Fox turned out for our community/media event at Gulf Coast High School in Collier County Florida and had this to day on the evening news…

By Anne Fitten Glenn
CITIZEN-TIMES CORRESPONDENT

ASHEVILLE – Ian Bryan’s message to businesses is that they can succeed by giving back to their communities.

His company, Sensible City, is a business development firm with a twist. Bryan, 35, eschews traditional public relations practices in favor of what he calls community-oriented marketing. Part of that includes working only with clients “whose primary goal is improving the world,” he said.

“I want our businesses to become helping hands, to roll up their sleeves, to create change by being good citizens,” Bryan said.

Central to Sensible City’s approach is organizing media events so reporters can see specific products [and ideas] in action. For example, Sensible City brings reporters into classrooms where interactive whiteboards [and other classroom technology] are in use. Bryan estimates the company has organized more than 200 media events [...] including one at Hall Fletcher Elementary in Asheville earlier this month.

“We focus on where the contribution is. We show the media real kids and real teachers using this product. We bring them into the real story,” Bryan said.

9 years ago, Bryan was waiting tables at the now-defunct Dragon Restaurant in Swannanoa. Working from his background in computer programming, Bryan created a computer ordering and sales system for the restaurant’s owners, who paid him with credits for meals at the restaurant.

Then he put those credits to work: He called restaurant customers – whose business cards he had collected – and invited them to lunch in exchange for business advice.

Those informal networking sessions led him into the world of marketing.

Today, Bryan runs a company with six employees based in Asheville, as well as one-person satellite offices in New York and Chicago. He travels all over the world, helping environmental and educational businesses and nonprofits find their niche within their communities.

Bryan and his team at Sensible City work hard to practice what they preach. The company is carbon-neutral, which means they keep extensive records of their emissions, including Bryan’s flights, calculate their monthly carbon footprint, and pay offsets to organizations that focus on watershed and timberland restoration.

The company strives to be principle-centered in all things, Bryan said. That includes promoting respect for others, active listening, accountability, integrity and what Bryan calls “courageous honesty.”

“I want my team to tell the truth even if it means losing money,” he said, laughing.

Bryan and his team donated their time to organize the media coverage and live capturing (blogging, Web streaming) of the first Ashevillage Building Convergence in Asheville in June. The three-day event promoted sustainable building practices and techniques.

“I don’t think our team could have pulled off Ashevillage Building Convergence without Sensible City. They were extremely generous. People said our media was awesome, and it was,” said Janell Kapoor, initiator of Ashevilllage Building Convergence and director of Kleiwerks International.

One of the down sides to the quick growth of his business is that Bryan recently had to remake the company’s meditation room into a meeting room.

“Although we still all sit on the floor,” he said.

ABOUT THE BUSINESS

WHAT: Sensible City: community-oriented marketing and development for socially-aware businesses and non-profits.

WHO: Ian Bryan, President and Founder, + six employees.

WHERE: 78 1/2 Patton Ave., 348-0319. Satellites offices in Chicago and New York, www.sensiblecity.com.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.

City slickers vs. county folks. Developers vs. neighborhood groups. Hippie activists vs. bellicose bureaucrats. You know the drill.

There’s too much focus on our differences. So I’m always intrigued when there’s an effort to search for what Asheville residents have in common.

Enter Asheville-based Barrett Values Centre. The consulting company, founded in 1997, helps organizations and communities transform their cultures into ones that driven by a common set of values.

Now Barrett Values, with quiet offices on Haywood Street in downtown Asheville, wants to help its hometown residents determine their common values, and offer that information up to private organizations and civic leaders who want to use it.

“What we’re hoping to do with this work is to start a conversation about values,” says Ella Quinn Long, assessment coordinator and analyst with Barrett Values. “We’re just trying to elevate the conversation to include a discussion of values.”

The thinking is that organizations or communities can be happier and more successful by working off a set of common values.

