What happens to the Old School?

I’ve been playing with some great new tools today thanks to my friend Graham. Things like PopFly and Microsoft Robot Studio. These are some cool little tools.

Microsoft Robotics Studio brings the programming of Robots into a realistic 3D world. Add to that the Soccer or Sumo Tournament that can be downloaded and I’m sure that our Students will have great time with it.

PopFly is still in Beta, and once released I think it will be a very handy teaching tool. I also think that once LG gets it onto her Tablet she will see the opportunities that it holds within. I can see her Year 9 IST class producing some pretty impressive content. Used with Visual Studio, which we have under the Schools Agreement, and this little beauty can be used to cover a myriad of the outcomes I’m sure.

The sad thing will be what happens to the “Old School” tools. This really is a time where new technologies are being used in a variety of Educational Projects. Teachers really do have to keep up or they will find themselves being left behind. We are already seeing ways in which Students are showing their Teachers a thing or two, so ICT in Educaton is surely a bi-directional learning experience.

Of course the sad part of this is that I have just created a lot more work for my team in this already too busy Roll-Out for 2008. It will be worth it when I see what our Students will create.

Roll on 2008.

So, for 2008

The time has come to look to 2008 and what we would like to achieve. We have already done the Hardware Audit and know what we are purchasing for 2008. We will end up with 220 Desktops, 56 School owned Laptops, and probably 50 -100 students with laptops. I cant see any changes to the current filtering protocols, and I would like for us to do some “trials” with a group of students. I sent the following to twisted for her to dwell upon.Ok, so I’ve been thinking (which has often proved to be very dangerous) and if you want to present at ELH 2008 on “TFT” we could approach it in the following way.

1. Create a wish list of what you’d like to be able to use (blog’s, twitter, etc.) and what you’d like to achieve with them.
2. I will then investigate and create (as best we can) these for you to use.
   • This may be hosted locally or remotely depending on how we go.
   • This may need a certain class/classes to be set up with different filtering options (I’ll explain how we can do this at some stage) which may need a submission to the powers that be and parental acceptance etc.
3. Teach to your hearts content using these new options and glean (isn’t that a silly word) as much info on the pro’s and con’s of what you’ve found in doing this.
4. We then do 2 presentations, to both teachers and techs, about what we wanted to achieve and how we achieved it by being united in what we wanted to do.

Just my early thoughts…… Lets see what we can do with this. If we can get LG with 2 classes in the same area we could use the original methods with 1 and the new and improved with the other. Though using this as a comparison may not be suitable depending on where they are to start with, but you’d get to see how students respond to the newer approach.Let me know what you think about this? Are there any issues I’m not covering here. Cheers,TFT.

Talking Heads

Just a quick update. We have started discussions with our Heads of Schools, and all is starting to look well. It appears that a few of us are on the same page, some even further ahead than I thought. 2008 is rapidly approaching and we are needing to move fast with this one. I am meeting with our Head of Middle School and our ICT Learning Co-ordinator – K-12 (lgw) next week. Lets see what we can push for next year. 2009 looks like it will be a year of great change. That is if we cant push it all through before then.

Fade to Grey

So, where do we begin? There were 7 of us at ELH2007 last week, and for most of us, there were huge plans, big dreams and the biggest of visions of what we would like to do. The worst thing would be to loose all of this.

This week I hope to get together with those of our Executive that attended. Our HOJS, HOSS, and ICT Learning Co-Ordinator K-12, and have a look at what they each want to do. I can see a brainstorming session coming on. The biggest issue will be timeframe. Obviously this is not going to happen overnight, but we need to start planning to make it happen. In the meantime the Teachers that were there have come away with great ideas and new ways to do things.

We will also need to look at Policy. What is currently in place is very restrictive. The sad part is that I wrote it. The happy part is that I’m open to change it. This I believe will be the first step. I can now see that the uses of ICT in Education are not something that can be controlled by Black and White Policy. We need to get to the point where we are flexible. At some point in time, some of that policy will need to fade to grey.