Here are few pieces of advice that may help you and your technology be more powerful and efficient in your learning environment.

1.  I hate to be pessimistic, as it's not the best sharing approach, but preparing for the worst will help your classroom run way more efficiently.  Be prepared for the technology to "crash" at any time.  It may not work when you need it most.  Here's an example of all the issues a netbook may have at one point or another:

Are you ready to go "old school" if you need to?  Our network also has traffic issues throughout the district and tends to be slow from time to time.  We know that and need to prepare accordingly.  Download videos you're going to use from Discovery Streaming and YouTube before the lesson so you don't have to depend on the network to be fast when you need it to be.

Classroom hardware can have issues as well.  Netbooks may need to be rebooted or may run out of a charge.  The Promethean lamp goes out.  Your ActivPen won't work.  The batteries are low on certain ActivExpression or ActiVote devices.  Test your hardware. Make sure it will work when you need it to work.  Have a plan as well.  Being prepared for disaster is way more than half the battle.

2.  Rethink your classroom setup as you retool your classroom environment.  If a classroom has a class set of netbooks/laptops and the students still sit in rows, as they always have, while the computer faces away from the teacher, there will eventually be issues of some kind.  In a broad sense, if a classroom has added a large amount of instructional technology to the room and the physical setup of the room hasn't changed at all, your instructional technology staff gets worried because they know there will be trouble sooner than later.  With more technology comes more responsibility and more management.  It can be done, and it can be done very well as we've seen in many APS classrooms, it just takes a lot of preparation, experience, openness, flexibility, and learning to make it happen.

3.  While good classroom management with and without technology can look, and work well, in any classroom, there is no better management tool than effective instruction and quality content.  When the students are focused in, they are purposefully busy, and are, for lack of a better word, engaged, classroom management takes care of itself.  All of the previous sentence is way simpler to type than to actually make happen, but teachers know it when they see it.  It's a beautiful thing and something I feel should be a goal with each and every lesson if possible.

So there are just a few suggestions, based on my experience and the experience of our department, that you may want to consider as you add or adjust to having instructional technology in your learning environment.  If you have questions, concerns, or need anything please contact the Department of Instructional Technology representatives that are assigned to your building.  We can help.  It's what we do.

If you are an elementary teacher and would like supplemental Mondo resources or you are use ipods or ipads in your classroom, then these additional resources are exactly what you need.

 

Image: On Flickr by trevorparker

376 Mondo audio files (created from the Mondo CDs) are now available for you and your students to use on a computer or on your ipods or ipads.  We would like to extend a very special thank you to Kim Duran at Boston K-8 for doing all the work and for sharing these files with all of us.

Over 130 additional Mondo movies (supporting all levels) have also been added to our Instructional Resources.  A very special thank you for that work goes to Tammie Doane from the Assistive Technology department.  

Check out all the Instructional Resources by going to:

Click on this link:  \\U:\Distdata\

Or, go to your desktop and open My Computer.

Open the U drive, Distdata folder and then the Instructional Resources folder.

There are two ways to update your software.  Option one: from the Inspire Dashboard, click on "Configure" and then click on "Check for Updates."  Option two: click on the "Help" menu within the software, then click on "Check for Updates."  Go through the update process like you normally would and you'll be all ready to go!

If you have questions or need assistance please contact your building DoIT representative(s).  We're always more than happy to help you.  Enjoy!

District Resources

http://about.ning.com/pearsonsponsorship/

Image: by Sklathill on Flickr

Most of the magic in maintaining a focus on instruction and learning in a 1 to 1 learning environment is classroom management. As much time as you spend in the beginning of the year developing discipline, procedures and routines in the physical classroom, should also be spent in your virtual classroom. Or better yet, draw comparisons between the two as you work with your students. Also, be be prepared to react swiftly to any student that moves slightly out of the boundaries developed by you and your students.

If a student crosses the boundary or honestly has a technical issue, be sure to have an alternative choice available for that student to accomplish their work. Once you make a practice of demonstrating the swift consequences for positive and negative behavior, students will be more likely to focus on their learning. This also stops the domino effect. I've seen it happen whereby one student “hoses” their computer by purposefully deleting file system folders and has an immediate excuse for not getting their work done. Soon after, more students replicate this behavior. If that student had  had an immediate next step that didn't let him/her get away with excuses, none of the other students would follow suit. It's too much work. So be sure students are responsible for always saving everything to the “cloud.” You may want an alternative netbook for the purpose of checking out to students have challenges. Also have a non-technical alternative available.

I've noticed that classrooms that have taken the same approach to the virtual classroom as they do to the physical classroom have minimal downtime due to technical challenges and zero to few netbook damages.

What have you found works best for you and your students?

ActivInspire 1.4 upgrade is now available through the ActivInspire dashboard or the help menu for all existing users!

What's New in ActivInspire V1.4?
For a more comprehensive overview of what's new in ActivInspire V1.4, please visit the special ActivInspire pages. There's also an ActivInspire Quick Start Guide PDF which you can download and print off.

Page Turn Effects
You asked for it, so Promethean delivered it! You can now transition between pages using animation, adding extra focus to your lessons and the added 'wow' factor for your class.

Multipage Select
Multiple pages can now be selected in the Page Browser for easy manipulation of content and the reordering of pages.

Exporting Self Paced Results to Excel ®
It's now even easier to export your Self Paced results into Microsoft Excel for instant assessment.

Pen Modify Tool
The Pen Modifiers tool allows users to create and underline text without having to switch between the write and underline functions

Are You New to ActivInspire?
If you're new to ActivInspire then why not try out the free version of the software, ActivInspire Personal Edition? You can also find out more about how to make the most of your software by taking a Promethean ActivLearning online course.

Existing users of ActivInspire and Version 3 can find out more about upgrading from the ActivInspire section.

ActivInspire V1.4 Tutorials
To coincide with the launch of ActivInspire V1.4, the ActivLearning team provide online tutorials that now include the new features of V1.4, demonstrating Multipage Select, Pen Modify tools and Page Turn Effects. These can be found in the free Introduction to ActivInspire online course.

A new V1.4 tutorial has also been added to the free LRS (Learner Response Systems) course demonstrating Exporting Results in Self-Paced Learning.

(Click image for larger view)

http://doit.aurorak12.org/tech-classes