I want to thank the staff and students for their flexibility yesterday during the bad weather.  We had to change our schedule very quickly so we could feed all of the students before sending them home for the day.  Awesome job!

We are having parent meetings this week to look at some options we have for schedules for next year 7th and 8th graders.  We want to be responsive to student, family, and teacher needs and want to provide students with more opportunities to learn at high levels; this is one reason for the earlier post about classes students would be interested in.  I would like to hear what you think about the middle school schedule.  What would be changes that you would make if you had the ability?  If you have heard about the possible changes, what do you think?  We have already talked to the staff about some ideas and they are excited about the possibilities!

One of our 7^th grade math classes had a discussion today about technology and student’s ability to think.  The teacher asked students if technology was causing people not to have to think.  A student replied, “Do you have to think to use technology?”  What are your thoughts? How is technology changing the way we process information, make decisions, and think?

I read another principal’s blog this morning about some of the ways technology has changed life for non-digital natives.  I would love to hear some of the ways technology has changed in your life time.  How has it changed?  How do you learn new technology?  What do you think is coming?

Here are some of mine–The television in our home when I was a child did not have a remote control–except for me,  as the youngest child, I was the one nominated to get up and change the channel.  I was in elementary school when desk top computers first entered classrooms.  The monitor was not colored or even black and white.  All text was bright green on a green screen.  Floppy disks were about 5 inches squared and really were floppy.  My parents got our first computer in 1983–an Apple IIE.  It did not have a printer and had 128K of memory.  It cost $2,300.  My first mobile phone was a bag phone that only worked in my car.  My parents gave it to me so that I could contact help if something happened when I was driving back and forth to college.  I had to type my high school papers on a word processor–a step beyone a typewriter but not a full-fledged computer either.

I can’t wait to read what you can come up with…Dr. Williams