This school-related tidbit nearly escaped my notice: One of the many new appointees selected by San Diego Unified Superintendent Terry Grier is Darryl LaGace, chief information and technology officer. LaGace worked previously as chief technology officer in Lemon Grove School District, which has been recognized for incorporating technology into classrooms and even extending broadband internet to students’ homes. You can read more about their initiative, Project LemonLINK, here.
Hiring LaGace is another sign that Grier is interested in similar technologies for San Diego Unified, as mentioned by our weekend interviewee, Point Loma parent Matt Spathas.
The Spathas interview has generated a lot of interest — both from enthusiasts who like Spathas’ vision for schools and from critics such as teacher Scott Mullin, who complains that the technologies Spathas advocates are a “quick fix” that don’t address the real problems in schools. Here’s an excerpt from his letter:
What troubles me most in his set of responses is where he says “We’ve got to refresh what we are teaching our kids. Probably less history and more future.” … History is not about a bunch of factoids. It is about our past, our present, and how the two inform our future. … If Mr. Spathas really knew what he was talking about he would be alarmed at the lack of teaching of History in our schools. Perhaps that is really one of the sources of our societal failures these days. People are not learning from mistakes made in the past.