Teaching, Learning, and Technology

Dear Families:

This week Sharon, Ruth, and I are attending the New York State Association of Independent Schools Conference for Division Heads. It’s a great opportunity for us to meet up with peers from other schools to talk about work that is taking place in our schools and to hear from a number of speakers on a wide range of educational issues. One of the speakers this year is Alan November. Alan is a provocative thinker whose work is focused on teaching, learning, and the role of technology in education. He is interested in looking at ways that technology can positively impact on teaching and learning and that can also help students to develop the necessary skills to be successful in a collaborative information-based society.

These are questions that we continue to explore as a faculty. From the introduction of teacher blogs, to on-line literature circles and the use of wikipedia tools for student research, it is clear that we need to incorporate these tools into our daily work with students. We also need to make sure that we do this in a thoughtful and purposeful way so that learning is deep and rich. While there are many interesting archived articles on Alan November’s site, I encourage you to read “Banning Student Containers” and “Beyond Technology: The End of the Job and the Beginning of Digital Work.” Both of these articles identify important challenges that schools face in keeping up with the times and suggest possible frameworks for how to address these issues. I’d be interested to hear from you on your thoughts about Alan’s ideas.

Finally, congratulations to all of the members of the Middle School Robotics team and their coaches for their most excellent work at this past weekend’s FIRST Lego League competition. The following summary comes to us courtesy of Middle School science teacher and Robotics Team coach Sherezada Acosta:

Our robotics season has come to an end. This weekend’s tournament was a great end to the months of hard work. I am happy to report that out of the 82 schools at the event, which represented the top performing teams in the New York City area, the LREI Robotics Advance Team received a 5th Place Award in the Robot Design category. This is an incredible achievement! For this award, the judges “look for teams whose work stands out for innovation and dependability. To assess innovation, the judges watch the robots work, looking for things that make them say ‘Wow!’ They interview team members to reveal the less obvious unique and inventive ideas. To assess dependability, the judges interview the teams to learn what solid principles and best practices were used to reduce variability and errors. Preference is given to robots that are best able to ‘back it up’ throughout the matches.”

As for the Rookie Team, just the fact that they did so well in the last competition and qualified to be in this one, which was mainly filled with veteran teams with more experience, was pretty amazing as well.

Both teams also got very positive feedback on the presentations and interviews with the judges. Below are some of the comments they wrote:

• Advance Team:
  “Excellent team and energy displayed”
  “Innovative Presentation! … Thinking out of the Box”
  “Amazing integration of individual goals with benefits to the community; creative idea to combine health and energy issues”

• Rookie Team:
  “Excellent teamwork and Robot Presentation”
  “High enthusiasm; engaged with activities designed to improve school life”
  “Excellent movie!!”

I was very proud of both teams’ performance at the event. It was a VERY long day (almost 10 hours!), but they did an incredible job of representing our school. Their enthusiasm and support of not only each other but other teams as well, was recognized by the announcers any time LREI was in the competing area, other parents and other team coaches. I was approached several times by different people to compliment our group. Even the photographers and video crew seemed to love them. When our kids were competing they spent most of the time covering them!

Well done!

Best,
Mark