A new school year and thinking about BYOD

It's September and we have returned to school.  The first few weeks of school for a technology integration teacher can be a little overwhelming.  Summer is wonderful and relaxing but we jump right back in at a very quick pace when we return to school.

This year I am excited to see my district will be planning a BYOD Initiative.  I will be working with a group of high school teachers to establish our goals around teachers bringing in devices and planning for student use later in the year.  I have been watching several school across the state move in this direction.

Last spring I visited Burlington High School, they did a 1:1 Plan using iPads.  Check our their blog post.  It's Time to Collaborate on our 1:1 Plan - Who Wants In?  They created "The BHS 1:1 Wiki".  As a person that  is about to start this process is great to see the results from other schools. I was impressed with the thoughtful planning around using the same device, getting everyone on the same page and most importantly how teacher collaboration has inspired other schools.  Burlington has opened their doors to help teachers see first-hand how embrace new technology to work with students.  The new Grafton High School appears to have modeled their ipad implementation after Burlington.  Another school that used a BYOD model was the Reading Public Schools.  Their BYOD initiative was presented at the MassCUE Leadership conference and had a great team approach to the implementation.  A few members from my school attended a session this month " Discover how to make your 1:1 computing initiatives a definitive success" hosted by http://www.customonline.com/onetoone.html. The Keynote,"Leading the Effort" was presented by  Patrick Larkin and George Couros. As always, they did a great job articulating the transformation in their own schools and their approach for implementation. I have followed both George and Patrick on twitter for several years and spending a day learning from them was inspiring.

I will be preparing a survey for teachers to join our school BYOD Initiative and begin the process of determining our next steps.  Stay tuned for more!

The 21st Century Classroom

Looking forward to joining a group of teachers this week to explore teaching in the 21st Century Classroom.

"The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn" - Alvin Toffler

Topics to review and presentation link http://goo.gl/CQNXW

Sites to review

1. The P21 Framework presents a holistic view of 21st century teaching and learning that combines a discrete focus on 21st century student outcomes (a blending of specific skills, content knowledge, expertise and literacies) with innovative support systems to help students master the multi-dimensional abilities required of them in the 21st century along with the  P21 CommonCore Toolkit
2. The 21st Century Fluency Project A collaborative initiative created to develop exceptional educational resources to assist in transforming learning to be relevant to life in the 21st century.  The 21st Century Fluency Project is all about change. In today's world we face technological applications in daily living the likes of which, even a few short years ago, would have been inconceivable. 
3. CommonSense Media  http://www.commonsensemedia.org/digitalliteracy  (report pdf)
   curriculum Link http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/curriculum/
4. Social Media with Twitter #digcit (see recorded conversation and links)
   
   The Digital Citizenship Chat and hashtag is a great network for educators that meets on Wednesday at 7pm Eastern. Digital Citizenship chat #digcit  

Reflection

I was fortunate to teach a mobile computing class this month.  With a varied range of students in the the class we were able to review dozens of apps and apply to our content area.  A few of the elementary teachers created their first ibook using a variety of apps.  I will post the link soon.

Mobile and Social Learning

I am gearing up for a class next week on social media and mobile learning.  I continue to explore apps for learning and lots of online resources.  

Why Mobile Learning?


Looking for more resources?  I attended a presentation by Kathy Schrock last year and she showed her Bloomin' Apps project along with a page to allow you to share your own favorite Web 2.0, iOS, or Android app with others, and find it very useful!

So much to explore and learn!

Summer Conference - Campus Technology

Every few summers I try to attend a technology conference.  Depending on the location I have attended ISTE, BLC or local workshops.  This summer I plan to attend a few days of The Campus Technology Conference for higher Ed at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston.  The pre-conference session is by Mark Frydenberg (Sr. Lecturer/CIS at Bentley @checkmark),  the topic The Silver Lining: More Classroom Cloud and Collaboration Tools. You can follow the conference on Twitter at #CT2012  -->

There seems to be lots of great topics on the agenda.  I hope to follow BLC while attending the conference.

Summer Learning - MA Digital Publication Collaborative

I am attending the kickoff at MA Digital Publication Collaborative at Burlington High School this week!  You can follow on twitter #madpc. Upon arriving at the conference I connected with a few colleagues from other school districts.  We quickly jumped in the conversation using Hootsuite and TweetDeck, so we could follow topics and links during the keynote.  We also followed the ISTE 2012 taking place in San Diego this week.  Ironically Patrick Larkin the former Burlington Principal, now assistant superintendent of learning was tweeting from ISTE12!  I love the fact that Burlington has embraced collaboration using technology and demonstrate the power of being connected.  I also admire their efforts to open up their school and share with everyone.  What an amazing group of educators!

A few notes from my sessions.
Day 1 -  The goal of the  MA digital collaborative was designed to present an overview of a multi-district collaborative. Superintendents Dr. Eric Conti, Burlington Public Schools, Dr. Marinel D. McGrath, Andover Public Schools, and Dr. Maureen LaCroix, Bedford public schools stressed the need for districts in MA to open up district lines and share what is happening in their schools and classrooms see more on agenda and topics.  The afternoon closing session included a visit from  Mitchell D. Chester, Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education where he listened to educators from across New England and thanked us for taking the time to work together.

Day 2
I attended a hands-on session using Net Texts, as an extension from the keynote on Monday. It allows students to access open source multimedia courses along with adding any of your own materials for a custom approach to online textbooks.   Students access the materials by downloading the Net Texts App for the ipad Here’s a few things that it can do ..

• Teachers received  a login prior to the conference to the Net Texts site to select existing courses or to create new courses by mixing and matching items from our library with their own educational material.
• Students use the iPad app to download the courses, filled with videos, slideshows, e-books, PDFs, text, audiobooks, and links.  

There is a list of collections that you can view.  A few of us seem interested in building a Digital Literacy/Citizenship curriculum for students.  I am familiar with the FREE Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum from Common Sense. I plan on taking a look at this over the summer.

I attended a second session with Nick and Noni from NetTexts on OER (Open Educational Resources and copyright) showing a number of resources such as http://www.ck12.org/flexbook. An additional session on copyright from Creative Commons was provided by dancallahan.  He gave a great presentation with lots of resource.

Day 3

We worked in a variety of groups by content area and posted to a wiki .  The technology library group was led by Dennis Villano.  He showed us dotEPUB  (a download that plugs into multiple browsers that turns any webpage into an e-book).  This allows students to mark up a handout and take notes if used on the ipad. We touched upon Apple's iBooks Author (a download only for mac, there is no ipad app for this tool).  Matt Brooks from Apple presented a more detail demonstration on iBooks Author at a number of session over the three days. If you don't have a mac they recommended to look at Sigil a download  http://code.google.com/p/sigil to create epubs.   At the same time #ISTE12 provided a link on the topic "Epubs in Action presentation"   http://www.smore.com/f5wd

I enjoyed the opportunity to get together with a group of passionate educators that love learning and want to make their classes more engaging.

To quote the Burlington's Superintendent ericconti "We are strongest when we work together". 

SMART Notebook 11 - New Release

Just downloaded the newest version of SMART Notebook 11!  Looking forward to learning about the new features.  I love the fact you can learn on line by watching the videos.  I am looking forward to working with widgets with the Notebook.

ipad app coming soon follow @SMART_Tech on twitter.  More on the notebook app for iPad being released soon http://smarttech.com/notebookapp 

I plan on working with a few of my special education teachers this month and review the new features.