“Vacation” ended but man, it was no vacation for me! I am FINALLY finishing up my thesis and this is the crunch time. Phew. More on that later – I am pretty sick of typing!

But just wanted to add that today I made my way over to the Apple Store on Boylston to purchase 2 1-1 training accounts for myself and my tech teacher here. For just $79/year, we receive 1 1-hour training per week each at the Store. There are workshops we can sign up for or we can request specific topics to be covered. The online account neatly organizes the trainings available to register for, and helps you keep track of which skills you want to and already have obtained. Best part I didn’t know is : you can take your students to the Store for field trips and/or workshops upon request! So Mr. Dodson and I are scheming ways to get our 6th graders over there to receive a training in iMovie for their eportfolio project. And we can also request a showcase and celebration of their work there in June before they graduate. I am excited about the possibilities!

So after the Superintendent and I successfully delivered the keynote speech together, (phew!), I was able to enjoy the day’s workshops and meet some of the attendees. In the Math Class, we used wireless HP tablets to answer math problems. The teacher also had a wireless tablet, from which he drove the software, provided by DyKnow, that was projected onto the SMART board. In hindsight, he did not need the SMART board to complete the lesson. Really the combo of the DyKnow software and the touch technology on the tablet did the trick. DyKnow allows the teacher to control what and when students see applications on their machines, and even enables and disables specific students’ controls. You can send an “eyes to the front please” broadcast on all screens, lock out 1 student, or project 1 student’s work on the screen, or allow 2 students to work on one question at the same time.

In science class it was clear that real-time data collection and analysis was a very powerful experience for students and the most true-to-life way in which scientists do it. PASCO sensors were plugged into laptops, and data was collected, and immediately, those data sets could be interpreted in multiple ways visually, such as graphs.

Some nuggets from the hand-outs and the conversations at lunch included :

www.k12blueprint.com : provides plenty of resources and guidance for technology planning

iPass is a robust student management system worth looking into

Rameo Marquis of Learning Curve is a strong resource about implementing Moodle, an open-source app, as a collaborative learning environment.

Intel showed a fantastic video introducing us that really opens your eyes as to what kind of digital world today’s kids are growing up in, compared to what we did. Ill find it…and post it…

So this is super cool : an animation showing the building of the US Space Station and the plans for the future, piece by piece, since 1998.
(via Dad)
Click to check it out : ISS Timeline

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching my first Kindergarten computer class yesterday. The K2 kids from 504 filed in and we talked about what computers are used for, what the parts of a computer are, and how to treat a computer and the lab. We then got onto the machines and students were shown how to log in and off, and how to launch the internet.
The discussions on the rug were so intriguing – I was not surprised to find that these kindergarteners know a LOT about computers and the web. When asked for tips on how to treat the computers I heard “don’t bang the screen!” and then “don’t SPIT on it!” – all good advice. I was told that a laptop is “a computer that opens and closes”, and they giggled when we agreed that computers are not thirsty or hungry, so no food or drink in the lab. This particular class knew their numbers and letters and could recognize them on the keyboard, and they followed directions well, with an occasional “oooo” and “this is the COOLest!” comment when we had “entered the world wide web”.

Real time data real life experiments

Originally uploaded by msradden

one of these PASCO sensors could be used by students to record the decibels of class applause into the computer while the teacher projected the meter to the whole class on the screen as they clapped and screamed. next…ask a student to record the decibels of the music coming from his or her ipod earphones. yikes!

Science class

Originally uploaded by msradden

Pasco demonstrated these plug in sensors for recording scientific data into a computer, using their simple and intuitive software to collect and graph the data in real time.

0402091021a.jpg

Originally uploaded by msradden

Just finished co-presenting with our superintendent at the HP educator’s forum today. phew. Now doing math problems on a tablet pc.