C4T Summary Post

C4T #3 Jeff Delp  (03/25)

Jeff Delp is the principal of Willis Junior High School in Chandler, Arizona. His blog Molehills Out of Mountains chronicles his experiences as an educator and outlines his philosophies on using technology to enhance the way children learn and the way teachers teach. I have found it to be a treasure trove of wisdom and resources.  I encourage every student to subscribe to Mr. Delp's blog; he has real-world experience and a great outlook on education!


In his post for Dec 31, 2011 entitled Productivity Tools for Educators, Mr. Delp reviews several technology tools that he personally uses to aid him to be a better, more organized educator. What I love about Mr. Delp is that he is honest about his own shortcomings. He writes that he (like so many of us) has difficulties with time management. Then he gives other teachers ideas about ways to use new technologies to aid in their organizational skills. The tools he reviewed were Google Docs, Evernote, Dropbox, Wunderlist, Posterous, and Twitter.  Of course, EDM310 students are all too familiar with Google Docs and Twitter, however I was unfamiliar with the rest of these tools.  His post inspired me to explore them and incorporate them into my PLN for future use. This is the comment I left on this blog post:

Mr. Delp,
Thank you for sharing your experience and resources! I am a student at the University of South Alabama and a future educator. Most, if not all, of the resources you described are being highlighted as useful tools in our current Education in Media class. I haven’t taken advantage of Wunderlist yet, but now I certainly plan on taking a look at it. Your assessment of these tools has served as reinforcement that what we are learning will translate practically into our careers. I appreciate your honesty about time-management issues. I know it is something that many students as well as teachers struggle to take control over. New technologies allow us to efficiently organize and plan without the stereotypical desk full of papers. I am slowly learning to be a paperless student, and I can only hope that all the classrooms of the future will be essentially paperless as well. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience.

C4T Comment #2 (04/01)

In the post Things Which Matter Most posted on April 1 by Mr. Delp, he discusses his experience as member of a panel about using technology to increase achievement and success in classrooms. This panel was hosted by the Hispanic/Native American Indian Caucus and Black Caucus of the Arizona School Board Association, and the keynote speaker was Dr. Trent Kaufman who is the leader of the Education Direction, an organization that trains educators and school staff.  Mr. Delp outlines Dr. Kaufman's 5 key principles for the improvement of instruction and schools overall.
1.Children are Born to Learn
2.We Must Improve
3.Redefine Data
4.Narrow the Focus
5.Isolation Limits Change
I will not go into too much detail about each one. However, in my comment on Mr. Delp's post below I highlight a few points that really stuck out to me.

Mr. Delp, 

Thank you for sharing the core of what you learned from Dr. Kaufman at the conference this weekend.  A lot of the basic principles represented in his ideas are what we as Education students are learning in our EDM310 class. "Currently, our schools are data rich but information poor."  I could not agree more with this statement. We are learning now to be facilitators of education instead of conveyors of fact. This goes back to his point about changing not only  WHAT we teach but HOW to teach it.  In our class, we are constantly exploring new methods  and means of instruction in order to be more relevant to a diverse and technologically-savvy group of students.  Thank you for being a principal that understands the importance of technology in the classroom and who is open to new and exciting possibilities for schools and classrooms! 

Again, I would STRONGLY encourage you to read his blog!!