The 1-to-1 project in my own school district has shown me the value of “one laptop per child.” I’ll watch this project with great interest.

Download: STP-NSBA-1to1 (26.9 MB, 58:31)

Our conversation centered mostly on the topic of access to technology and how full-time access changes the teaching and learning environment. Will’s school just launched a tablet PC project for teachers, and we’re in the second year of a 1-to-1 project with 600 elementary students and their teachers. We’ve both found that if teachers let it happen, 1-to-1 environments can change the day to day work of teaching and learning dramatically.

Are we approaching a day when not providing a computing device to each and every student constitutes educational malpractice? A laptop changes nothing by itself, of course, without a well-trained teacher to create and facilitate learning activities that exploit the technology. At least if you send the technology home with the students they can explore things on their own regardless of what goes on at school.

Download: ETC2C-20050922 (19.5 MB, 42:32)

This principle was reinforced to me throughout the professional development program for our one-to-one computing project. We did some training early on and it was obvious that the sessions were operating at too high a level for a substantial number of the teachers in the group. (Yes, we had actual tears from at least two participants.) Nothing like making a teacher cry to bring home the importance of this issue. We improved our training program substantially and by the end of the year we were offering much smaller training “electives” that teachers could choose from to help ensure that they were getting the material at an appropriate level. A mentoring model is an obvious next step, and I plan to work on that this year.

The final principle that I discovered was that teachers (and everyone else by extension) can only learn when they’re ready to hear what is being taught. It’s of little use to teach iPhoto to someone who’s never taken a digital picture. Ever tried teaching people about blogs who aren’t regular blog readers? They may enjoy the training, but the chance that they will begin blogging seriously themselves is practically zero. When I get questions from teachers about some bit of technology that they were trained on a few weeks or months earlier, it’s obvious that they didn’t learn it the first time because they weren’t ready to hear it.

This “just in time” element is evident in my thinking about our curriculum sharing tool. I’m convinced that the system won’t be used to its utmost unless the district’s teachers get timely suggestions of resources that they can use right away. Talking to someone about a technology tool that they might use in a few months isn’t effective. You need to get the information to them when the curriculum is already on their minds.

One tip: I wouldn’t bother buying a subscription for your K-2 students. I haven’t found much content appropriate for kids that age. If you ask, the BrainPOP folks will sell you a subscription that doesn’t include that group and you’ll save some money.

I had the pleasure of meeting Craig Nansen face to face today. Craig, a fellow Ed-Tech Insider, is a pillar of ed tech leadership here in North Dakota. He’s got eight people working on technology integration in his district of 7,000 students. That’s an impressive level of commitment to staff development!

I’m doing a “nuts and bolts” talk about our one-to-one tomorrow and hope to have time to catch some sessions too. I’ll post all the good stuff here.

Drag images in and out of the well, resize, crop, shape, rotate and add a watermark, border, or drop shadow. No need to launch multiple applications to add text, labels, arrows, circles and squares to your image. Add a thought cloud or talking balloon. A few simple clicks, copy, paste, and send them off to your web server instantly. At the click of a button the image is sent and a handy URL is copied to the clipboard.  Just like that, it doesn’t get any easier!

The software only works on Mac OS X. It’s free, but not open source.

Most of the people who use graphical tools to create Web pages in our schools use Dreamweaver, but there’s no way I want to buy that for each of the 650 laptops. Nvu might be just the ticket for students who want to learn to create Web pages. The tool promotes CSS and other Web design best practices and seems to go well beyond basic Web development. Maybe they’ll all be blogging someday, but until then Nvu will have to do.

This software has such amazing potential with kids. Can you imagine how geared up students would be to use this? Heck, I had a blast creating my first comic. (I created it very quickly. Please forgive the rampant silliness.) Who wouldn’t be motivated to do a writing project this way? Given that iPhoto can be used to manage any kind of image and not just digital photos, my brain is racing to think of uses for this software. Here’s the first off-the-top-of-the-head list:

• Science students create lab reports combining digital photos of an experiment with hand drawn or computer generated graphics explaining what’s going on. They could include their data analysis right in the “comic.”
• History students find some period costumes and re-enact a historically significant event.
• Students use Comic Life to create a storyboard of a video project including some sample dialog and key visual elements.
• Combine digital images and hand-drawn graphics in the same panel to send characters back in time or create giant ladybugs that can crush cars.
• Students create a comic book that explains their family history and combines old and new photos.

This software would be a great addition to the student laptops in our one-to-one computing project. The cost is very reasonable (especially for site licenses) and the potential is huge. This is easily the most fun I’ve had with a piece of software in a long time. If you’re reading this and think of a good project idea, post it in the comments. Let’s see if we can get a good list going.