their development. It takes years to perfect some qualities of good teaching. How will you know what you don't know? To get better at something you need to understand what it is that you do well, and what you need improvement in. So it is simply not enough to ask yourself what you think YOU need help with; it's important to ask others that you trust to provide feedback too. Ask them to visit your classroom and watch you work. Visit theirs. Take notes; ask questions. Talk to their students; talk to yours. You can learn a lot from people if you just spend some time with them. Look around at your environment. Take note of your peers. Who do they interact with? How do others respond to them? Ask them to take video and replay your sessions together. Use a rubric to help you recognize patterns. A technology progression chart or rubric will provide a framework for conversation. Discuss. Listen.
Audience - Know your "students". Observe your students in different classrooms during the day and in different spaces. Take notes. Ask yourself, are the needs of most students being met? I like to ask myself, "Who is my most "interesting" child?" Interesting can be interpreted in many ways. How will I plan my lesson to ensure that child's needs are being met? This helps me think about ways to differentiate my lesson. It also helps me keep the work challenging and interesting enough to capture the most "interesting" child's interest.
Sensory - Everything that you can hear, touch, smell, taste and see will affect the learning environment for someone. What do you see, hear, touch, taste, as you observe lessons being delivered? Take note of how these sensory experiences may affect students. Perhaps they even affect you. Everything that affects the senses - the sounds you hear (it is noisy outside), acoustics of a room, (does the teacher need a speaker to be audible enough), visuals, (are visuals distracting or not attracting enough attention) will impact delivery of lessons. Are you teaching in the best possible environment? What can you do to change that?
Design is important. What is my classroom layout? How does it support good teaching? Even the way the desks are arranged make a difference in a classroom. If you want to work towards increasing collaboration and communication, take note of the way your chairs are arranged. Change the layout to make it easier to introduce groupwork. Is it easy for students to speak with each other? Are there also spaces for students to work independently? Does the layout support good learning for the cohort? I have had teachers move desks in between sessions to accommodate different cohorts of students in order to impact learning positively. Guess what? It works.
Creativity and Innovation - Think about what makes your class "different". You're ready to lead if you can truly say you live in this century and it shows. Ask yourself, "If I walked into my classroom today and I had a choice, would I stay?" What makes your classroom innovative? Is it the method of teaching? Engaging others from outside the school? Are students excited because they feel like they are part of the action. Learning is a verb. Your classroom should look like one.
Finally, define the terms. Speak with one voice. Every teacher should come to an understanding of 21st century skills that is equal to others. Use correct terminology. Don't confuse collaboration with cooperation. How do you define risk? Probe each other and fine tune your objectives. What areas of 21st century learning do you want to embrace?

Finally, Build a Relationship. I always say that nothing can replace the building of a relationship with people. Discuss all you want with your fellow teachers but don't forget to listen. It's too easy to "suggest" something to them rather than try and work the lesson from the inside out so you will need to dedicate time to planning and redesigning lessons from scratch. Be fearless but also create a fear-free environment. You'll learn plenty along the way too.

Change Management

2012-02-13T01:05:00Z

We've been involved in a lot of conversations around change management. More specifically the question of late is how do you create change? This "change" is typically followed by conversation about what "needs" to change. Do we need to change leadership? Attitude? Do we change our ideas; the way that we do things? I suppose the real question is how can we instill a culture of adaptability and flexibility in our environments. After all, what is change except the ability to be flexible, adaptable and instill a culture of learning...of growth...?

We have all endured change in our lives. Some of those changes are entirely out of our control. To age is to change. Time is about change too. There are always things that we cannot control in life. That's fine. We grow, we adapt, and hopefully through experience, we learn too. Once upon a time, this woman was a child. A child changed into a teen. A teen changed into a young woman. A young woman who changed well...you see where I am going. There was also a time that I would question everything about the way the world worked, why it worked a certain way...why it didn't change into another, different way. I like to think I still do.

One such experience was as an accounting manager for a pretty large corporation. In my early twenties, as a young, fairly inexperienced manager, I asked about some reports that I found myself working on late one night. The fact that I was extracting one number from one report and placing it manually into another bothered me. It wasn't that working until midnight wasn't appealing - after all everyone had to pay their dues. However, what bothered me was that the fact that the numbers I was inputting came directly out of a report that had been computer generated. Why, if the numbers came out of a computer already, was I inputting them manually into another report? That seemed silly. After all, what I really needed to do was analyze the numbers, send them off to respective departments and get answers to questions I couldn't answer. Working until midnight even as a way to pay some dues when I knew the numbers were somewhere, hidden, in the mighty depths of the mainframe in Chicago was silly. So, despite confused looks about why I was questioning what to me seemed an easy fix, and the disagreements with IT (why couldn't the computer round I asked?) I finally received my reports. Oh but not without some difficulty!!! It couldn't be done they said. That's not the way we had done it in the past they claimed. So what was my answer? I deciphered code, taught myself some logic, and spent hours writing my own formulas to prove that it could be done. Of course my logic wasn't perfect but it got the point across. You best believe we created those reports, and got our rounding errors fixed, and did what people said couldn't be done because it hadn't been done that way before.

