I am sitting in my graduate level UMASS-Boston Adolescence class now and on my laptop, trying desperately to maintain the “very low” connection I picked up from some location called “cupcake.” At the beginning of class, the professor was unable to get the light of the overhead projector on. He remarked to me, “This must be what you experience in the Boston Public Schools.”

In most BPS schools, yes, it would be. But at TechBoston Academy, the model for future public schools, I am lucky enough to have access to more modern tools to teach with. At TBA, we work in a wireless, networked environment where everyone, including students, has their own laptop. I use an LCD projector which connects my laptop to a SMART board. When I lecture, I make animated, colorful, creative power point presentations, and I use the SMART board to annotate my slides on the projection. I can save my notes and drawings onto a networked drive which students can access. I maintain a web site where I post the assignments, daily agenda, handouts, and resources. I incorporate offline and online activities into my lectures.

After unplugging and plugging the projector back in, the professor realized he had not turned the projector light switch on. Hooray! He could continue his 3 hour black and white text on transparency lecture in the yellow light of the classroom!And yet I complain that our school does not do enough with and through technology?

If TBA is indeed the model for future schools, then the model needs to be replicated sooner rather than later. And surprisingly, it looks like it needs to be implemented in some college and university classrooms! We don’t have it ALL figured out, but I am proud and confident enough to say that we are definitely leading the way.

What IS certain is that my students are lucky to be at TBA! They would be MISERABLE in a class like this!

(so I couldn’t post this to my blog at the time that I wrote it because the connection was so low, so does this count as “blogging” or am I just “posting” it? [Insert the obvious “gratuitous nerd alert” comment here]

Ta-Da!

Microsoft unveiled its mysterious “origami” product today. Looks super slick – a paperback-sized pocket PC with 60GB of RAM and a touch screen interface with high resolution for video and heavy app viewing. USB ports for any peripherals, and a QWERTY keyboard on screen if needed. Oh, but it’s not called “origami.” It’s something even more hip-sounding : “Ultra-Mobile PC.” Oh, Bill. You are one cool dude.

Comes out in April!

I provided curriculum development and training to TEEN Voices, the magazine published for and by teenage girls. Women Express, Inc. offers a variety of programs, works with girls world-wide, and publishes Teen Voices print and online magazines. I was hired to develop a curriculum which helped teach teen girls how to make an online version of their magazine. I delivered a schedule of weekly objectives, detailed lesson plans, and sample projects to Teen Voices and they were very pleased!

The program is being taught to approximately 50 teen girls in downtown Boston as we speak!

I am currently enrolled in a Human Development course called “Adolescence”, and yes, you guessed it!, we’re studying the precious period in all of our lives know to many as “puberty.” In reality, puberty is only one short phase of an extremely long and confusing transition from childhood to adulthood. (“Confusing” does not always mean it was a negative experience – you may remember a quite enjoyable adolescence! In fact, although we typically think of adolescence as a tumultuous time, studies show that it is not that traumatic a transition for most people) . There are indeed physical changes, (which may have occurred at later ages for some of us (ahem!), but there are also cognitive changes and social transitions which vary based on culture, environment, religion, society and heredity. The passage into adulthood in contemporary society is in fact quite cloudy, with no clear-cut age and/or ritual at which adolescence is finally over with. Think about it : society allows us to drive at 16, see R movies at 17, vote at 18, and drink at 21 – all “adult” priveleges. Why not give it to us all at once at ONE age, so we’d know, at ___ years old, we are officially adults?

The question in the text book (Steinberg, Adolescence) jumps out at me from the page :
“When did you become (or when will you) an adult?”