I’ll take these kind of interruptions any day. Working in my office, the familiar Skype chat box sound alerts me to someone wanting my attention. It was Matthew, a grade one student in Kathy’s class. He wanted to chat. This is our conversation: Matthew: are teechr sas yes you can cum from Mathew. Me: I will come over tomorrow if that’s...

I purchased an XO in efforts to consider the possibility of low cost computing and where this might fit into classrooms. I’ve played with it somewhat and was able to do some interesting things but  knew I needed some people better than me to do the real testing and dirty work. Enter Kathy Cassidy and her amazing grade one bloggers. What a treat it is to...

Today my XO or “$100 laptop” arrived.  It brings with it the cool-looks-like-a-Fisher-Price-toy kind of responses from others. I fire it up and without doing anything, I’m online. (Our technicians had issues with the wireless in their office but it worked without even keying in a WEP code here).  I take a quick tour and have a look at some...

This morning I worked with Grade 5 and 6 students who all have a tablet PC.  I’ve been talking to them about building networks and wanted to demonstrate mine in meaningful, fun, engaging way. So I decided to take them on a tour, using some interactive maps and showed them the power of networks, open API (don’t worry I didn’t actually use that...

I’ve blogged about this before and it’s not going away anytime soon. Today Clarence “twitted” this: That excites me and worries our IT guys. Our IT department is great to work with unlike many of the experiences I hear about. I challenge our IT manager and he challenges me.  So upon seeing the twit of Clarence, I immediately teased him...

Gary Stager writes a short but challenging article on why spending money on a laptop is by far a better investment that glitter pens. The Last Back-to-School Sale Ever Now grant it, most who read this already agree with this but I try to consider the naysayers and doubters that one to one computing is really the nirvana for educational success.  Many argue that...