Our school district is piloting Google Apps in Education. It's a natural fit to use Google with the Netbooks. "Working in the cloud" is a term that I am hearing everywhere- TV commercials, educational journals, blogs and so on. The Netbooks are the perfect machine for cloud computing. Jolicloud makes it easier. There are numerous apps offered through Jolicloud that may be added to the Netbooks. Management could be an issue, but with Ubuntu you are able to sync an App change. Make that change on one machine and when the others log in the next time, they just need to run their sync for the App to show. The icons make locating items an easy task.
With any pilot program, your main job is to find out what works and what doesn't. Often times human error can ruin an otherwise great idea. I created a Google document to share with the class with a list of instructions. By following the directions, students would review the basics of word processing. Thing is, I forgot to share the document properly. Now that I have, I will be eager to read student responses.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Getting Acquainted with Netbooks
We are an Apple School. There have only been about 6 PC's in the school in my 11 year experience as Tech Specialist here. BUT...an opportunity presented itself and we now have 26 Dell Inspiron mini Netbooks. They are assigned to AW's class and offer a one to one computer initiative. They were introduced last week and the excitement was contagious!
Preliminary set up and organization are key. Our district subscribes to Atomic Learning and I used the tutorials in the Netbook workshop to help me out. It can be difficult helping others with a technology that you've never 'touched'. Atomic Learning had nice pdf handouts available and they were used to send home information to the students and parents.
My first decision to make: keep the machine with Windows or try a Linux OS.
After 4 days using Windows, I knew we needed to look seriously at an alternative. The Netbook took about 3 minutes to boot up, numerous updates would run and seemed to be needed daily. We had the concern for viruses, which had never been an issue for us before. Also, this class is participating in a Google Apps for Education pilot program in the district. Since we'd be "working in the cloud", I felt Linux would be the way to go. My friend and colleague AD helped me out. He chose Ubuntu with Jolicloud. The system was loaded on several SD cards and installation on 26 machines took a little over 2 hours.
We used a Bretford laptop cart and used additional power strips to accommodate the power plugs. The odd shaped Netbook plugs prevent the use of a traditional power strip.
I gave the classroom teacher address labels and had the kids create a name tag. I thought perhaps their own name tag would create a sense of pride and encourage care of the machines. After tagging, the Netbooks were ready to roll out.
Preliminary set up and organization are key. Our district subscribes to Atomic Learning and I used the tutorials in the Netbook workshop to help me out. It can be difficult helping others with a technology that you've never 'touched'. Atomic Learning had nice pdf handouts available and they were used to send home information to the students and parents.
My first decision to make: keep the machine with Windows or try a Linux OS.
After 4 days using Windows, I knew we needed to look seriously at an alternative. The Netbook took about 3 minutes to boot up, numerous updates would run and seemed to be needed daily. We had the concern for viruses, which had never been an issue for us before. Also, this class is participating in a Google Apps for Education pilot program in the district. Since we'd be "working in the cloud", I felt Linux would be the way to go. My friend and colleague AD helped me out. He chose Ubuntu with Jolicloud. The system was loaded on several SD cards and installation on 26 machines took a little over 2 hours.
We used a Bretford laptop cart and used additional power strips to accommodate the power plugs. The odd shaped Netbook plugs prevent the use of a traditional power strip.
I gave the classroom teacher address labels and had the kids create a name tag. I thought perhaps their own name tag would create a sense of pride and encourage care of the machines. After tagging, the Netbooks were ready to roll out.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Into the Book
There are so many wonderful educational resources available and I found one I’d like to share. It is called Into the Book (http://reading.ecb.org) and was developed by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, Department of Public Instruction and a team of educators.
Kids can get into the book! After entering their first name, they will be assigned a key. There are eight strategies that they can explore; Visualizing, Summarizing, Synthesizing, Making Connections, Prior Knowledge, Inferring, Evaluating, Questioning, as well as using strategies together. Instructional videos are provided and then interactive practice.
Teachers can check out the learning objectives for each strategy, take a look at the student/teacher videos, lessons, teaching tips, suggested books and additional links.
There are so many wonderful suggestions, updated information, pdf downloads, teaching tips and so on.
Into the Book is a multimedia treasure house that will help improve students’ reading comprehension. I know you will find it useful.
Kids can get into the book! After entering their first name, they will be assigned a key. There are eight strategies that they can explore; Visualizing, Summarizing, Synthesizing, Making Connections, Prior Knowledge, Inferring, Evaluating, Questioning, as well as using strategies together. Instructional videos are provided and then interactive practice.
Teachers can check out the learning objectives for each strategy, take a look at the student/teacher videos, lessons, teaching tips, suggested books and additional links.
There are so many wonderful suggestions, updated information, pdf downloads, teaching tips and so on.
Into the Book is a multimedia treasure house that will help improve students’ reading comprehension. I know you will find it useful.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Kid Web Browsers
Here's information on two kid safe browsers. Zoodles (http://www.zoodles.com) is advertised as a "playground full of fun, age-appropriate games". There is ad blocking and violence filtering.
Another I looked at is KidZui (http://www.kidzui.com/). Both offer a desktop icon for ease of access.
Another I looked at is KidZui (http://www.kidzui.com/). Both offer a desktop icon for ease of access.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Where have all the teachers gone?
All the SB6 talk has taken a toll on my outlook for work. That isn't good, it will be so difficult to stay focused on tasks at hand and not look into the future. I fear the country is failing the citizens of tomorrow, and the problem is in our backyards. A dedicated educator takes care of the whole child...not just how well they read, or how high they can score on a test. They care if they are unhappy or having trouble with family and friends. They care if the child is moving to yet another foster home, the fifth in one year.They care if the child has enough food to eat over the weekend. They care if the child goes home to an empty house and no one else will be there for hours. A dedicated educator provides shoes, clothing, counseling, empathy, and love and manages to instruct and motivate and instill in their young charges a desire to learn. What will happen to all the dedicated educators?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
