So here’s what I think might be easiest on us for the April 7, 2010 Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines…

1. Online attendee registration form (attendance is FREE) and running list of attendees. When the list gets to 500, we close down registration. [registration is now CLOSED]
2. Online presenter signup. Each Iowa 1:1 district commits to its educators giving 2 or 3 presentations. Note the different session strands; Open means any topic; Unconference means we’ll schedule those the day of the conference. Each session should have a title, presenter, school organization, and 1–sentence description of the session.
3. Online projector signup. We need to equip 13 rooms with laptop projectors and speakers. Districts sign up to equip one or more of the rooms.
4. Name tags. CASTLE will provide name tag holders. Every participant will be responsible for bringing his or her own name tag (we’ll specify the dimensions). We encourage folks to get CREATIVE!

Let me know what you think. If all of this sounds good, we’ll flesh out the Institute wiki page and start advertising! If you have suggestions or concerns, leave those as a comment and we’ll start discussing them. Thanks!

As the following chart illustrates, more Iowa workers were employed in May 2008 than in any other month in the past two years. Since then, Iowa has lost 65,700 jobs and gained 7,000, for an aggregate total of 58,700 jobs lost. The Construction and Manufacturing sectors represented about 20% of all of the jobs in Iowa in May 2008, but have represented nearly 60% of all the job losses since then. In other words, those two sectors are hemorrhaging jobs at a rate of about 3 times their representation in the state economy. Most other sectors’ losses have been roughly proportionate to their representation in the Iowa economy. Two sectors, Financial activities and insurance and Educational and health services, have actually seen employment gains since May 2008.

What implications do these data have for us as educational organizations?

[Click on image for larger version]

Good Morning Iowa,

The Okoboji Schools are thrilled to be included in this state-wide network of 1:1 schools. While we are not a total 1:1 school yet, it is our goal to become one in the near future. Many thanks to Scott, Nick, and the entire CASTLE crew for continuing to push the envelope and getting Iowa schools to where they need to be. We look forward to the great conversations, interactions, and fellowship this group can bring.

Thanks

Bob

The first-ever Iowa 1:1 Institute (I11I) will be on April 7, 2010 at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines. We have the entire first floor reserved for Iowa's inaugural 1:1 laptop conference. More information will be forthcoming in the next few weeks. We have a bunch of rooms so start thinking about what you'd like to present!

This post introduces the new Iowa 1:1 Network. This space is intended for ANYONE that's interested in 1:1 laptop computing initiatives in Iowa.

How does this space work?

At its heart, this is a group blog. Anyone who's a member of the community can post at any time. We're using Posterous as a group blogging service. Posterous is an extremely simple but powerful tool. I encourage you to check out Posterous' list of all of the different ways that you can contribute to the site.

Guidelines for posting

You can post anything that you think would be helpful to the community. Random thoughts, questions for the community, planning documents, funding models, lesson plans, photos, videos, links to outside resources, podcasts, research reports, exciting things happening in your classrooms, nifty technologies, upcoming events - literally anything that you think would be of interest is welcome. Contributors can be administrators, teachers, other educators, parents, students, etc. If you're uploading documents, images, audio, or video, please also provide a short description so that others can evaluate its applicability to their setting. No commercial advertising or spam, please (we reserve the right to revoke someone's account if need be).

NOTE: It’s okay to share! I know it goes a bit against the grain of our Midwestern culture, but how are we going to know all the good stuff that’s occurring if you don’t toot your own horn a bit?

We also have a wiki

This site should serve for most purposes. We also have a 1to1 Schools wiki established if you're interested in using that. If you'd like to see other tools added to the network, please let us know.

Are you reading our 1to1 Schools blog?

If you’re not reading CASTLE’s 1to1 Schools blog, you should be. You can subscribe via RSS or via email.

Live or die? It's up to you!

This community only will be as good as we make it together. This is a site that will survive and thrive if we create and nurture it. If we neglect it, it will fade away. If we all post often and leave lots of comments and questions for each other, this has the potential to be a tremendous resource for Iowa school organizations and other interested parties. I hope that this is the start of something interesting and powerful. I’m really looking forward to learning from all of you.

How do you join?

ANYONE can join this community. We encourage all interested administrators, teachers, and others to participate. Drop a note to Nick Sauers, Leadership Training Coordinator for CASTLE, with the e-mail address under which you'd like to join. Then look for your welcome message from Posterous!

Got questions?

Post them to the network and we’ll do our best to get them answered!

SCOTT
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Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D. 
Associate Professor & Director, CASTLE 
Iowa State University, (515) 294-4871 
Blog @ www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org
Twitter @ www.twitter.com/mcleod
Full contact info @ www.scottmcleod.net/contact