A Day at Apple Computer

It is amazing what one school board member can do.

One school board member from our district, a graphic designer by occupation, thought that it was wrong not to have Apples in our district.So.. he engineered support from a group primarily behind the UC campus coming to Merced group.. a sub set of the local Chamber of Commerce to get a group of the district's most savvy tech administrators and District people including the our State Senator Denham to spend a day in Cupertino to look at the technology that fires the lives of many students in our classes. It was hosted by Apple and a nonprofit organization called 21st Century Partnership.

There point was that schools bought technology to do business tasks. Essentially a push technology, while our current needs are more pull technology. We are in a world of too much information rather than one where we need to acquiring info. We need to teach students the skills to sort out and validate and create rather just gather. We were introduced to a group of new terms that sort of blew apart some of the conceptions of the business people and the educators.. more on that later..when I drag my notes in from the car.

The group of 46 traveled by chartered bus to Cupertino... and the business community paid for a dinner at Wool Growers in Los Banos.

I got a chance to sit down and chat with the board member for an extended period of time and at lunch got to do the same with another member. What an opportunity. The technology was cool too. I didn't find a single business member or an educator that had a blog. Most were wondering why anyone would text message when they could e-mail. That was where I was last year.

Have a great Wednesday. My students love Wednesday (mot) its writing day.

Take care
Pat