Onionskin

I’m so excited! It’s official. Next month I am going back to working with kids and teachers, as an Engaged Learning Specialist at the middle school level!

I love the fact that my new job title places the focus on Engaged Learning, and that it is a multi-faceted position. I’ll be working with students in a computer lab part of the time, so I’m delving into the brand-new NETS publication eagerly, looking for the changes and seeing how they align with my current thinking about digital citizenship. I’ll be working with teachers to integrate technology part of the time, so I will get to apply some of that new knowledge shared by friends who attended NECC this summer and do what I love most – collaborate and facilitate. I will also be making some changes to the media center, so I am very grateful to have the insights of so many colleagues in my online PLN who have been investigating and blogging this past year about the changing role of the library.

Best of all, my new superintendent and new principal “get it”… They have used the phrases “breaking down walls” and “getting in the way of students’ learning”. Not surprisingly, my superintendent shared with me the highlights of various conversations he’s had recently with Will Richardson, David Jakes and Meg Ormiston. How refreshing to speak to an administrator who doesn’t give me a blank look when I talk about who’s on my aggregator!

This announcement is so new that I haven’t even seen the spaces I’ll be working in next year, so it’s a little hard to “envision” at this point. I’m looking forward to meeting new friends, getting oriented to a new culture, and beginning this wonderful adventure. I’m sure that it won’t be long before my To Do List grows to immense proportions, and surpasses the length of my current list of questions… so I’m getting organized now! I’m looking at Moodle and nings and wikis, and investigating student blogs and podcasting tools…

What tools have been most beneficial to you in your quest to integrate technology? What suggestions do you have for me — things you wish you’d known when you started your last new position? What would you do with a brand new opportunity like this one?

Photo Credit: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=109866&

As I mentioned in my last post, there has been a resurgence of interest in the low-cost alternatives to the big name manufacturers of interactive whiteboards.

I’ve been listening to some of the Twitter-chatter regarding this subject in the past week or so, and discovered a resounding lack of satisfaction with the fact that most of the low-cost alternatives are only Windows-compatible. In a remarkably well-timed e-mail follow-up, Jim Flanagan forwarded to me this February post from Uwe Schmidt. The comments on this blog have continued for three months, so be sure to scroll down and see all of the updates!

It’s spring, and Ed Tech Directors across the country are looking at how to “spend down” those budgets.

I spent the afternoon with some of my favorite smart people, a spirited group of Technology Directors from the northwestern suburban school districts of Chicago. The collective knowledge in the room is overwhelming — not just on the “techie” level, but on the historical knowledge of where education has come from and where it should go to next in Illinois.

One colleague shared her board’s intense interest in SmartBoards^©, and quasi-linked it to a recent article in the local paper regarding a neighboring district’s enthusiasm for this product.

Other Tech Directors in the room nodded sympathetically. One questioned the use of this type of a tool as anything that increases student learning; it is all teacher-directed, and seems to be a fancier way to do what we’ve been doing (wrong) for so many years.

I referred to Will Richardson’s presentation a few weeks ago, in which he mentioned a much cheaper solution that was developed by Johnny Lee, a doctoral student at Carnegie-Mellon.

By some odd coincidence, my Twitter network tonight included an informal announcement from a colleague at the University of Delaware: “Built my Wiimote whiteboard pen and almost have it working!”As others added comments and followed other threads of discussions she continued updating every few minutes:

“I can barely solder and made a fair pen in about 1/2 hour.”

“Then you have to play with the software for awhile.”

“I’m doing it on Mac and trying Darwiin Remote and Wiimote Whiteboard.”

“It’s going to take a bit of practice.”

“Let me know how it works out for you. I’m still playing. Not as smooth as the videos ”

“$10 parts to make light pen, $50 Wii controller, free software almost creates a smartboard…”

It was exciting to know that what I had heard in theory could actually take form. I wondered if my colleagues in neighboring school districts had the resources, manpower and patience to experiment in this way. Yet, who can afford to ignore the potential savings if the Wii version — if indeed it delivers what the pricier out-of-the-box versions do?

Stay tuned… My University of Delaware friend and another university-level educator have been challenged by me to create video tutorials of their “amendments” to Johnny Lee’s original post.

<a