I should've realized that my passion for making easy things easier to do in order to make it easier for the harder things to get done would drive me the rest of my life. Now, 20 years later, I find myself still questioning the why of "Why do we have to do things the old way?". Next time you have work to do and find yourself working all hours of the night to make things happen, sit back, think about what you are doing and find a way to make the easy things happen more easily. This way, you can concentrate on the things that really matter. That's the LogicWing way. We help you make the most of your technology so you can do what you do better.

Remember 9/11

2012-01-13T06:35:13Z

So it's been almost 10 years and 4 months since the United States was struck by tragedy. Today I remembered a project that we were so touched to be a part of. A very good friend of mine struck up a conversation over the summer about that day. Her students, in Kansas, wanted to do something special to remember the lives lost and we brainstormed some ways that we could engage them and others by way of a small (albeit global) conference.

It's been 4 months and a day since we held our little conference and I felt like tonight was a good night to share some of the day. Remember 9/11

5 Things to Consider Before Implementing a Collaborative Solution

2011-08-06T22:21:09Z

Since it's coming up on the Fall, I thought I'd list a few things to consider if you are considering a collaborative solution for your school or organization.

1. Purpose - Purpose should always drive decision making. The purpose of having a set of collaborative tools for your organization depends on what outcomes your organization is trying to achieve. If the purpose is that you want your oragnization to create and share documents, then you can bet being more efficient is the answer. Collaborative solutions are all about making the way we learn and work, better. Don't implement a solution because you want to be like the "Joneses". Those of us who've used Outlook, Notes, Google Apps or other collaborative tools know...these tools make our lives better, period. Take the time to find out what you are trying to achieve with them and evaluate from there.

2. Flexibility - How portable and flexible does your learning or working environment have to be? Does your organization allow wireless devices like Smartphones and tablets? One of the best features of a modern day collaborative solution is that information is available real time, allowing a user to be more flexible. Work is no longer a place you go to, it's a place that comes to us. Learning is no exception. If you need a solution that allows your users and students access to information anytime, anywhere, then you need a collaborative solution that is Internet-based, portable and flexible.

3. Infrastructure - What kind of infrastructure do you have in your place in your organization? Wait, didn't I just mention that you didn't need equipment in order to install it? You don't, however the type of infrastructure you have is important because once you have installed Google Apps on your domain, you need to be able to use it. Google Apps works through your browser, therefore bandwidth (the amount of time it takes for a person to download and upload information from the Internet through a browser) and connectivity are important. The tools aren't the only thing to consider when making a selection. How much support staff will you have? People can be a part of your infrastructure too. How long will you need to train them? What kind of collaborative solution resources will your organization be able to take advantage of?

4. To email or not to email? We receive many requests from organizations asking us whether they can install Google Apps as their collaborative solution but keep their email service as is. The simple answer is yes, you can have both an email service and a separate collaboration solution. However, having to manage two systems - an email system and a collaboration solution on separate platforms can be time consuming. There are other factors to consider here: size of the organization, type of other services the organization uses, how many users are what we would call "technology literate" and how many users are open to "change" - "the flexbility factor". If you are going to go this route make sure you train some power users and give them time to support others during the early implementation phase. Email is an important and essential tool for everyday communication. The stronger the adoption of the collaborative solution, the more likely it is you will want to consider the same solution as your email provider.

5. Cost - Putting the cost aside...well, okay, we can't. Google Apps for Education and Non-Profits is free. Google Apps for Business has a cost of $50/user attached to it. Other options like Office 365 and Lotus Notes have varying price structures. As a non-profit, K-12, or university institution, you and your IT folks will want to evaluate your "must have" features and weigh the cost before making a decision.

