The best GMail application for iOS just got updated to be optimized for the iPad.

As I’ve been slowly honing my abilities at writing here I’ve also been working on discovering the voice and purpose of this site. I’ve had blogs in the past but they’ve always been too personal and had little focus on anything in particular which made them feel more like my journal left open for the world to see.

Right now the about page of Course Code is a bit misleading in the reality of what I’ve been finding I want to write about. I started CC with too much constriction and focus around technology and education. In reality the natural evolution is shifting to a focus around technology, education, productivity, art and whatever else I want to share or write about.

Matt Gemmell recently wrote about designing blogs for readers. The first thing that stuck with me was this:

I don’t think there’s any reasonable way, or any need, to separate vanity and ego from a personal blog. Writing is inherently about its author, and is a product of their personality and opinions – that’s not something to be shy about, and we shouldn’t try to change it either. So, write for yourself – and hold yourself to an appropriate standard, because you’d better believe that others are judging the person as well as the piece – but as soon as you publish your views, you’re inviting readers to take a look. I think that the needs of the reader and the author are more aligned than many blogging systems seem to believe.

This post along with a few digital and meat space high fives from other writers I respect have made me feel more confident that what I’m writing is good and as I continue it will only get better. This is fueling my confidence in sharing my own views and interests through Course Code. I want this site to be the outward expression of my inward thinking and viewpoint so it’s going to break away from technology and education from time to time and I’m realizing that’s ok.

I found Matt’s post found via 512 Pixels.

If you’re like me then your schedule lives in Google Calendar and the computer you always have on you is running iOS. While Fantastical is my go-to calendar app on the Mac and iPhone I find that Calendars+ from Readdle is the best iPad app for Google Calendar as I need to see what availability I have before committing to an event or meeting.

If you’re like me then your schedule lives in Google Calendar and the computer you always have on you is running iOS. While Fantastical is my go-to calendar app on the Mac and iPhone I find that Calendars+ from Readdle is the best iPad app for Google Calendar as I need to see what availability I have before committing to an event or meeting.

An interesting look behind the scenes of one of my favorite podcasts. If you’ve never heard of Radiolab it’s something you must check out.

Throughout my career thus far I’ve grown from being an Apple employee to managing the Apple side of an consulting group to leading IT for a growing network of schools with thousands of users. Around a year ago I lost the ability to have mental clarity about everything I was managing. My work had grown from managing a single campus with a 1:1 computing, a flat network design and Apple Airports providing wireless for 450 users to implementing the plan I’d been working on. This included:

• Scaling from 450 to 800 users
• Prepping campus #2
• Switching from Airports to Aerohive APs
• Implementing the Casper Suite
• Implementing a brand new, fully designed Cisco network infrastructure
• Building a WAN to support the JSS
• Supporting a new full-scale blended learning system
• Setting up Open Directory (and mobile home syncing) for both campuses
• Rolling over PowerSchool from year to year for the first time
• Switching from an analog phone system to an hosted PBX solution
• Imaging 900 Macs w/ evening assistance from some famous internet hipster

All of this work had to happen in less than 2 months and I was solely responsible for seeing this through to completion. What followed was the most grueling summer of my life which may have slightly burned me out.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because I learned a lesson. Well, a whole lot of lessons.

A year later and I’m preparing (/have been preparing for months) to orchestrate the opening of two new campuses and jumping from 800 to 1600 users over the course of a few months. I’ve been testing, choosing and implementing tools over the last year to take the mental management and leverage technology to keep the ship afloat and on course. Thus far I’ve implemented OmniFocus, Evernote, (live by) Google Calendar, MindMeister, Kickoff and most recently Omniplan. I now have another team member and need to be able to keep him informed on what needs done by when along with keeping other departments aware of our progress and any risks we currently or may soon have.

