The topic was “10 months into a 1-to-1 iPad deployment: lessons learned.” Main take-aways:

As part of the event, we put [...]]]> Last Thursday was a great day of professional development as 30 educators from around the Northwest visited Westside’s iPad Open House. This was an opportunity for IT directors, teachers and administrators to see students in action and learn about the process of deploying a 1-to-1 iPad program.

As part of the event, we put together a list of resources, from multi-iPad management tools to educational apps to digital learning communities (embedded after the jump for website viewers).

I also attempted to take the past year’s experiences & tutorials and synthesize it into a single pre-deployment survey that covers pedagogy, infrastructure and budgetary considerations. This document can be used for either an iPad deployment or a laptop deployment and is free to download.

I’ve found it easier to stay informed since implementing Gmail’s multiple inboxes lab, which uses filters to keep pertinent information “above [...]]]> With a constant flow of email from teachers, parents and students, there is more than one time this year when I’ve been caught off-guard and/or let important communication fall through the cracks.

I’ve found it easier to stay informed since implementing Gmail’s multiple inboxes lab, which uses filters to keep pertinent information “above the fold” when I’m online:

Multiple inboxes can be switched on from Gmail’s settings> Labs > Multiple Inboxes. Once enabled, you can set up inboxes using any search parameter you choose (or a combination using Boolean operators):

What skill(s) do you feel are most important for today’s students to explore in academic settings (tech [...]]]> Name: Chuck Milsap (gobeehive.com)
Organization:  Daniel Bagley Elementary, Seattle School District
Current title:  Health & Fitness Instructor
Selected accolade: Washington State Elementary Physical Education Teacher of the Year,  Voted best smile in 7th grade

What skill(s) do you feel are most important for today’s students to explore in academic settings (tech or non-tech related)?

By 5^th grade, kids should have the skills to independently develop and follow a personalized exercise plan. This plan doesn’t have to be incredibly extensive, but students should consider personal fitness goals, various components of fitness, a variety of activities and other factors when creating a plan to enhance health. Creating such a plan is particularly important considering our current obesity epidemic combined with the fact that students generally see a decrease in PE minutes during the middle and high school years.

“K-12 Physical Education has evolved more than any other subject over the past decade and continues to make tremendous advances in the way technology is integrated to enhance instructional outcomes.”

How are you using technology in PE? As an organization tool for yourself and also with students?

I use some form of technology on a daily basis in PE. Heart rate monitors and GPS navigational devices are often used in class to enhance curriculum and maximize movement sequences. In the “Wellness Center”, we often meet for lesson overviews and class discussions. In this area of the gym, students can view relevant websites, student work and other images projected on the wall.

This is also were you will often find our iPad. This tool has had a tremendous impact on the way I teach and the way student move and interact in PE class. I use the iPad to log fitness scores, display exercise intervals, create short exercise videos, play music, administer customized assessments, communicate with students who are non-verbal or who have special needs and much more.

What are some of the results of using technology in your gym?

Post assessment scores are up from last year among my 4^th/5^th graders (both written and fitness assessments). I attribute this in part to our dynamic use of the iPad. One noteworthy connection could be seen in the area of nutrition. This year, students scored 10% higher on post (written) assessment scores following a 2-week instructional unit. During the unit, we used a variety of apps that supported student learning by: counting caloric intake and output, videotaping a variety of foods consumed in the lunchroom and videotaping a few nutritional public service announcements from teachers, students and our principal. We also used a popular smoothie app to decide which offered greatest nutritional value and what ingredients we needed to bring to PE class. Each of these instructional strategies combined to increase nutritional awareness throughout our student body.

What is the best part about your job?

The daily interactions with all of my students. We have over 400 students at DBE, and I see about 200 in the gym each day. I get to grow up with my students, seeing them through the elementary school system from kindergarten through 5th grade. We learn a lot about each other, our families, and we share a lot of laughs along the way.

What was your path to your current position?

I graduated with a BA in Physical Education from Seattle Pacific University in 2000. At that time I was a young PE teacher who entered the gym with little knowledge about what a PE curriculum looked like. Since then I have earned my National Boards and participated in hundreds of formal classes, but the time spent with my PE colleagues has proven most effective in my instructional development.

Do you have a single lesson plan, curriculum strand, or project that you feel exemplifies effective technology integration?

I have occasionally used a simple (and free) app this year called ChoiceBoard Creator. This app allows me to do a variety of things to support curricular goals.

First, I can create a customized assessment for selected students. This formative assessment strategy has greatly increased post assessment scores among my low and medium learners. Further, this app allows my to instantly create choices for students who are finished with given tasks or students who need structured choices.

ChoiceBoard Creator allows us to maximize movement time by instantly projecting selected activities and it has proven effective in communicating with students who are non-verbal and have not developed sign language skills.

We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist . . . in
order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

In pondering the Editor note: discussing “jobs from the future” may be a creative compliment to high school classes studying economics, sociology, media literacy, entrepreneurism,  etc.

In pondering the Fisch & McLeod’s quote from Shift Happens 2.0, I can’t help but imagine what these jobs will be. While social science fiction focuses on the more glamorous possibilities, the reality is many employment opportunities will be rather pedestrian – back in 1990, a full-time job as a bulletin board moderator seemed futuristic.

Assuming capitalism & consumerism march onward, we still have electricity, and everything that can be outsourced will be, what are opportunities for recent grad employment?

Young people may turn to stints as Surfer Surrogates. A surfer surrogate effectively rents their online identity: travelling with high-profile clients (sports stars, movie stars, politicians, executives) and allowing them to use/tarnish the surrogate digital footprint and geo-location data.

