Happy Presidents' Day and a bit of news re MNPS Virtual School

Things move apace here at MNPS Virtual School. Though it's a holiday for students and a Professional Day for teachers, our whole team (5 dynamic individuals) are each and every one of us in to work today, working working working. We are providing a valuable service to district students over this upcoming Spring "Intersession" the first week of the district's first two-week long Spring Break and Spring Break itself), providing "Bridge Math Intensive," our first real foray into the world of Blended Learning. Students, for a nominal registration fee, will complete in two weeks a course normally running a full 18 week semester. It will be online, but every morning of the 9 days the students attend our physical School, they will work mornings with two stellar online (and classroom) math teachers, then after lunch they will attend intense Math Lab and continue working in small groups with yet another wonderful teacher.

Bridge Math Intensive--and the intensive effort it will require on the part of teachers, administration, and students--will be of particular help to Seniors who may only lack that 5th math in order to graduate on time.

This is what continually amazes me about the teachers with whom we work. Sure, it's an opportunity for them to pick up a little extra money over their Break, but believe me, they are not doing it for the money. They care. They care deeply. In addition to customized registration procedures for BMI (no, not the songwriter's licensing agency--Bridge Math Intensive), we're working this week to open registration for our Summer Success Program, an 8 week fee-based (and no, funding does not happen for summer school locally or, to my knowledge, anywhere in the state) during which students will complete a half-credit course (often one semester of a year long class) for credit. This will require its own set of procedures and mechanisms for registration and delivery. Finally, we're working on new mechanisms and procedures for registration for school year 2013-14. I posted on Facebook last week a status that may have sounded a bit smug or facetious, but I meant every word of it. To quote:

Scott Merrick -- February 13 in Nashville

I'm so glad to be in a workplace where all team members are recognized for their contributions and talents and where continuous improvement is more than a buzz phrase--it's an ever-present challenge and imperative. Thanks MNPS Virtual School and Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Be sure to tune in to Newschannel5+ (Comcast channel 250 locally) Wednesday night at 7PM until 8 to watch our esteemed Principal, Dr. James Witty, and our similarly esteemed District Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jesse Register answer community questions about Virtual School and the way we're doing it here in Nashville Public Schools: We believe we're constantly improving the right way to do it.

 Back to work, y'all. No rest for the innovative. Happy Presidents' Day!

The scottmerrick Daily!

Hey all. It's in the sidebar, and will remain there, but I want to call attention to the cooltool of the day, Paper.li, where you can set yourself up with your own daily "newspaper," drawn from the (modified or otherwise) posts of the folks you follow on Twitter and your Facebook friends! I like it mainly because it transforms all that for me on a daily basis into a user-friendly compendium. In a way it's just another way to view your twitter feed along with fb, but in another way it's a way to take a solid look at just what you've gotten yourself into in your Personal Learning Network (PLN). How many times can I use the word "way" in a sentence, lol?

Here's what it looks like (today--tommorrow it'll look different!) in the widget for me bloggy. If you haven't already done so, go peruse it for yourself at this link: http://paper.li/scottmerrick!

Good Ink!

A little ink at Learning and Leading with Technology, ISTE's print and online magazine: I responded a while back to an email from L&L calling for responses to the prompt, "Should You 'Friend' Your Students on Social Networking Sites? I came in on the majority side, as you'll see if you click to read the page I've screengrabbed below, but with a caveat: When former students are adults, as in college age or older, and if they still have an interest in their old elementary teacher and what crazy cutting edge technology he's into these days, I happily do "friend" them.

I do not do so with my own elementary students (I teach K-4 computer) nor with my son's Middle School friends or High School kids. Once they're grown, more or less (and I've lived long enough to know the best of my friends are still growing up) they're on, in my book.

See http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20090910/ and find the Reader's Respond page to see my anecdote. I'm thrilled and pleased that they accepted it for publication. More than anything, I'm glad to have new way to keep up longstanding meaningful relationships.

Advice about Twitter et al

There are a lot of folks who see social media--facebook, twitter, blogging, plurk, friendfeed, and more--as an opportunity to promote their businesses. I have this advice for them:

Social media is about information. If the information is valuable and interesting it will go viral. If it's transparently commercial and self-serving, it will not. In fact, it may have the opposite effect. I mentioned that in a conversation with my lovely wife and she said, "Write that down. Now."

I did.

Facebook Exchange with a Former 3rd Grader!

I just want to share a gratifying Facebook comment exchange I had with a former third grader, now a student at Princeton. I happened to be on a couple days ago when he posted:

Alexshould be working now, but cant find the will.

I was just about to logout and slam my laptop closed after working all day trying to edit down audio from a recent presentation to a serviceable file for inclusion in a new podcast, and I'd decided to just quit for the day and finish it up ad hoc this week. Seriously, I'd been working on it for 8 hours (post-production is highly underappreciated!). I wrote to him:

Scott Merrick at 6:03pm February 23
Will it to happen, Alex, you can you can you can. I'm stopping. Been working all day and into the night! You get started! Here's the torch!

and almost immediately got this back:

Alex wrote at 8:19pm
thanks for the encouragement! I guess you never cease being my teacher!

If that's not the bee's knees I don't know what is. Here's a public thanks to Facebook for making it possible for me to "never cease!"