Education and Technology

I experienced some weird signal loss with a few of our ActivBoards that I could only reproduce on the teachers laptops that used those ActivBoards. I took my known good laptop with me to test the board to verify that it was the teachers laptop, not the ActivBoard. I also took the teachers laptop to another ActivBoard, which would then reproduce the error without fail. This led me to start looking at what was installed on the laptop for conflicts.

In each case, 8 total, the laptop either had the AOL client installed or a Google product that had installed the Google Updater. After removing or actually first disabling these programs, I found these laptops worked without any further trouble with any ActivBoard. I let the laptops run for a week with the updater or AOL disabled before I then re-enabled the offending software for a final proof of theory. Bingo, the systems started losing signal with the ActivBoards within an hour, sometimes within 30 seconds.

Our district does not condone the use of Google products such as Google Desktop or toolbar and does not support them, ditto for AOL. I personally consider the AOL client software a poor piece of programming that takes over your system without any regard to your wishes or what else is installed.

I’ll be warning teachers more often about Google and AOL so that I don’t have to make a service call that could have been avoided.

Technorati tags: Educational Technology, k12 Education, ActivBoard, Promethean, Google, AOL

This YouTube video has some interesting points that I talked about in my last post.

Pay Attention:

Technorati tags: Educational Technology, Technology, k12 Education

Every school year most administrations come up with a theme for the year. This year our theme is “Under Construction”.

When I saw the construction motif, I thought about all the construction that has taken place over the summer. A new Chiller room and AC unit, new carpet in some of the wings, new paint in one building, security cameras and the installation of 32 more ActivBoards. These things were needed as the school was built in 1958 and hasn’t had a remodel in many years. But what does this construction have to do with teaching? Well, we have to continually add to, remodel, fine tune our students as they grow. We also have to do the same with the curriculum and the tools we use to teach with.

What also stood out as the Principal talked about our students being under construction was that each grade level is a foundation for the next. When a student moves from grade to the next they are not a finished product, instead they have been molded, remodeled and fine tuned for that grade level. They have been molded to be ready for the next grade to add more to the foundation.

The same has to be done to the technology. ActivBoards have been added, teachers have been trained to use them. We need to start using the tools that the children are using at home, the iPod, blogs, wiki’s and other interactive tools. How many students do you have that have a MySpace account, or use Facebook, or have an iPod? How many have a Wii or a playstation or even an xbox? Did you know that you can use the ActivBoard as an interactive tool that the students already understand and are interested in because it lets them join in, touch and make their own choices just like that Wii, playstation or xbox.

Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. Use what they use in their everyday life and they will surprise you. Use the tools that lets them learn what we need them to learn. Maybe that’s the way we need to look at the construction. Build on what’s there, add that coat of paint with something they can connect to.

“Under Construction”, that’s what we all are.

Technorati tags: K12 Education, Educational Technology, Education

Welcome…..

I’ve been writing Education & Technology for about a year. In the last few months I’ve been working on moving my blog to my own hosted domain. With the preparation and seeing that the school year is about to begin Monday morning the 20th I thought now was a good time to take the plunge.

I’m looking forward to writing some great things in this school year. We have a lot of things going on here at Brentwood Elementary, one of which is a Wiki for our new Science lab. I’ll be blogging about that in the near future. Some other things that we will be working on are an online school newsletter, a lesson plan wiki, teacher blogs and the use of the ActivBoards in all classrooms.

Keep watching more to come soon!

Technorati tags: Educational Technology, Education, k12 Education