Reflecting on 1:1

I visited Moorseville Graded School District and Richland School District 2 this spring.  The purpose of both visits was to visit schools and view 1:1 programs in action.  As an ed tech enthusiast the idea of providing every student with a device is an incredibly exciting prospect and I was green with envy as I peeked into classrooms and watched the teaching and learning taking place.  The two districts I visited were not identical.  They had different demographics and deployed different devices (Moorseville provides students with MacBooks and Richland 2 provides students with Chromebooks at the schools visited).  Regardless of the differences Moorseville and Richland 2 did have some essentials in common that may point to the success these districts have experienced with their 1:1 initiatives that are perhaps missing in criticized attempts such as the recent iPad rollout in California and alluded to in Alan November's blog post, Why schools must move beyond one-to-one computing.

Essentials:

• Planning & preparation (committees with membership representative of all stakeholders, efforts to build community support, a multi-year rollout)
• Procedures & guidelines that undergo annual revision (responsible/acceptable use policy, annual insurance premium/usage fee and agreement, procedures for repair and theft, digital citizenship implementation plan, guidelines for modifying assignments for students without a device)
• Infrastructure (wireless and bandwidth to exceed the predicted number of devices, site based instructional technology coaches, site based tech support, ongoing PD, a standard learning management system, Google Apps for Education)
• A firm belief that technology is a tool for teaching and learning as well as an understanding that there are times when paper and pencil may be best.

Interesting tidbits:

• Damage rates vary more by the school level and/or device NOT by whether or not students are allowed to take devices home.
• Middle schools have the highest damage rate.

What this means for school libraries in Mooresville & Richland 2:

Media specialists are not the tech people in either district.  They are responsible for reading promotion and collaborating with teachers to provide information literacy skills related instruction.  The school libraries function as a learning commons and are arranged to allow whole class instruction, small group instruction, and individual exploration.  The school library collections are a mix of print books and ebooks.

SCASL Conference 2014

This March I attended the annual conference sponsored by the South Carolina Association of School Librarians. It has been a few years since I was able to attend this conference and I was so glad to have the opportunity to go. I carpooled with others attending from my district and enjoyed the opportunity to connect almost as much as the conference itself. I gained a much needed boost of enthusiasm while in attendance. I also picked up several new ideas.  I am especially intrigued by two apps I saw demonstrated.

Green Screen by DoInk is a green screen app for the iPad that actually works! It looks awesome and easy to use making it well worth the $2.99 price tag. Students shared how to use the app in a session I attended.  There are so many possibilities for using this app with my production technology classes.  Once we get it figured out and create on location videos my students can help teachers in their core area classes who choose to use green screening for "on location" video projects.  I became even more excited about this app after reading an online post that discusses using Green Screen by DoInk with Aurasma.  Watch the YouTube video to see an overview Green Screen by DoInk.

Another app that caught my attention is Klikaklu.  This app allows users to create treasure hunts and scavenger hunts by linking trigger images with clues.  Immediately my mind jumped to the beginning of the school year tour our new sixth graders take and how much more engaging this tour could be using Klikaklu.  I also thought about our upcoming community resource fair and the possibility of creating a contest to reward participants for visiting each organization.  Klikaklu does appear to be a free/paid scenario. It sounds like the scavenger hunt creator will need to pay otherwise ads will appear, but the cost for participants is free.  Watch the video to see how it works.

I co-presented at the conference with Kay Leroy and Lindsey Insalaco.  Our session titled Powering Up: Integrating Tech in the LMC was well attended.  All the seats were taken, people were sitting in the floor, standing in the back, and hovering outside the door.  Our session focused on meeting our district's call to redefine the role of the library media specialists and take a leadership role in regard to instructional technology.  The feedback from our session was overwhelmingly positive.  We could not have been more thrilled with how things turned out.

Celebrating Teen Tech Week with Interactive Displays

Due to the timing of our state's writing assessment my school will celebrate teen tech week a few weeks late this year.  As a newly initiated BYOT school I really want to make this celebration an opportunity for students to use their mobile devices to participate.  I also want students to have the option to participate using a computer since not all of our students have or bring mobile devices.  As I considered options I recalled visiting a friend's library media center and noticing a poster titled favorite author.  Her students had written down their favorite authors on sticky notes and stuck these notes all over the poster.  This recollection inspired the interactive displays below.  These displays have been enhanced with Padlet, Google Forms, Aurasma, and QR codes.  The beautiful guys and girls read displays are thanks to my wonderful intern, Lena Sprouse.  Photos of the displays along with corresponding links will be added to our school website.

Honoring Coretta Scott King with ThingLink

ThingLink is offering free student accounts for teachers.  I signed up and challenged my production technology students to honor the life and work of Coretta Scott King by creating ThingLinks for a CSK award winning author or illustrator.  I am looking forward to seeing the work that is turned in at the end of the week.  My students are applying several apps to bring this project together.  They are using the camera to take photos of the books in the school library media center by the author/illustrator chosen.  Skitch is being used to crop these photos.  Students are using Pic Collage, a class favorite, to create a poster that features one book photo and the author/illustrator's name in fancy font.  These posters will be printed and posted along with a QR code that will correspond to the ThingLink created.  Students are searching online using Safari to find resources to link to their poster and using worditout.com to create word clouds.  As they finish various milestones work is being submitted to Showbie.  I am thrilled that my students are moving beyond a single app approach and focusing on solutions rather than limitations.

This is the project example I created.

ISTE Virtual Conference Takeaways

Thank you ISTE for hosting a free live virtual conference for members!  I participated at the kitchen table in my pajamas even during the midst of a snow week (out of school Tuesday-Friday).

I am so glad I did!  I missed Adam Bellow's closing keynote at ISTE 2013 due to flight schedules.  The virtual conference allowed me a chance to catch the highlights, hear from the man himself, and to become inspired to "change the world".  I also enjoyed the Q & A with ISTE 2013 Ignite presenters and the tech coaches that offered such practical tips.  Key points from various presenters included "ed tech done right is about education", "making something and not sharing is selfish", and parents must be trained  and a lot of planning goes into a successful 1:1/BYOT initiative. I have listed a few of my take aways from the conference below.

• futureme.org: email yourself in the future (great exit ticket, reminder, etc.)
• curate with bit.ly and scoop.it
• use padlet.com or en.linoit.com to allow teachers to share tech integration ideas
• makerspace resource: inventtolearn.com/resources
• edcamp locator: edcamp.wikispaces.com
• STEM resource: zstem.weebly.com