Long says the process starts with a simple survey that asks people to identify key words that they hold as personal values. Then they’re asked what they think their community’s values are, and what they think their community’s values should be.

Anyone who takes the survey will be asked to choose from a list of about 90 words that list values, from affordable housing and accountability to collaboration and quality of life. Long will take the feedback and report back to show where there’s agreement and differences on those questions. After that, it’s up to the community to take action.

[Click here to read the rest of this article at ACT]

In this clip, Wood TV 8 explores how the district uses PolyVision’s eno to engage in class with a “more collective and collaborative” style of learning. Superintendent Scott Palczewski explains how technology in the classroom helps the students in Kentwood School District “be global leaders” as adults.

​John Greenan has made it official: He and Brent Brown are going forward with Forwarding Dallas to fill that parking lot behind Dallas City Hall with a self-sustaining building. Says Greenan of his decision to go with the Portuguese architects behind the downtown hillside, “Dallas would be a richer city to have the work of any of these architects represented, but as we went further into our review, we began to see the deep logic of the MOOV-Atelier Data design, Forwarding Dallas. Forwarding Dallas seemed to us to do the best job of incorporating concepts of sustainability into the foundation of the design.”

[Read entire story]

SAN FRANCISCO – Green Festival®, the nation’s largest and longest running sustainability event, will return to the San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center this April 10-11, just in time to rev up the Golden Gate city for Earth Day’s 40th anniversary. More than 225 speakers, 350 eco-friendly businesses and a broad range of hands-on workshops will complement this year’s theme: “Motivate – Participate – Activate.”

“In honor of Earth Day’s 40^th anniversary, this show is unlike anything we’ve done before in San Francisco. People will be motivated to go back into their communities and participate and make more planet-friendly choices in their lives,” says Green Festival co-producer Alisa Gravitz.

For two days, an expected 40,000+ attendees will explore the latest in clean technology, green building, socially responsible investing, eco-fashion, renewable energy, green careers/green collar jobs, natural foods, groundbreaking films and ecotourism.

Speakers including Alice Walker with tribute to Howard Zinn , Mayor Gavin Newsom,  Chuck D. from Public Enemy,  Danny Glover,  Amy Goodman, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, , Hunter Lovins, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Drew Dellinger, Caroline Casey, Paul Stamets, Jojopah Maria Nsoroma, Starhawk, Youth Speaks, Gifford Pinchot III, Dr. Kevin Danaher, Alisa Gravitz, Rev. Andriette Earl, Diane Patterson and many more.

San Francisco Green Festival Highlights Include…

[Click here to read entire release at pitchengine.com]

NEW BRIGHTON — On a wide screen in the classroom of New Brighton Middle School teacher Rick Schwartz, young Alexander, not yet labeled “The Great,” read Homer’s “The Iliad” from a scroll.

A narrator reminded students that as he moved toward greatness, Alexander, inspired by Homer’s portrait of Achilles, always traveled with a copy of “The Iliad.”

It’s not likely that seventh-grade pupils in the social studies class at New Brighton will carry interactive whiteboards as they travel toward greatness, but teachers and administrators hope the new technology provides enduring images and insights that inspire growth.

The New Brighton Area School District opened its middle school doors Thursday for politicians, educators and other interested individuals to tour high-tech classrooms. The district had three interactive boards in July 2008 but has expanded to 56 in less than two years, said Robert Lee, director of technology.

In the middle school, classrooms for language arts, math, science and social studies have been outfitted with interactive boards. The band/chorus room also has a board.

“We want our students to have the highest, greatest, most advanced technology … but never forgetting about reading, writing and math,” Principal Joseph Guarino said.

The district used money from federal and state grants to grow its technological capability.

“We’re a small school district, a small community, but we’re trying to do what’s right by our children,” Superintendent David Pietro said.

The children appreciate the effort.

“It enhances our whole experience,” said seventh-grader Kelly Lane.

