Friday, February 22, 2013

Video Tech Vision Statement

This is quite specific to this school and their program but it has components that could help us develop our own Tech Vision Statement.

Middle School That went 1:1 with iPads


Central Valley moves towad iPad-enhanced education

MONACA — Instinctively, as he responded to a challenge posed by his life sciences teacher, Central Valley seventh-grader Matt Lovy clutched a pencil and began to scribble his thoughts across a page in his notebook. After several words, he stopped and dropped the pencil.

“I’m just going to type this; it’s faster,” he said as he turned to his school-issued Apple iPad.

Taylor Goodlin, Lovy’s project partner, who had already punched a response into his iPad, laughed.
“(The iPad) fits our lifestyle, if you know what I mean,” Goodlin said.

Observing from the back of Lynn Russman’s classroom at the middle school, Assistant Superintendent Nick Perry noted student involvement in the iPad-driven science project.

“They’re all on task; they’re all engaged,” he said.

In the 2012-13 school year, Central Valley launched four pilot classes using iPads — one science class and one math class in the middle school, and one chemistry class and one Algebra II class in the high school.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Teaching Digital Citizenship

Becoming a digital citizen

by Nick Sauers

Recently, I led an ISTE webi­nar focused on dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship for a small group of edu­ca­tors.  My ses­sion didn’t focus on all of the bad things stu­dents and teach­ers can get into with tech­nol­ogy, but instead the ways they can use tech­nol­ogy to enhance their learn­ing and teach­ing expe­ri­ences.  I’m cer­tainly not insin­u­at­ing that schools should ignore teach­ing about those neg­a­tive aspects of tech­nol­ogy.  Stu­dents need to be aware of the impact that their online activ­i­ties can have.  How­ever, it does seem that much of our focus when dis­cussing dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship focuses on those neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences.  My pre­sen­ta­tion focused on the ways teach­ers and stu­dents are using tech­nol­ogy in pow­er­ful ways. 

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Click here for a few more links on Digital Citizenship.

Click here for some links on Cyberbullying and Cybersafety.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Beyond 1:1 Computing

From eSchool News

Why schools must move beyond ‘one-to-one computing’

Ed-tech consultant Alan November recommends using perspective and a new term instead: One to the World



Seize the world

Without question, I believe every student must have 24-7 access to the internet. However, while one-to-one computing might work as a marketing slogan designed to convince schools to buy as many computers as possible, it is a simplistic and short-sighted phrase that suggests if every student had a device and if every teacher were trained to use these devices, then student learning would rise automatically.

Adding a digital device to the classroom without a fundamental change in the culture of teaching and learning will not lead to significant improvement. Unless clear goals across the curriculum—such as the use of math to solve real problems—are articulated at the outset, one-to-one computing becomes “spray and pray.”

If the language we use to describe an initiative sets the tone and direction for it, and if we want to create a more inspiring vision than giving each student a device, then I have a simple proposition: Let’s drop the phrase “one-to-one” and refer instead to “one-to-world.”

This simple, one-word change takes us beyond the focus on the boxes and wires and alludes to why we are making the investment in the first place. The planning considerations now evolve from questions about technical capacity to a vision of limitless opportunities for learning. This change also has enormous implications for the design of staff development. As soon as you shift from “one-to-one” to “one-to-world,” it changes the focus of staff development from technical training to understanding how to design assignments that are more empowering—and engage students in a learning community with 24-hour support.

Developing leadership

Perhaps the weakest area of the typical one-to-one computing plan is the complete absence of leadership development for the administrative team—that is, learning how to manage the transition from a learning ecology where paper is the dominant technology for storing and retrieving information, to a world that is all digital, all the time.

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Ways to Use iPads

17 ways iPads will be used in schools in 2013

Last year, iPads in education took the world by storm, finding their ways into initiatives at both the K-12 and university levels. Here at Education Dive, we talked to some of the people responsible for those rollouts and watched as schools decided how to use tablets, whether they were Apple's or not.  In 2013 iPads are still going strong. New pilot programs are winning over former doubters and in some cases existing programs are expanding.

So how will iPads be used as their classroom roles evolve in 2013? Education Dive found these examples:

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