Meanderings With an iPad 2

This morning, I took my iPad 2 out for a spin. I walked around our buildings taking video of students using our technology to learn in various ways. The one thing that really stuck in my head as I walked through the halls was the 'anytime, anyplace' ability when in a 1:1 environment. I saw students in the hallways, on the floor, at tables, and, oh yah, some were still in desks of all places. They were using their laptops to do some pretty cool things. Some were using weebly.com to create websites comparing and contrasting two Latin American countries. Others were creating Keynote presentations to review vocabulary words. Still others were doing bell ringer activities on wordcentral.com. This is good stuff.

I saw elementary students utilizing the technology a little differently. Kindergarteners were using starfall.com for some reading practice during small group time. I saw a bunch of AR testing going on. There was a lab full of students using learning.com's EasyTech to learn about safe emailing practices. Another class doing small groups was using fun4thebrain.com for additional math practice.

The point of my excursion was to gather some video to test the video editing abilities of the iPad 2, which I will do. The result of my wanderings was excitement about how far we've come and how far we are yet to go in our 1:1 journey. So often I get stuck in my office dealing with all of the problems and don't get enough chances to get out and see the good things that are going on. My trip was revitalizing. I will post a link to the edited video once it is completed.

The Last Year

The last year has been a busy one for me full of exciting changes. Since my last post well over a year ago, I have taken a different job at a neighboring district. Spirit Lake has become one of Iowa's largest 1:1 districts. I have been extremely busy helping to make that happen. There have been some frustrating moments as well as some very satisfying moments. We are finally ironing out many of the larger issues, and I am finding time to blog again. I am hoping to do a much better job at keeping this blog much more current. My plan is to do a couple posts a week talking about my day-to-day challenges and triumphs as the Director of Technology. My hope being that someone may find my rants useful in some way.