Anyhow, what got me started not posting was school, as in, my job. Some of you know I teach 6th grade Language Arts. At one time I used to be on the cutting edge of educational technology stuff for elementary schools (heck, we had one of the first elementary school websites back in 1994–you can find our 1997 page through the Wayback Machine, and then link from there to our 1994-1997 pages). I used to present at conferences, do little workshops, trained teachers how to hand code their own html pages, taught my students in Utah via web camera from Denver (1999ish), etc. etc. Anyhow, when I moved schools about six years ago, the principal who hired me actually moved to the district office during the summer. The new principal didn’t know me, and none of the teachers did either. None of them knew my tech background. I just kept to myself and floated under the radar. Did my thing and enjoyed the anonymity of it (I use the word “anonymity” rather loosely–I was in no way “famous, ” etc., just anonymous skills). Grew complacent. Drifted away from using much tech in my classroom. In essence, I was a tech slacker.
This year we switched principals. Back to the one who originally hired me at my new school. He just so happened to know my tech status (his wife was the secretary at my old school and I’d even been to his house to clean up some viruses on his personal machine). And he’s very interested in tech as a teaching tool. So I’ve been recruited back into the educational tech world. I troubleshoot many of the machines at our school. I’m the tech committee chair. I conduct little training sessions twice a week after school. Etc., etc. These things keep me busy, and I like the feeling of being able to help others.
But more importantly, it has kind of reinvigorated me as far as using tech in the classroom. So, besides being busy with all the things mentioned in the previous paragraph, I decided to try and get some money to purchase a set of classroom laptops–32 to be exact. That’s required me to write some grants. Three of them, actually. I’m looking for $21,000 to make this happen. For any of you in the university world, that’s small potatoes, but in the K-12 world, especially 6th grade, that’s fairly significant. So I’ve been researching and writing. I finally got the three written and sent off last week.
But, that didn’t end my work. Since I plan on revamping the way the classroom operates (I plan on using the laptops 75% or more of the time–hopefully closer to 90%), I need to start looking at how I would do that. So I’ve been spending just about every spare moment of computer time researching current Web 2.0 applications within younger classes. And not worrying about fishing. Or writing about. Or even reading about fishing.
I was wondering where you had disappeared to, and was hoping you might be on an epic trip! Well, writing grants can be an epic trip all its own huh?! Sounds like you have a nice plan. I am guessing the laptops stay in the classroom and multiple students sit at them throughout the day? I have seen those large charging carts etc but have never looked into a laptop setup like that more than curiosity. The Chrome OS info of the last few days could definitely mix up the possibilities of how to approach it. With multiple students using the lappy throughout the day the cloud approach may be something to explore.
I have three groups of about 25 kids during the day. I’d love for a laptop per kid so they could take it home, but that would be about $40,000. I could just go with desktop PCs, but I still want freedom to move the students’ desks around in different configurations, so I’m going with laptops. Web 2.0 apps are my initial target–really leveraging the social aspect so students can collaborate on projects/work. I’ve really thought hard about cloud computing, and Google Docs (now Chrome OS) was looking enticing, however… We always have to weigh student safety/security against everything we do. And, our intranet is pretty good, with kids logging in at home or school (it wouldn’t matter which laptop they used since all the work is stored on the network). So I can easily have students work on stuff at school and they can access it anywhere. Most of the collaborative stuff (wikis, blogs, journals, quizzes, etc.) would be done using Moodle–not quite in the cloud, but also available anywhere an internet connection is had. Anyway, I won’t bore you with more details, but I’m hoping I can swing the $$.
Hi Scott – glad to have you back in the blogosphere! Nice stuff, but please, don’t stray too far from posting and fishing. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Please keep in touch.
Thanks for checking in Bob. Not to worry, I’m not straying too far.