If you haven't read the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) Guide to implementing software you should. It offers some great advice about how to implement solutions, and barring the language for software that has to be installed on a device, the planning guide is excellent. K-12 SIIA Software Implementation Toolkit

Contact Us the EZ Way

2011-05-10T23:13:37Z

There are many technologies that have inspired us over the last ten years...the iPhone, iPad, Web 2.0 tools, Google Apps. Now there's a technology that can make our lives even more convenient than they already are! Welcome QR codes! Creating information in a digital format is genius, pure genius! Simply raise your Smartphone or other device with a QR reader to the following symbol and viola! Contact us by phone without lifting a finger (well, maybe a few...)

Contact Us by Tele

The Story of Pixar

2011-04-27T03:36:00Z

If you have missed this gem of a documentary, it is well worth watching more than once! Once upon a time there were some very creative gents...The Pixar Story

Educating the Whole Child

2011-03-12T01:21:33Z

In a little corner of Syosset is an amazing school I am proud to be a part of, Variety Child Learning Center. As a member of their board, I've been able to proudly serve as advisor in the area of educational technology. With the new research around the use of mobile devices, we've been working on inserting interactive and adaptive devices into classrooms.

What's important about education, and I would say even more important when servicing those with special needs, is the positive outcome that comes from servicing the child as a whole. Weekend respite programs for parents, sibling groups, staff training sessions, and the school's well-known open door policy, are just a few ways that VCLC improves the lives of its students, and others.

Calling all Writers: FanFiction.net

2011-02-05T21:53:38Z

Fanfiction.net is a website where children (and adults) can take their creative ideas about anything and turn it into something everyone can enjoy. Have you ever had a favorite TV show? Movie? Book? And you think about the what if-s in the story line? Now you can write stories for all of your favorites. With Fanfiction.net your stories can be viewed by anyone and people can comment on it. You cannot only write stories, but read them, too. You can make an account on Fanfiction and be able to *follow stories and authors. Fanfiction is a great website if you want to speak ideas, be creative, and write.

Students & Parents: Info Made Easy

2011-02-05T19:32:00Z

A conversation with a member of a local community brought to mind how important COMMUNICATION is in today's society. Could it be that there is too much information and not enough time to share it all? Case in point: A youngster in school loves reading but finds it hard to take a book out during "library time". There's too little time to allow it, is the excuse. The curriculum must be adhered to. If there's extra time after the lesson, it is implied, then the student is given time to find a book they want to read. Enter the age of the digital catalogue and digital databases.

Most, if not all, schools, have online databases of books that are available through their building libraries. Gone are the days where you had no idea what books were available in school. With the implementation of catalogues like Follett's Destiny product, community members, parents and students should be able to see what books their children their children have access to (and what books their tax dollars have paid for)!

In my day, we went to the library after school. Why? Because it was the ONLY place to get reading material outside of a small school library and your newspaper stand. Today we have MANY places to get information. The problem lies with community members, parents and students, knowing WHERE to access the information.

NY Public Library, Flickr image by ktylerconk, Orig dt 03/1/07, upload dt 11/25/10

In this post I'm going to include several places to get information for all you information hungry readers out there. Keep in mind that some of these places are local to my area (Long Island) and some are available to people all over the world. Here are some places to keep in mind when looking for something to read:

Your School District Library Catalog. Usually the catalogues are found right on a school district's main web page. Click on an individual school building if you don't find it. Search Library, Online Databases, Online Catalogues, Library Media Specialists, etc. Follett Destiny's products main pages have a similar look and feel and can be customized. Here are two examples of how students (and parents) can view books available in their schools: Westbury Powells Lane and Maine South High School
Your Local Library System - This includes your town library system and your county-wide resources. In NY, towns have the option of sharing resources with other areas, so your library card gives you access to one library or many. Here is a listing of some of our local library selections: Nassau Library / Suffolk Library
Your State Library Initiatives - In NY, we have NovelNY, an initiative funded by the state that allows access to state funded databases and information accessible in different formats. All you need is a public library card OR a NY driver's license, or a non-driver ID. This online collection is available to all NYS residents. In Maine, they have Maine InfoNet which includes MARVEL, Maine's Virtual and Electronic Library collection. Do you know what your state offers?
US Federal Resources - These resources include The Library of Congress & The National Archives A trip to DC is not complete without a trip to these national treasures but their online collections are extensive and accessible 24/7. Check them out.
OverDrive Media - One of many companies working with libraries and schools around the world allowing access to information in e-publishing formats. This company happens to help my local Suffolk County community to gain access to materials through a portal called Live-Brary. They also have an App called OverDrive Media which allows you to read e-pub format books on your iPod Touch, iPad, computer, etc. etc. It's not difficult to install but for those who need help here's a terrific blog post about how to get started: Blog Post by Alex Sharp 1/17/11.