Utilizing these tools I’ve realized that my role has shifted to becoming the cache of my external brain(s) and tools. I have an evening ritual to prepare for the following day by looking over my calendar and looking at the my to-do lists and performing a mini-review of what I could accomplish in the time I have the next day. I often plan meetings and add tasks and milestones for weeks or months in the future and depend on these tools to act as the long term storage for my life and I just keep what I need for the short term mentally stored. This frees up my mental capacity to think through longer term plans such as our continued growth and projects of a size I’ve never been responsible for before such as this and this. Nothing I’ve implemented is perfect and I’m far from even being good at it but I’m becoming more efficient and productive every day and that’s progress.

From a great self-reflective piece by Charles Edge:

I need to stop reasoning crap to myself. When your alarm goes off in the morning and you hit snooze, you’re reasoning to yourself that you have a little more time. When you decide to eat that last slice of pizza knowing that even if you have Lactaid that you’ll have heartburn tonight you’re reasoning yourself into some good old fashioned acid reflux. When you work an extra 10 minutes rather than go buy flowers for your significant other, you’re reasoning yourself into divorce.

All of us who are geeky can relate to at least part of this post. While I’m not a big soda drinker and I kicked the midnight oil bucket a couple of years ago (at least when I have work the next day) I really took something away from the excerpt above (especially the last sentence). I often reason the wrong, lazy or easy choice to myself because it’s exactly one of those three things. I sometimes fear that my work may cause issues in my personal life. When that feeling becomes too constant I have to step back, re-assess how I’m prioritizing my time and make the necessary changes to correct it.

Sam Spurlin writing about embracing being an idiot and procrastination:

That’s why I created my Weekly Review Checklist, why I have a recurring reminder to think about my longterm goals and overall vision, and why I put things I don’t want to forget directly in front of my door. I’m working on embracing the fact that I’m an idiot instead of fighting it. By embracing it I can take steps to mitigate it and that’s much more preferable than feeling smart but doing dumb things.

I couldn’t agree more with Sam on this. I found Sam’s site through David Sparks’s blog and am enjoying it.

On more than one occasion I’ve had the following conversation.

Big Fan: So what do you do? Me: I’m the IT Director for a non-profit charter management organization (CMO). BF: What’s a CMO? Me: We’re a non-profit organization that helps lead and manage charter schools. BF: Oh, I’m not sure how I feel about you guys. Me: What do you mean? BF: Well, charter schools take my tax money and do the minimum with it in order to keep as much of that money as possible. You’re not as responsible for the growth of your kids and you don’t have any proof that your model works any better than the local school districts. Me: Well, actually I have some information here on this digital publication that I can share that shows our growth, our story and from that you can see how we’re using tax dollars. BF: I’m really not interested in that. You can put your iPad away.

While I know this may seem like an overdramatization it’s an honest to God conversation I’ve had on more than one occasion. There seems to be a stigma around charter schools but it seems to be more of a mis-judgement. While there are some charter schools that aren’t doing the best job they can, that shouldn’t speak for the entire group. There are also local school districts that have failing schools and aren’t providing the expected educational outcome with their students but they shouldn’t get a pass just because local districts are the norm. This is pure ignorance due to a lack of knowledge and a lot of heresay.

Charter schools provide healthy competition within the education sector. We’re all fighting for the same dollars and cents by providing the best education possible to the children we serve. This puts the power into the hands of parents. If a parent wants the best education program available for their child (and what parent doesn’t) then the schools that provide this will receive more of those funds with a fuller enrollment.

The idea of competition is seen as a positive in other sectors, why should education be excluded? Our children deserve to be competed over more than our decision for who’s smartphone we’ll carry. Technology is a huge driver in the levelling of the playing field for this competition to occur. With technology we can craft different models for how we deliver, analyze and continuously perfect curricula and if it’s not working we can pivot much faster to something that provides the expected outcome. No singular model is yet to stand out as the best way to teach and provide the best results in the 21st century; and how could it? Schools don’t serve the same demographic of students. Each community has it’s own set of needs and so the model has to be meticulously crafted to serve it’s students. This may be the missing piece of traditional education. Let the competition begin.