A question for our laptop using students

Do you use any of the tools portrayed in this video as supporting 21st Century Student with his learning?

What do you think of this video?



Background notes from the original posting on YouTube.

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.

ERAC Meetings

I attended the ERAC Contacts meeting today in Victoria, BC. Because of the travel time back home and making two ferry connections, I'm staying over tonight. During the meeting today I was showing someone my PureDigital Flip Camera. I thought I'd use the flip tonight to take the short video embedded above. It really is a slick little gizmo and at the price - I think I paid $99 - it does a pretty good job. Since I showed mine at a principal's meeting last year, I think there have been a dozen or so purchased, mostly for use in Special Education, but some for classroom use. I think there is a clear application for them in the classroom. Mine came from Costco, but I haven't seen them there lately.

FlipVideo. Look here for more details.

Trying out xtranormal

This took about 15 minutes to create.

Imagine kids making public service announcements with this free web tool.

Cheers... Bob

Fighting Cancer

Do you see the guy over on the right... in the picture of family... yes, that's him left side of the picture, by the window, in behind my daughter and their daughter. That's Elias. He has brain cancer. He's had it for some years now, but following his last episode this summer they have decided to try alternative medicine to go along with the traditional treatments. He is fortunate to have the top oncologist in Western Canada on his case, but the cancer keeps coming back and in August it showed signs of really spreading. Alternative medications are expensive. The costs are approaching $15K per month. I feel so fortunate to live in our small community. The school district (he is a chef at the high school), the union he belongs to, the ferry workers (where he works in the summer), the community at large... they have all rallied around him in this time of struggle.

If you want to read more about his story, go to: http://caringbridge.org/visit/eliasminatsis. It is uplifting how my daughter, Chelsea, and Elias are facing this journey.

Teacher 24/7 Laptop project

It is a pretty exciting time for me. I'm very excited about the decision our Board of Education has made regarding the provision of MacBooks to all our teaching staff, full time and part time, continuing and temporary contracts. The teachers must apply for the laptop, but the costs are being handled by the board over a 4 year lease program.

The laptops will be ordered next week and the rollout will be held over much of a week before the Winter Break. I'll be coordinating training sessions on various pieces of software and web 2.0 tools from January through to June and we will have summer days during the July/August break.

The purpose of providing a laptop to our teaching staff to have available for them to use at any time of the day they wish is to enable them to support/enhance instruction in the classroom. The learning opportunities for staff though workshops and peer tutoring will help teachers, individually and collectively, as they become more familiar and confident in using this resource to support student achievement.

I'm even thinking of a "laptop camp" similar to the Hypercard camps we used to have many years ago.

This should be a very interesting project, one which I am happy to see get rolling before I retire.

The purpose of providing a laptop to our teaching staff to have available for them to use at any time of the day they wish is to enable them to support/enhance instruction in the classroom. The learning opportunities for staff though workshops and peer tutoring will help teachers, individually and collectively, as they become more familiar and confident in using this resource to support student achievement.

Photo Credit Swansea Photographer
http://flickr.com/photos/tfrancis/1288761901/in/set-72157600161692049/
Used with Creative Commons Licensing Permission to copy, distribute and transmit the work