Work Projects

It’s Gonna Happen!

Posted on May 6, 2016 by Work Projects

Excited would be a minimal way of stating how I feel right now! After returning from a trip to Los Angeles with 5 of my colleagues, I am beside myself knowing that the far fetched idea of bringing the STEAM Carnival to DFW is about to happen. This is something that I have been working on with my folks here at the ESC as well as the team from Two Bit Circus. Things like this don’t just happen without the help of dedicated people, the relentlessness of the individual, and a lot of luck on the side.

Without knowing final details it is looking like we will be hosting the event over the course of several days at the ESC. I can’t wait to see the kids light up the way that my son and I did when we were guests of the Carnival in San Francisco. We are going to blow the minds of the North Texas districts with this event. 

In addition, we had the pleasure of visiting a very cool place called Trash 4 Teachers. Their concept of providing teachers with clean recycled materials for their classroom is brilliant. Brent turned us onto this place while we were there. Hoping to get them as part of our Carnival as well. Fingers crossed!

Mind Blown with STEAM

Posted on November 15, 2015 by Work Projects

The Carnival has come to town! Well it at least has come to San Francisco so I decided to go to it. Just didn’t sound as good to open the post with “I have come to the Carnival!” Not the same ring.

I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful briefing with Cisco and VMWare out in the San Jose area over this past week. Hoping to bring back several things to put in place at the ESC though the focus of this post is centered around the weekend event prior to the briefing known as the STEAM Carnival.

I decided to fly into California two days early to visit and review an event that was introduced to me by some friends at Cisco and iSchool Initiative. The STEAM Carnival was founded by two guys name Eric Gradman and Brent Bushnell who run Two Bit Circus. These guys were running around the place having so much fun and making minor modifications to the attractions in the process as well. It was a pleasure to actually get to meet them briefly in passing and then have a sit down with Brent a couple days later. More on that shortly.

The Carnival was so amazing that my oldest son bought his own plane ticket and flew to California on his own to join me. Seeing the Carnival through this perspective made this something that I HAVE to bring back to the students of Region 11. This has to happen!

I can’t describe all of the great things that we experienced at the Carnival without going on and on forever. I will say that a couple of highlights of the event included the Dunk Tank Flambe, the Wave Pendulum, the button wall, and this rocket ship game where Cooper and I dominated several small children. Play to win! 

Two days later I had the privilege to sit down with Brent at a small coffee shop and share my idea of bringing the Carnival to DFW. The conversation started slow and then picked speed as I learned of his fondness for STEAM education. Come to find out his dad is Nolan Bushnell who invented Atari. What a cool family!

Fingers crossed we can make this happen in the future in DFW. I want this experience for our kids!

Change Just Happened

Posted on September 19, 2015 by Speaking Opportunities Work Projects

So my new role gives me the opportunity to host our quarterly (well four times a year) Technology Advisory Committee meeting or TAC meeting for Region 11. To my understanding, this previously consisted of 50-60 people attending and get spoon fed information regarding state, regional, and local policy and change and then partaking in a lunch while listening to a vendor give their spill on their product or service. (Long sentence there)

Yeah that style might not play well with my personality so I decided to shake it up a little bit with my 50-60 attendees, get them active in the meeting, and even take it global. Piece of cake! So how did this work out? Well…

First off, my 50-60 attendees turned into 120! We had to open an additional adjoining room to fit everybody in the space. Largest attendance in a while from what I understand. I guess everybody wanted to size up the new guy. No problem we moved the wall and began presenting to an L-shaped audience. 

Second, let’s get them active. So what better way to do this than to have them participate in the famous “Marshmallow Challenge.” If you haven’t seen this, please check it out. It is fun and productive for large groups especially when your audience is a large group of technology administrators who are not accustomed to activity during the TAC meetings. Lots of smiles and laughter so I can’t complain there either.

Finally, how did we go global? Well when your meeting falls on Global Collaboration Day and your distance learning staff decides to broadcast your challenge and open it to schools across the world (Yes…we had Zambia, Australia, Canada and 3,200 other students from the US join us), it comes fairly easy actually. 

Without anymore detail, we were able to show off the capability of our Zoom distance learning tool, engage a somewhat traditional crowd and still provide the needed information for their districts. Throw in a fantastic lunch and a good night’s sleep. I think we might be able to do this.

Rory Peacock

Rory Peacock

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
– Lao Tzu

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