Latest News, Appearances, Press Releases

Join Thor Prichard and Steven Burt at the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) June 30th through July 2nd in San Antonio, Texas. Find us contributing to the discussion at many of the Web 2.0 related sessions and the discussion on Twitter.

]Several of our staff will be attending sessions and sharing ideas with colleagues at WebVisions. The annual event, taking place later this week over at the Oregon Convention Center, explores the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy to uncover the trends and agents of change that force everyone to rethink their assumptions about the Web.

Come meet us at the next meeting of the NW Education Cluster, April 17th.  At the meeting will be a presentation from Accelerate Oregon, a group that's trying to leverage public and private commitment to Oregon's K12 education system to improve teaching and learning through the integration of technology.  For more information about the meeting, contact us. 

In case you haven't noticed recently, we've been expanding our team of hybrid expertise in education and technology.  This is due in part to expanded engagements and services in the field of education content development.  For example, we're developing new curriculum for helping educators make effective use of laptops now increasingly being deployed through 1:1 initiatives.  We're also working on materials for a client to help leaders in education champion professional development in technology integration.  It's going to be a busy spring here at Clarity Innovations.

New research from Tom Layton, Online Learning Evangelist for Clarity Innovations, suggests three important goals for preparing students to live and learn in a digital world, along with eight recommendations for reaching those goals. To learn more about his work, contact us.

On the docket next is the scarcely available XO laptops. These laptops are being distributed to children around the world with the intent of providing them with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves. (Image courtesy of One Laptop per Child.) Layton plans to test the device's abilities to overcome one or more of the seven problems that currently inhibit efforts to provide the kind of education students need to learn in today's digital world. To learn more about the seven challenges, contact us.

Clarity Innovations has recently been awarded a large, year-long contract for educational content development services. Due to the size and volume of work which this contract will entail we will be hiring a number of new positions to begin work early in 2008. We are seeking a number of highly qualified candidates with a demonstrated track record of educational and technology expertise. If you are interested, please take a look at the careers section of the website.

As a member of the Northwest Education Cluster, Clarity Innovations is participating in a special roundtable discussion on Building a 21st Century Education System for Oregon at the sixth annual event being held at the Oregon Convention Center on December 3rd.

The Oregon Leadership Summit is an annual gathering of business and government leaders to discuss what's working or not for making Oregon a leader in the global marketplace.

On Tuesday, October 30, Steven Burt will be Principal for a day at Lewis Elementary School. The unique program of the Portland Schools Foundation invites business and civic leaders to learn first-hand about the challenges, responsibilities and decisions that principals face daily as leaders in the city's public schools.

At the 2007 NSBA T+L Conference, Clarity Innovations is partnering with Educational Systemics to produce the Conference Pathways Program, an immersive, guided learning experience that gives attendees an opportunity to significantly enrich their conference-going experience by sharing and reflecting with their colleagues what they learned in one of the five strands in the conference program (1:1 Computing, Data-Driven Decision-making, 21st Century Skills, Professional Development, and Tools for Classrooms). (Registration for the Conference Pathways Program filled quickly. If you're interested in a Conference Pathway being conducted at your next conference, contact us today.)

We'll be attending this month's meeting of the Portland Ed Cluster, which will feature a presentation about the challenges faced by the University of Portland wanting to increase awareness of the University and its strengths. At the meeting hosted by the University of Portland, staff and their partners from the discoverycollaborative will share how their approach (conducting solid research with all the right audiences) has lead to a successful framework for positioning the University with a broad range of audiences.

While taking some time off this week, our Finance & Operations Manager John Marini enjoyed some baseball with friends.  During the game, John was selected for a trivia contest... enjoyed by all at the game on the large "jumbotron" screens. John won the baseball trivia contest, and as his prize received a DVD and a month of free internet service.  We guess his acumen for numbers and spreadsheets has something to do with his knack for baseball trivia.

Earlier this month Technology & Learning Magazine launched its 21st Century Connections Web site of articles and resources for meeting the needs of today's learners. To achieve this, they turned to Clarity Innovations for our hybrid expertise in education and technology to rapidly adapt and customize a Web 2.0 platform for their readers. The result is a Web site that's both easy to use and manage. To learn more about the project and how we multiplied their effectiveness, contact us.

Join Thor Prichard and Steven Burt at the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) June 23rd through the 27th in Atlanta, Georgia. Find us contributing to the discussion at many of the Web 2.0 related sessions, in addition to co-presenting about effective use of open source Web 2.0 tools for schools (a birds of a feather presentation Tuesday).