“It helps a middle school student’s attention span,” said Maria Taylor, also a seventh-grader. “People get distracted. They pass notes. The white boards definitely keep your attention a lot longer than a teacher reading from a book.”

In the social studies classroom, Schwartz concluded the lesson on Alexander by handing each youngster a handheld device called a Qwizdom. The pupils plugged an identification number into the device and then used it to take a multiple-choice quiz. Questions appeared on the whiteboard.

Schwartz used the new technology to drive home an ancient point: “Aristotle taught Alexander to learn by: A. Observing; B. Reasoning; C. Thinking ahead; D. All of the above.”

The children punched a “D” into their devices. Schwartz could instantly see which questions troubled pupils most and returned to the material before they left the room.

“It’s a nice tool to see immediate feedback,” Schwartz said.

In a seventh-grade science class, teacher Anthony Martella, by touching the screen, summoned video images from Webcams inside volcanoes in Hawaii, from Mount St. Helen’s and from other volcanic eruptions. He summoned a chart listing the all-time largest volcanic events and an illustration showing the Earth’s structure beneath a volcano.

“Everything flows together. There is no stopping and starting,” Martella said.

Guarino, as he explained the district’s relationship with technology, recalled a recent Sunday spent in church. He watched a child playing with a handheld video game.

“He was using two or three screens at the same time, and he was moving seamlessly between them. That’s kids today. That’s how they’re wired today. We have to maintain that interest level or the math and the reading and the writing mean nothing.”

Bill Utterback can be reached online at butterback@timesonline.com.

Click here to read the original post.

By Max Cacas, Reporter, FederalNewsRadio
Listen to the story here

Two years ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the “Green the Capitol” initiative, designed to reduce the Capitol’s carbon footprint, and make the entire Capitol campus more energy efficient.

Yesterday, the acting Architect of the Capitol, Stephen Ayers, offered a progress report, complete with photo slides, to the EcoBuild America conference, which got underway earlier this week at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

The conference focuses on the cutting edge of smart, sustainable high-performance and sustainable green buildings, construction techniques, materials, and products.

A little over a year ago this month, the newest, and some would say, the greenest portion of the Capitol complex, the Capitol Visitors Center, opened to much fanfare, and some controversy and criticism for its high cost and repeated delays.

Today, with much of the construction completed and much of the criticism behind him, architect Ayers points to the number of people who have visited the Visitors Center.

“We’ve had 2.3 million people come through the Capitol building, and the Visitors Center, since it opened last year,” he said. Ayres also notes that as many as a million visitors stepped into the Botanical Gardens at the foot of Capitol Hill, which also falls under the purview of the Architect of the Capitol.

We’re also coming up on the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States. Ayers detailed in photos how the Inaugural platform, where the President takes the oath of office and delivers his inaugural address, is stick-built from wood, which is later donated to Habitat for Humanity. He also talked about a special feature of that platform, which in the best traditions of recycling, was turned into something new.

“We put a large piece of mahogany, right on the spot where the President stands. We take that piece of mahogany, and we fashion 100 gavels out of that. He hands them out as gifts, to his family, cabinet members, and friends that joined him that day.”

Ayers also told the EcoBuild conference that little, by little, they are making their way across Capitol Hill, and working to make the lighting in congressional hearing rooms more eco-friendly.

One of the really successful projects we’re doing in the Senate is a daylight harvesting system, now in 35 members’ offices. The system measures the amount of daylight coming into an office, and controls the lighting in those spaces.

Across Capitol Hill, Ayers points to the renovation of the House Science and Technology Committee, where the architect’s office installed new windows, electrical system and new LED lights, which are more power efficient.

Click here to listen to the story, see the original post and visit relevant links.

