Find your niche!

We have had some great PD opportunities the last couple of weeks.  We had a group of staff attend ITEC in Des Moines where Chris Like and LeAnne Wagner presented Mission Possible.  This conference is always a solid event with a lot of sharing from others across the state.  Later that week a group of staff attended EdCamp in Chicago.  Ed Camp is not a typical conference, rather it is an unconference where the agenda is determined by those in attendance.  Our staff went and stepped right in and facilitated some sessions.  We will be hosting something similar in February. Please stay tuned if you are interested.  Following that Jimmy and I had the chance to attend the ISTE Leadership Forum in Indianapolis.  I was very proud of Iowa and our district.  I felt like we had as much insight to offer as many other districts.   This is a great organization to stretch your learning if you are passionate about technology as a driver of change.  Additionally, check out what it takes to be a Google Certified Teacher and an Apple Distinguished Educator if this is where you find yourself gravitating.  These are two great programs! 

With all of this being said, I think the coolest thing that I heard by far this week came from Mrs. Ahrens' classroom. She was circling around to groups in her room and noticed that one of her students that was sick for the day had Skyped into her group's conversation.  The student then asked Mrs. Ahrens's a question and was able to have it answered right there. Talk about anytime anywhere learning!  I would encourage each of you to find something you want to do different in your classroom and see how the technology can help with that. Remember, the primary concern for all of us is teaching and learning, not the tech.

Wednesday after Mr. Raso's presentation we will be discussing a few iPads specific topics and giving you some time to work on missions in Mission Possible.  Colin Wikan will be holding Thursday After Class starting this week in his room D308 to host conversations centered around teaching with technology be sure to attend!    

Please let us know of any concerns you are commonly seeing or dealing with in your classrooms.  I think the more conversations we have about this together the better.  

Welcome to 1:1

At the end of this week we will be at full implementation for freshman and sophomores.  We are happy with how smooth the process has been.  Parents have been very happy with the information they are receiving and believe in what we are doing.  After all of this I am most excited to turn the focus back to how this opportunity can help our instruction.  We will be focusing back on Mission Possible and what can be done in different content areas. Remember, we should be asking ourselves what we want to do and then looking for tools to make this happen!

Staff, please make sure to read the information on the bulletin board.  There have been some questions that have come up and I will address those as timely as possible.

Finally, this week some of your tech team members are attending ITEC on Monday where Chris Like and LeAnne Wagner are presenting about our professional development.  We are also completing a site visit and attending an EdCamp at East Leyden High School outside of Chicago on Friday and Saturday.  Be alert for news on Bettendorf hosting an EdCamp in Iowa soon!  We will be releasing more details in the near future.  We are excited for the opportunity to bring some educators together to share and learn from each other.

Thanks for all you do each and every day!

Matt

On to the sophomores!

We have around 400 of our 800 iPads out to the students.  Parents and students continue to be excited about the opportunity. This week we will begin distribution to sophomores.  Also in October we are going to begin addressing digital citizenship topics through advisory.  We believe that these are important conversations and should take place throughout the curriculum throughout the year, but also deserve to have some special attention devoted to the topics.

I have only had a couple requests for apps from teachers, remember if you have an app you want to try, complete a form and submit it to your team leader.  We will have some iPads available for checkout in the library once we get all of the devices to freshman and sophomore students distributed.  We will have some challenges with managing these devices in comparison to the ones that are personalized to a specific user.  Finally, we are starting to get some requests for visits.  We know that this is a process and that not everything will look different right away, but we do want to show and share with others our path.

Make it a great week!

Matt