The XO Laptop, Give One Get One:

Previously I wrote about the OLPC XO Laptop program.

The Give One Get One program has been extended to December 31st. IA Physics teacher David Lyons and his wife Lynne decided it would be a great Christmas gift for their daughters and purchased and gave 3. One of the features that appealed most to Dave was the "mesh network" that would allow his daughters to interact with each other. Like all good physics teachers, Dave has already snagged one of his kids toys to utilize in class and even though Santa has not yet arrived to his home, he allowed students the opportunity to give it a go this morning. I am sure we will have much more to report very soon.

As I mentioned before, if you are in the holiday spirit of giving but don't see a personal use, you might consider give one, give one to IA. This would be a great tool to allow our own future inventors the opportunity to create applications for this project.

From November 12th to December 31st, 2007, your $399 donation will fund an XO laptop going to a needy child and you can receive one for yourself in the US or Canada. You can order online at laptopgiving.org

Or you may call to order: 1-877-70-LAPTOP (1-877-70-527867)

For general questions about Give One Get One, please email: service at laptopgiving.org

"Now You Change It"

Yes, get used to it. I had a conversation with a staff member the other day about the fact that the district is considering giving up on the costly Blackboard that our staff has finally embraced (after 5 years) and switching to the *free open-source Moodle. He was concerned that all the work put into BB thus far would be wasted. That is not the case at all. Think of it like a personal fitness routine. Just because you change programs or trainers does not mean the work you have done in the past has been wasted. On the contrary, it has gotten you to your level of fitness today.

It has not taken 5 years for the staff to learn BB. It has taken that long for them to buy into the concept of an on-line content management system. Now that they realize the benefits, I think they are ready to keep on moving forward.

The switch is still in the consideration stage (don't panic) but aside from the resistance of staff to have to "learn something new", I see a lot of value in the open-source applications. For one, they are constantly changing for the better.

Just this past year we introduced wiki's into the classroom and in a few short months, our kids are utilizing dozens of them. A great feature of Moodle is the integrated blog and wiki feature. Each course as well as each user automatically has access to their own blog. Everything in one place!

Below is an amazing new application that I happened upon today. More great tools to use every day. I will get an adventurous teacher to give this a go and report back. In the meantime, have a look for yourself and let me know what you think.

Give One, Get One (or give one, give one)

There is some great news out there for those of us excited about the famed $100 "One Laptop Per Child Program." For a limited time, these laptops are being offered for sale in the U.S. It is a "give one, get one" program. For $400 you can get one and one will be sent to a poor child in another part of the world. If you have the means and are in a spirit of "giving" this Thanksgiving, this would be a great gesture. If you have no use to "get one" the students here (at IA) could use them. Being totally open-source, having a few of these would give our students the opportunity to practice creating content. These are only available for a very limited time. Take a look below.

We can learn from the animals.

I was watching Animal Planet the other day and it occured to me that animals teach their young by simply modeling behavior. There are no lessons, dissertations, assignments. The young simply watch and model the behavior of the adults. The adults always model "appropriate" behavior.

Facebook Mom (eeewww)
I signed up for Facebook the other day. (I had to do it from home since it is blocked in the district.) Someone suggested it to me to be able to get in touch with alumni. My own kids were horrified. Many of my current as well as former students friended me. My being there reminds them to be careful what they post.

Below is an example of how easy it is to embed a PPT in your blog. If you are curious as to how I did this, come rattle my cage and I will show you. It took 3 seconds!

Today I was lucky enough to be invited to Mrs. Saxsma's class to read one of my favorite children's books. I chose to read Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina . I will never forget the day in second grade that Sister Cecilia Mary read that story to our class. She talked about making predictions based on what has already happened and asked us if when listening to the story we could use what we know to solve the peddler's problem. That was 45 years ago. Below are some photos of Mrs. Saxsma's class practicing the art of storytelling.

I have been at the MACUL Conference at Cobo the past two days and am posting this to demo how simple it is to use google docs to post to your blog.

March 1, 2007

Web 2.0

By mminer

I spent many hours in the past couple of weeks putting together a professional development presentation introducing web 2.0 technologies. The struggle for me is to try and filter down all that there is out there, as it is changing every day, into a neat little relevant package that will be immediately useful. It has to be sifted down so as not overwhelm you to the point of your eyes glazing over and your head exploding. So much to do, so little time. What I have decided is to start with the tools that will help you in your everyday life without focusing on things that may make you think you have to re-do your lessons- because that is where I think the resistance comes in. Many teachers are afraid that technology means that they have to throw out their old plans and create new ones. Not at all the case. Technology when used properly, should make what you are already doing better. One of the best tools available today is from Google. So I will be inviting each and every one of you to a Gmail account. Please accept this invitation. If you are brave you can venture out and explore the Google tools available to you on your own (kinda like reading ahead) otherwise they will be coming to you soon at an upcoming PD.