Courtney Williams's blog

When City View (Texas) Independent School District Superintendent Steve Harris was diagnosed with stage III squamous cell carcinoma last November, he kept his spirits up and started doing research. He decided to take a chance on the newest version of a proton radiation treatment—only available in a few places in the world—at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

Excelencia in Education, a non-profit organization whose mission is to increase Latino student success in higher education, released a report this week detailing college completion by the Latino population in all 50 states. The report stresses that the United States will not achieve college degree attainment goals without increasing the number of degrees earned by the Latino population.

In early February I spent four days in Austin on the show floor of the 32nd TCEA Annual Convention and Exposition—one of the largest education tech conventions in the nation with thousands of attendees.

What a great day at TCEA in Austin, Texas. I learned so much my first day at my very first large conference and exposition. Today I met with education technology companies to learn about new trends and what's on the horizon for key players in K12. I had great conversations with representatives from DimensionU, Empowering Writers, ePals, SureScore, MindPlay, AMX, HP, Adobe and others. I loved hearing that the district where I taught last year is adopting SureScore to improve college readiness and also now uses MindPlay with struggling readers and English language learners.

Whether you support school choice or not, rallies and events across the nation kicked-off National School Choice Week on Monday. School Choice Week events are held annually to focus on providing effective education options for every child.

Jan. 8, 2012 marks the ten year anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act. I participated in a conference call with RAND, to find out about research and trends in education today, ten years after NCLB went into effect. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.

I’ve been reading a lot about quick response (QR) Codes use in education lately, so I decided to do some research about how to effectively use these black and white codes in the classroom (The comic provides a quick tutorial for those who have never used QR Codes). I think QR Codes are a fun way to provide supplementary, relevant information to students. All you need is a Webcam and you’re ready to start reading and scanning QR Codes!

Young people are struggling to find jobs more than ever during this tough economy, so some high school students are turning to industry certification to differentiate themselves and expand employment opportunities. We recently talked to Certiport’s CEO Ray Kelly, who told DA about the opportunities industry certification provides to students.

DA’s editorial team recently talked to Follett Software’s Michelle Begora, program director for ERM and Digital at Follett Software. We learned about exciting new trends in the library/media world. The product that really caught my attention is Cognite, which works with Follett’s Destiny Library Manager. Cognite allows administrators, teachers and students to connect to the library and find print or digital resources from the classroom or at home. The digital resource can be accessed online, and print resources will be available in the school library.

My best friend, Ashley Dunn, happens to be a rocket scientist, something we both aspired to when we were younger, but I took the creative route to fulfill my passions for journalism and education, and she took the engineering route that led her to a career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.