​Scenes from Becoming a Digital School Administrator

Several months ago I began the process of updating "Becoming a Digital School Administrator" a clollection of best practices by active school building administrators.  I hoped to refresh about 50% of the content the collection housed at iTunes U collection. 

Instead I brought in at least 85% new material and created a new, more accessible platform with Weebly Pro.

This has not been an easy process. First I tried contacting former contributors. Many had moved on to other positions, meaning that not only would I not get new content from them, but due to my own standards, would remove their extant contributions. Also, some of the admins I contacted did not feel that they had anything new to offer. One major exception was elementary principal rock start, Brent Coley.  Not only were Brent's former resourecs still exptremely valuable but he contributed new ones such as an invaluable online, meticulously indexed staff handboook.

As chronicled in This is Really Hard....and Fascinating I relentlessy pounded Twitter for new resources. I hit up every prospective digital admin I could find who were "followed" by other rockstars like Brent. Naturally, most of this fishing led to nothing. But ultimately I made some absolutely superb connections, and learned a great deal as a consequence.  In my final blog post of 2016 I would like to acknowledge those who took the time to contribute more than one great resource. Check them out at www.digschooladmin.com/ and follow them on Twitter

Matthew Mayer  @memayer21

Derek Rhodenizer @DerekRhodenizer

Melanie Hutchinson @gvtechteach

Crystal Miller @CrysLaneMiller ​

Dr. Kristen Kuhlmann @AHSPrincipal385 

Liz Garden @PrincipalGarden

Derek Oldfield @Mr_Oldfield

Martin R. Geoghegan @MGeoghegan22

This is the second in a series of blog “snapshots” of how Mercy students benefit from using iPad technology (and other tools) throughout the school day. (Cross-posted from http://tinyurl.com/zeh97fn

Our 9th grade Design Foundations class students create compositions using the principles of good design such as filling the frame, creating unity, developing a focal point and balancing the composition, all accomplished with Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator is a digital drawing application which is available in both of Mercy’s computers labs. Because I am always looking for ways students can use technology to enhance other mediums, it occurred to me that these designs would make interesting surface embellishment on a slab wall piece students we're working on in Ceramics 2.

Part of the Ceramics 2 curriculum is surface design. Some people may think that the only way to enhance the surface of a clay piece is with glaze alone. I had planned to have students use a variety of techniques using colored slip to add color and texture to the clay as opposed to glaze. We used Adobe Illustrator to create the stencil by using the text tool and a variety of fonts. Most of the students chose to incorporate their initials to personalize the design. The resulting print was then cut to create a stencil that would mask sections of the background previously embellished with Mishima and Sgraffito. This is what the stencil looks like after the negative space was cut out and masked onto the clay with water.

After we covered the stencil with colored slip, we removed the paper and cleaned the edges. It was then bisque fired. The bisque piece was removed from the kiln, and finished with clear glaze.

The use of Adobe Illustrator allowed students to manipulate, position, and size the letters and fonts which resulted in a strong design and allowed students to use and reinforce design and technology skills previously learned in their 9th grade Design Foundations technology class.  --- Guest Blogger:  Carol Rife, MHS Fine Arts teacher