1 to 1 at HJM

What a feeling! First week down… students are reading quietly during AR. Does this tell you anything that I’m just now able to blog a little? We are using laptops in class right now, in partners. Students are getting used to posting and gathering information from the web. Hopefully we will get to send them home soon. I didn’t realize what a learning curve it would be! I always figured these “digital natives” would hop right in ready to roll… but they don’t. Most of them know enough to get them in trouble… so not only is it our responsibility to teach the curriculum this year, but our students will also learn the appropriate ways to conduct themselves in an online world.

Tomorrow is our first required teacher workday. It is also (drum roll please) our Orientation / Parent Night for students at HJM. We have been feverishly working the past week trying to make sure the laptops are at their peak performance and ready to run when the kids arrive. Today I’m working on a way to identify the endless sea of black neoprene cases. Can’t you just see the complaints now? “He stole mine!”… “I think this is my case, but I’m not sure!” We’ve gotten metal rim tags (seen here) to attach to each case. These will have their laptop number (ie. 28) and their library asset number (ie. T927) so:

A) They can keep up with their cases

B) If the case / laptop is lost, it can quickly be identified in the library

C) Teachers can quickly identify who has what

Hopefully it will work out well! I’m 16 down… only 40 some to go?? This will be a great experience… this will be a great experience… this will be a great experience! Nothing wrong with a little positive motivation!

We will be having our own team parent night on Wednesday August 26th for all students and parents. Here they will get the official word on student laptops and sign all the agreement forms needed. As it stands right now, they probably will not walk out with a laptop on Wednesday night, but we can hope that they will receive one on Thursday morning!

Excitement is brewing. I talked with one of my incoming students this year and she told me that she is very excited about having the laptops. Hopefully the students will be excited and also learn to appreciate all the effort, support, and ultimately love that went into these laptops for their use.

But who am I kidding, these are 8th graders! Bless their hearts… I love them all the same!

Note: Picture from http://www.nextag.com/metal-rim-tags/shop-html accessed on 8-20-09.

Rooms are all set up and decorated (with VERY few staples in the wall – I have 3 and Tracy has none!  A HUGE feat if you know us )… a few more outside bulletin boards to go… now just a little planning to do!  You got any good ideas? We’re looking for as much integration as we can do.  We’re open to any ideas and suggestions – we’re excited to see what comes out of this year!

Room setup in each room:

• 7 five-foot tables with 4 chairs each (2 x 2 chair arrangement) – To get ready for some Kagan strategies!
• Digital projector
• Document camera
• Promethean board
• Student laptops with Promethean Student Edition software
• (Math / Science room only) Promethean ActiveExpression, ActiveSlate, & ActiveSound (well… waiting for the rest of the install!)

We’ve decided we’re the “Dot.Com” team right now and will take our first poll for new team names when the students receive their laptops.

T – 8 days.

Ready or not, here we come!

After much discussion and deliberation, we decided today that we will use wikispaces as our platform website.  We looked at the site pbwiki and wikispaces.  The big question is “Why wikispaces?”  The short answer: the discussion capability.

Pros for wikispaces:

1.  Free upgrade to their “Plus” plan for K-12 users.  This gives an ads free option & the ability to add 100 users (without the need for individual student emails).  Once you get the free upgrade, you are given a link to automatic upgrades for every subsequent wiki you / your students create.

2.  Easy user upload either from spreadsheet or text file.  You can create your own passwords or have wikispaces generate them for you.  They send you a nice compiled list in your email of all student logins and passwords.

3.  Discussion board integrated into your wiki automatically.  Once members have been added (if your page is locked down) they have the option of joining in on the discussion board.  Quick and easy for classroom use.  This could possibly take place of a classroom blog that is only used for classroom discussion.  You think?

4. Easy lock / unlock pages within the wiki.  Instead of having the whole wiki locked or user-edit capable, you can choose which pages you would like.

5.  Wide variety of widgets to use within the wiki.  We will be using the google Docs to host many parts of our wiki.

Cons:

1.  Editing text in the wiki is not super easy.  Be careful when using the text toolbar in conjunction with the header sizes (heading 1, heading 2, etc…) When we were working on it today, there was some funky overrides when using both text functions.  Thus making us think we had gone crazy!!

2.  Purely adhering to my ADD   Pbwiki has a nice compiled folder system.  On wikispaces, every time you add a link to a page, it adds it to your navigation bar.  In pbwiki, you can choose to put that file in a specific page folder.  Thus creating an in-depth website with a nice, neat front page.

Overall, we are very pleased with this decision.  Let us know what you think!

Check us out:  http://mrsgreenes1to1.wikispaces.com and http://mrsdavis1to1.wikispaces.com

We’ve been feverishly preparing for the new year. Our tech facilitator has been to Web 2.0 training, Tracy has been to Kagan training, and I (along with our librarian and principal) have been to wiki and ning training. We’re all learning brand new vocabulary and getting very excited about the upcoming year!

Right now, the big question is what to use for our class website. Wikis? Wikispaces? PBWiki? Ning? I must say though I think wikis are the way to go. They’re an easy way to make a website. And with wikispaces (possible pbwiki as well) you can add multiple wikis in conjunction with yours.  (ie: student based wikis for different collaborative projects!)  Using wikispaces, you can also get a free upgrade using the K-12 license that will knock off the pesky ads on the side. Very cool!

An informative and quite entertaining video:
Wikis in Plain English

Now we’re just waiting on Tracy’s big move from upstairs to downstairs and the paint in my room to dry! Then it’s off to the races. Ready or not, here comes August 25th!

We are getting excited!  We are T – 6 weeks until the start of school.  Lots of essential personnel to our 1 to 1 pilot experience will be meeting to gather ideas and hammer out some of the last minute details.  Hopefully, we will develop good teacher and student resources for the program and figure out the nuts and bolts for how this operation can run as smoothly as possible.