A Good One Leaves Us

I was sad to say goodbye recently to UC CIO Greg Jackson, who’s moved on to a wonderful position at Educause. Greg was the whole package as an IT leader: deeply experienced, a superb communicator, analytical yet empathetic, funny as all get out, and knew how to  walk the talk. He also answered emails really [...]

Twitter Honeymoon Over, continued…

See, this is what I’m talking about. When toilets and toasters can Twitter, it’s time to move on.

Twitter Honeymoon Over

I’ve been using Twitter pretty regularly for well over a year and I’m thinkng about letting it go. Over time, I find it less and less useful and increasingly annoying. I’ve been pretty careful about whom I follow, but the tweets seem to fall into two camps: obsessive ed tech tweeters who give me a [...]

Whither Summer?

How is it that summer escapes IT workers so quickly? Even with careful project plans we concoct each spring, there are always enough curve balls to force tough choices about how summer time is spent.
This year, a few unexpected departures have jostled our workload some. One member of our IT team resigned very late in [...]

A Real Vacation

Between InfoComm and a two week vacation, I’ve been away from work for just about three weeks. Seems like forever. It has been a while since I’ve had the chance to really relax; having a great staff to handle what comes up during my absence is a real blessing. I don’t want to be thinking [...]

Keep an eye out for this one-day conference

After attending the midwest Tech Forum for the first time April 24, I can heartily recommend it as a good, accessible, one-day conference to keep up to speed with technology integration, management, and leadership. A series of effective, well-paced presentations were punctuated by opportunities for professional network, chats with vendors, round table discussions, and enjoying [...]

Math Apps for the iPhone

An update today from the folks at Wired reviews several math games for kids available for the iPhone. I also heard that a pair of techno-precocious Lab students have gotten approval to sell a math game iPhone app they developed. It’s fascinating to watch disruptive technologies blur the boundaries between computers, phones, and gaming [...]

A Little Busy…

I am usually pretty good about managing meeting schedules and try to bunch them on certain days so I can leave bigger chunks of time open on other days. I can tell there are too many, though, when I start losing track of them, as I did this morning. Today I had three meetings: Computer [...]

Signs of Rampant Disruption

An NBA player got in trouble with his coach for twittering during halftime.
Jurors are doing web research on handheld devices during trials.
Bloggers like me can call in audio blog posts to the mobile blogging platform Tumblr.
In schools, we are only beginning to understand how disruptive these technologies already are and how much more so they [...]

At NAIS

Yesterday’s presentation went well. The three hour workshop is a good format. There is enough time to say what needs saying and get some real discussion going. About 18 people were there. My co-presenters and I tried to help attendees come away with concrete suggestions for improving their ed tech practice in areas of leadership [...]