The boss can use a surrogate’s interactive devices to do what he or she wants to online…without the search terms, frequented sites and online interactions being traced back to their own name. A candidate for governor could sit on a tourbus watching honey badger videos all day on a surrogate computer while other staff members use the candidate’s devices & accounts to post video/micro-blog/photo updates and visit pertinent “grown-up” sites (legal, federal, news-based, political, etc).

Physical surrogates will be preferable to tech-based cloaking systems because there will be someone to take the blame for illegal data downloads or questionably moral activity. Surrogate contracts will include non-disclosure agreements and enormous legal penalties for violation.

Have your own ideas of “jobs from the future”? Please comment or post and link back! 

Example surfer surrogate posting:

Help wanted: Love to travel? Looking to get paid just for showing up?

National political candidate is hiring a dependable and discreet team member. Great entry-level position for recent graduates.

This job package includes:

• $43,000 salary
• paid cell phone contract, unlimited data plan, stipend for digital device purchases
• full medical/dental/vision benefits
• up to 6% retirement match
• mobile housing – private room on a support staff bus

While many teachers have been introduced to “the flip” via the video lessons of pioneers, video is just one example of an evolving flipped teaching sensibility. Flipping is the act of identifying rote or procedural elements of a lesson, [...]]]> This position piece was a response to a Learning & Leading prompt, submitted April 9, 2012:

While many teachers have been introduced to “the flip” via the video lessons of pioneers, video is just one example of an evolving flipped teaching sensibility. Flipping is the act of identifying rote or procedural elements of a lesson, shifting this repetitive content to a medium not bound by teacher availability, and empowering students to take an active role in their education.

Flipping is a natural compliment to a 21st century learning environment. The teacher moves through the roles of manager, coach, facilitator & mentor. Class time is spent exploring, discovering, succeeding and sometimes failing. Students work on project-based work and collaborate as appropriate to share information and successes. When a common vocabulary or foundational concept is required, the teacher (or students) can choose how to provide that information in a way that is archived for future reference.

Flipped instruction today is defined by a teacher’s willingness to help students learn how/when they see fit, release control of the classroom experience, and engage in a process of finding the best way to reach and respond to students individually. The appropriate medium to convey information beyond class (videos, podcasts, worksheets, books, articles, etc) is selected based on content, community needs & teaching style.

Critics of flipped instruction suggest that the concept is about shifting bad lecture to an unresponsive, technology-dependent format. This argument focuses on a narrow definition of flipping taken out of context of the learning community it was designed for. Successful educators use the flipped model as one of an array of tools to support students – often employing a number of communication media (email, IM, bulletin boards, blogs learning management systems) to create a culture of information sharing within a cohort.

Flipped content allows viewers to control the content they interact with, the time it is engaged, and the speed at which it is consumed. It is essential to note that this content typically focuses on the lower-order thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy: leaving class time for application, analysis & evaluation. Students can access content during study hall, library-time, electives, homeroom, class free-time or from home.

Khan Academy is not, and has never, served as a model of flipping – KA video tutorials are a library of academic concepts & quizzes that might be used to support a flipped classroom. The term “flipped teaching” merely highlights a method of untangling student learning opportunity from teacher availability. The flipped opportunity is the prospect that an educator can move beyond the mechanics of content-delivery to the art of teaching.

Flipping is not a dummy-proof solution to education. Anyone seeking such a goal discounts the devotion and expertise that teachers bring to a classroom day after day, year after year. Whether to flip or not is no longer a relevant question. With 21st century learning, a more apropos question is, “What can our community accomplish in the classroom if everyone has, or has the ability to obtain, a foundation of understanding from which to succeed?”

“Technology is the use of new knowledge to improve our lives by solving problems or making us more productive.”

These world are the culmination of hours worth of discussion about [...]]]> On Tuesdays & Thursdays I get to hang out with a group of amazing middle school technologists who recently crowd-sourced the following definition:

“Technology is the use of new knowledge to improve our lives by solving problems or making us more productive.”

These world are the culmination of hours worth of discussion about the benefits and consequences of technology. At one moment in a conversation, a fifth grade student dropped this gem:

“Even music can be technology, because it uses knowledge to make our lives better.”

It took me a few seconds of bumbling to wrap my head & heart around the comment – such a profound and innocent statement that fuses the desire to create with technology’s potential to connect us with each other and the world around us.

There’s a beautiful illustration of this concept in Alive Inside, a new documentary that sits at the intersection of technology, music and therapy. Get past concerns of the word “iPod” dropping a bunch of times and watch through to the 5-minute mark where music reveals itself as technology, based on the above student definitions.

“It gives me the feeling of love, romance. I figure right now the world needs to come into music – singing you’ve got beautiful music here. Beautiful, lovely. I feel  a band of love, of dreams.”

original source: (Core77.com)

The goal of the night was to stop focusing on how different the media suggests today’s world is and start recognizing the ways [...]]]> There was an excellent gathering of parents in West Seattle last night to discuss “parenting digital natives.” Our small-group conversations focused on essential questions that reflect our cultural and family values around technology use.

The goal of the night was to stop focusing on how different the media suggests today’s world is and start recognizing the ways in which clear parenting is still important, regardless of the technological medium.

Notes and resources for growing up digital are captured in Storify and shared after the jump…

Parenting digital natives

A collection of resources for parents interested in understanding the digital world that children are experiencing. Generated by/for the Westside School parent community on April 10, 2012 in Seattle, Washington.

Storified by Jac de Haan · Wed, Apr 11 2012 16:54:36