North Carolina County Super: Pursue Blended Technology

There’s a new blog on my radar.
This surprising blog post comes from Dr. Donna Peters, former Montgomery County Public School Superintendent and winner of the 2010 North Carolina Superintendent of the Year. Here is the news story: Donna Peters wins superintendent award. What’s surprising is that she is saying almost all of the things that progressive teachers and education entrepreneurs are saying about a need for technology and a shift in the cultural mindset of school. It’s always been my understanding that the superstar superintendents are great at their jobs, but that they lag behind curve and leading edge thinking when it comes to big shifts in education philosophy.
Here are her instructions for leaders in education. What’s great about this is that she’s not banging the education reform drum, which I think tends to scare teachers and education leaders. Instead, she’s saying, “Change has already come, and here are the things we should be prepared to deal with.” Here’s one segment that is of particular interest, addressed mostly to teachers:

The model outline below provides a quick insight into the possibilities of the open world that our students and teachers cannot afford to miss:

Web Searching in the World of e-Books

E-Learning and Blended Learning
Availability of Open Source and Free Software
Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
Learning Object Repositories and Portals
Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
Electronic Collaboration
Alternate Reality Learning
Real-Time Mobility and Portability
Networks of Personalized Learning