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Captivating technology

November 4, 2011 – 3:21 pm

Our school is moving towards a technology-rich environment, and many of our kids own the latest in digital tools. The pace of modern change, however, is such that there is no way any one person (or group of people) will be able to keep up with all the latest trends.

One of our fellow teachers had an enlightening moment earlier this week. He walked into the library to find a group of students excitedly poking and prodding at something on one of the desks. When he headed over to where they were, he could hear the chatter as they tried to figure out how it worked. They couldn’t believe that something as cool as this new device existed.

Once they actually got the thing running, there even was a little bit of pushing and shoving to be the “next in line” to give it a go. He snapped a few pictures of the kids “fighting” over the privilege of using the machine, and shared them with us. I am always reminded of how lucky we are to live in days of such modern convenience, and how quickly the world changes around us.

(and of course the photos are used with the photographer’s permission, and kids’ faced blurred because they are, well, kids)

By Dave | Posted in School | Comments (0)

Slacking off

April 30, 2009 – 7:55 am

There haven’t been too many posts this week due to a new distraction in my life. For better or for worse, however, there is a long backstory that you’ll have to wade through to get to the good stuff!

Electronics in India are a hot or miss affair. Some things are very reasonably priced and of good quality, others are horrendously expensive and/or are shady knock offs. When I’ve wanted to get something expensive, I’ve usually tried to get it from the US – still showing my regional bias, I suppose.

Susan wanted to find some specific pictures from when we were in Belgrade, and the fuss and hoopla that took place in trying to find them in our stack of picture dvds was out of control. As I surveyed the wreck that our living room had become in the quest to find a few silly images, I decided that I needed a new external hard drive on which to store all our media!

One of our colleagues was planning to go to the US for a conference, so I cleared it with her and ordered a one terabyte drive from Amazon to be delivered to another colleague’s apartment (where she would be staying). That is a thousand gigs! Crazy – how am I ever going to use that all (of course, I remember saying the same thing when we bought our first computer with an enormous one-gigabyte hard drive!)?!

As I sat in front of the computer ordering, I figured ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ and ordered a portable mp3/video player as well. Well, I must’ve missed the email that said it was being sent under separate cover – because when our friend got back, she only had the hard drive, but did say that “a really small and light box from Amazon was at the apartment as well.” Guess I’ll have to figure out a way to get it this summer!

But the hard drive is here, and so I’ve spent much of the past week transferring music and pictures over to it. There are still some doubles to weed out and some ‘floaters’ lost on individual disks around the house to put on, but all in all it feels good to have everything in one place. Of course, I spent an hour last night looking through old scans and pictures I haven’t seen in years, and got nothing done on the Egypt pages…

And that’s why there haven’t been any blog entries this week. But I promise, there is a good one tomorrow!

By Dave | Posted in Dave | Comments (0)

Free verse Friday: Technology

March 27, 2009 – 7:53 am

In ancient times it was “the web”
it crawled at speeds so slow
a class website with webquest links
was as far as you could go.

But times have changed and now we’ve found
tech expectations grow
now its no longer good enough
a powerpoint to show.

A class must have a daily blog
among so many things
like social network buddy lists
and teacher-student nings.

Forget a course description?
just check out the school wiki
and if there are errors, we’ll sure fix ‘em -
with Google docs, real quickly!

Can’t come to school? Just Skype or tweet
(coolspeak for using Twitter)
If you post your status on Facebook
no pictures ’til you’re better!

Laptop’s down? No internet?
Blackberry to the rescue.
No peace of mind, no extra time
Just check your email, won’t you?!

Jing, Wink, ALEKS, GoGo Frog
Schooldude, DyKnow, VC
Scratch and Atlas, Portal, Pivot
Please, please, please stop the insanity!

By Dave | Posted in Dave, School | Comments (3)

ASB Unplugged

February 27, 2008 – 2:22 pm

ASB UnpluggedThe whole school is aflutter this week because of a big technology conference we are hosting. There are administrators and tech personnel coming in from at least 26 international schools, and the 3-day conference is a huge showcase for the day-to-day uses of tech in the educational arena. Many teachers are personally delivering workshops: Susan is leading a group on the use of a digital document camera in the first grade classroom while Dave has ‘farmed out’ his presentations to students – they’ll be showcasing subject specific programs to the conference attendees.

It is a pretty big deal for the school, as ASB is very much on the cutting edge of computer use in the classroom. In the middle and high school, all students have a tablet computer (think “laptop with swiveling screen”) that they bring with them to all classes. The elementary school kids have a good deal of computer exposure as well – witness Alea’s webpage and Breck’s class blog. Of course, there are also a million other things going on, from grades being due to a PTA formal party, so there’s no chance to sit back and bask in glory!

Just to keep things in perspective, however, I did have to laugh at what I got when I googled the asb unplugged conference:
ASB Unplugged on Google

I was relieved to note that – no, people didn’t (necessarily) consider the conference to be ‘dangerously irrelevant’ – this is the name of a blog run by Scott McLeod, one of the keynote speakers at the conference. Whew!

By Dave | Posted in Alea, Breck, Dave, School, Suz | Comments (3)