Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I anticipate this will become more and more of an issue and am wondering if others have already had to deal with this.

Students and teachers who bring their own laptops or wireless devices will soon be requesting internet and network access at schools. Questions that come to mind are:

• What security issues are there?
• Can they potentially impact the network?
• Who is responsible for that?
• Is this any different from school districts that have issued laptops to teachers/students?
• Or are they configured in such a way as to reduce or limit their potential security issues?
• Can they just be given internet access without accessing the network?
  
• What I.T. support is necessary for this to occur?

I’m sure there are other issues I’ve not considered but since I’ve already been asked about this, I’m hoping some of you have some thoughts.

Image Citation:
“Wall of Laptops.” Kartooner’s Photostream. 11 March 2006. 29 Sep 2006 .

I’ve used this tool before but a couple of days ago, I picked up on an entry by Ewan Mcintosh and passed along his suggestion to our local schools. Here’s how one teacher took the idea and creating something outstanding.

Recently I’ve tried to stop using the “integrating technology” term and simply talk about using it. Jeff over at The Thinking Stick provides a really nice example of this in his latest post, Technology: it’s what we do, not one more thing to do.

We need to get past the point that we need to understand how the technology works. We don’t! We just need to understand how it can be used in our classroom to enhance learning. The students will figure out the ‘how to’ part on their own. They live in this world, they are good at troubleshooting problems and finding solutions.

I’m sure I’ve said these exact words at least 3 times in the last month. Take an inventory of your classroom skills and interests and start using and building on the knowledge and expertise you already have access to.

On Wednesday, I’m spending the day working with 2 classes wanting to use video editing. Normally this would be a very easy day to plan for. However they are using software I’ve never used. I worked on a project today as a test and ended up using the help section for practically every task. I’m not planning on doing a whole lot more in preparing to use the software. The kids can figure it out themselves. I will spend the day talking and demonstrating the importance of storyboarding, planning and review the elements of storytelling. That’s what they need to know. Technology is the easy part. Learning is the hard part.

technorati tags:jeffscofer, technology

Our school division has a mix of small school (K-12 schools under 50 students) and larger schools ( 800 student high school which I realize is small in some circles). I’m realizing the challenges small schools face with multiple grades. Designing instruction for a variety of learners can be a task.

Harold Jarche, via Will Richardson, talks about the value and possibilties of small schools in his post Small Schools, Loosely Joined.
The points I found most compelling were

• Communities of learning online could be developed to link learners in several schools and even in different countries.
• No teacher would be able to “master” the subject matter, so
  teachers would become facilitators of learning, which is what they
  profess to do anyway.
• Small schools would be integrated into the community and there
  would be a sense of ownership by the community, not the education
  system.

I talked today to a group of “digital interns” about the importance of being a learner and not expecting to be the master of your subject. Rely on your students and expect them to help design and build the learning environment.
Small schools do have their challenges but the fact that they have to reach out should be considered a good thing. Maybe large schools struggle with embracing some of the benefits of the read/write web because they have more of an audience and community within their building. (BTW, read that post on audience and community)
Interdependence is a good thing and is critical to small schools. Maybe it’s the same as the benefits of a small town. Everyone tends to work together to get things done. Know one knows all the answers and the kids have to pitch in as well.

Blogged with Flock

I got 2 really cool things from Tom Woodward, the bionic teacher. One that everyone should utilize and the other that falls in my “this is interesting but I’m not sure yet how I’d use it” category.

The first is his remix of the Karl Fischs’ presentation called “Did You Know”. Tom was kind enough to send me a larger version. I planned to do a remix of it but felt it stood well on its own for my purposes. I uploaded it to our new youtube group. and called it Education Today and Tomorrow.

The second thing from Tom is this link. Go ahead see if you can stay on this site less than a minute.

Thanks Tom.

technorati tags:flatworld, tomwoodward, karlfisch

Blogged with Flock

After reading this article in USA Today, I thought of road rage as reasonable analogy. The article talks about some teachers blogging anonymously and making personal attacks and criticisms about teachers and schools. In the same way that drivers can hide behind the windshield and metal of their vehicles and yell and shout at other drivers, so do these teachers. I don’t like it. I suppose there might be a place for anonymous blogging but it seems like many do so in order to go on the attack. I think it’s a bad practice and for the same reason, I don’t want anonymous commenters on my blog, I not much interested in reading theirs. If I can’t find the about page, I’m leaving.

It isnt’ like you can’t challenge others views or writings. That’s part of what makes blogging interesting. I don’t consider myself too controversial, although some may disagree with me. Tom Hoffman’s recent challenge to Wes Fryer, David Warlick, Will Richardson, and Vicki Davis, while not my style, does raise reasonable questions and offers good discussion. He’s not personal, he simply disagrees with what they say. Maybe one day he’ll tell me where I’ve strayed in my thinking.

Let’s encourage each other to be forthright in our comments and discussions and stop hiding behind pseudonyms for the soul purpose of unleashing personal attacks. You’re giving us a bad name!

I’ve had the opportunity to share the “news” about social software/web 2.0/Read Write Web (choose your favourite term)  to some groups other than classroom teachers. In the past month I’ve done two workshops for our provincial teachers’ association. One to the local teacher association groups and the other to the special subject councils.

The message is virtually the same but it’s nice to discuss the use of these tools outside the classroom application.
This week I also begin a series of 3 workshops on digital photography as part of our community courses.

The fact that these topics and tools have great use for adults in everyday life, once again brings validation to the importance of them to be explored and used with our students.

I’m soliciting all you geeks out there for some recommendations. Currently our school division website is using Mambo as it’s CMS. It certainly has a lot of great features and components. As a new division we’re hoping to use one CMS and create 45 school websites using a single instance of the CMS rather than having separate installs for each school.

We’d be happy to stick with Mambo but need something that’s quite simple for end users to use. Mambo is fairly complicated from the back end.  Does anyone have a suggestion for a CMS that would allow us to use a single installation of a CMS and create individuals websites off of that? The template would be similar but ideally it would be great if each school had some control over the navigation and css.

So all you geeks out there…what do you suggest?