]]> http://www2.sensiblecity.com/2010/01/federal-news-radio-interview-w-white-house-architect-stephen-ayers/feed/ 0 http://www2.sensiblecity.com/2010/01/scholastic-administrator-magazine-best-in-tech-feature-includes-polyvision-qwizdom-and-echalk/ http://www2.sensiblecity.com/2010/01/scholastic-administrator-magazine-best-in-tech-feature-includes-polyvision-qwizdom-and-echalk/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:02:01 +0000 derekgordon http://www2.sensiblecity.com/?p=2193

When comparing editorial presence across three of our education clients, it popped up that each (eChalk, Qwizdom and PolyVision) have been recently featured in Scholastic Administrator Magazine’s “Best in Tech” section. Here are the summaries:

PolyVision eno

Jim Wolff
Director, Information Technology
Tustin Unified School District
Tustin, California

Response: Our staff has embraced the technology and new tools, developing and sharing best practices.
Learning Curve: The most novice user can interact with the board in less than 20 minutes. Teachers can integrate all classroom resources with a basic understanding of the Crestron control system. PolyVision’s eno has a lifetime warranty and open platform for software.
Usage: It doesn’t require an application to work—it’s driver-based with no cords or cables. The interactivity allows teachers to capture and reuse information, as well as collect and assess that information.

Qwizdom Q4 and Connect

Rob Stratton
Technology Specialist
Gulf Elementary School
Cape Coral, Florida

Goal: To provide every teacher with a system that offers specific, immediate feedback.
Response: The classroom voting system allows assignments, quizzes, and tests to be scored efficiently. Teachers can make real-time decisions that positively affect student achievement.
Learning Curve: Qwizdom provided training that helped us develop in-house training materials.
Usage: All of our classrooms have Qwizdom Q4 remotes. The system delivers content, reinforces basic skills, and aids in assessment.
Future Plans: We will begin introducing Qwizdom Connect, which offers online resources.

eChalk

Dr. Dana T. Bedden
Superintendent
Richmond County (GA) School System
32,000 students

Problem: RCSS needed a way to communicate with parents, students, educators, and the community in a timely manner. We also needed a solution that would allow collaboration between the students, teachers, principals, and other stakeholders. We needed to utilize Web-based tools for our students to stay abreast of trends in technology.

Goal: The mission of the RCSS is to educate students to become lifelong learners and productive citizens. We want our students to be prepared for the future, and the life that they will face when they leave the Richmond County School System. It is important for them to learn how to use e-mail, blog, and use discussion boards within a safe environment.

Response: eChalk is a comprehensive tool that provides websites for districts and schools. There are teacher pages with calendars, announcements, and resources for parents to be kept in the loop of their child’s learning. There is file storage and sharing that all educators can utilize to get needed information. The website provides a public view and a private view. The private view allows us specify exactly which users have rights to things such as special education forms and tribunal information. Our students can also use the e-mail, blog, and discussion areas in a safe network. Finally, we can communicate with the community. We can recognize our sponsors and partners. Through our system homepage, we can show the exciting things going on within the system.

Lesson(s) Learned: As with other software products, eChalk had some quirks in the beginning. The nice thing about this company is the willingness to work through the problems. The customer support is excellent. Each release brings about a resolution to issues and a commitment to honor suggestions.

Usage: eChalk is used daily. Our analytical reports show how much our homepage is utilized. We also know which pages get the most “hits” and we can make changes accordingly. We use the survey tools often—from textbook voting to public opinion. The pages are used for communication and collaboration. We can add audio and video files to the pages. The system supports many formats, such as Flash, Windows Movie Maker files, and Quicktime.

Learning Curve: The support is phenomenal. The training sessions are customized for the needs of the system. eChalk is willing to work with our system to integrate the website with other technologies. There was nothing to install and the pages are very user-friendly and easy to create.

Future: There will be an upcoming release of eChalk, which will allow our users to have more flexibility in design. We are looking forward to the added levels of creativity while keeping a consistency throughout the system.

Cost: Approximately $221,000, but now 94 percent e-rateable.

Bottom line: A powerful web solution.

[READ THE ARTICLES HERE AND HERE]