k12online08presenters » Dennis Richards - 0 views
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Tom Daccord on 03 Feb 09Dennis is a former English teacher and administrator in urban and suburban schools for many years. Dennis has always gravitated toward K12 leadership, learning and technology topics. He has graduate degrees from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and Harvard University's School of Education. In addition to blogging about K12 learning, leading and web 2.0 tools/pedagogies at innovation3.edublogs.org, he is president of the Massachusetts affiliate of ASCD, a member of the Leadership Council for ASCD; a member of the Massachusetts Working Group for Educator Quality; Co-Facilitator of the Massachusetts High School Redesign Task Force; and a member of Massachusetts STEM Summit V Planning Committee. The web 2.0 conversation is not about technology tools; it is about student learning. Dennis subscribes to the definition of Professional Learning Communities that Rick and Becky DuFour and many other leaders of education have espoused. In simple terms, * learning (for us and for students) is our purpose, * we can improve student learning if we learn together collaboratively, and * monitoring student learning is the only way to know: 1. what students are learning, 2. how we are teaching and 3. how we get better at it. A former English teacher and administrator in urban and suburban schools for many years, he has always gravitated toward K12 leadership, learning and technology topics. He has graduate degrees from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and Harvard University's School of Education. He is married with three children and four grandchildren. Among other things, he loves running, cycling, kayaking, contemporary poetry, photography and the outdoors. In the summer of 2007 his professional life changed when he attended the Building Learning Communities Conference 2007 and in three days experienced, for the first time, the power of Web 2.0 tools and their potential for transforming schools and learning. That experience
