This Week in Ontario Edublogs

Check out the great reading – straight from the pages of Ontario Edubloggers…

GAFE You Have Me Convinced

David Fife’s recent post about his thoughts of working in the cloud, particularly with Google Apps for Education is an interesting read.  He discusses trust and functionality and why he’s now “convinced” that he’s made the right choice.  Unfortunately, one of the reasons is a locked down computer at work.

David’s also presenting at the ECOO13 Conference!  Click the image to see his session.

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Park Avenue Post Weekly

Brian Harrison is using his blog as a way to communicate with students and parents.  My guess is more parents than students.  He’s delivering it via website, Twitter and the blog.  What a great way to communicate with the community.  I found it interesting that, after two weeks, he’s taking on the topic of BYOD right up front!  It will be interesting to follow this and see if the discussion continues throughout the school year.  I hope that it does and highlights what enabling is possible because of the decision.

Brian is also presenting at the ECOO13 Conference.  Click the image to see his session.

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2nd Grade Math, My Way

Kristen Wideen share with us her thoughts about using her employer’s selected mathematics resource.  With access to the amount of iPads that she has, she doesn’t see the point of all of the photocopying of worksheets.  Instead, she offers a selection of electronic alternatives.  I’m sure her students and the school budget appreciate the move!

And, guess what?  Kristen is presenting at ECOO13 too!  Click the image to see her session.

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#edtech I.T. Management

There’s a price to be paid for upgrades and, unfortunately, that appears to be reliability for Tim King.  I love his analogy of running the Tour de France with training wheels.  Apparently, things aren’t going the way that he hoped.  In this blog post, he shares some of his frustrations and his thoughts about locked down computers getting in the road of technology use and adoption.

This is an issue that I can clearly see both sides of the fence.  IT Departments don’t lie awake at night trying to think of new ways to bugger things up.  Well, at least for the nine months I managed one, I didn’t!  The goal is to have happy clients that sit down, log in and address educational endeavours.  But now, with the technology abilities that students come with from home, can we really expect that a computer with a subset of abilities is going to be embraced?  And, if you have a situation with a student with her own laptop sitting next to a student who has a crippled machine, where are they going to collaborate?

It’s a tough call.  Tim offers some good insights from his perspective.  This is definitely worth a read.  Ironically, there was a dialog on Twitter about technicians and I did some research.  In industry, technicians are responsible for 20-30 machines.  Is that true in your school?

You got it!  Tim’s presenting at ECOO13 too.  In addition to a session of his own, Tim is one of the stations at the fabulous Minds on Media event.  Click on the image to see the Minds on Media session.

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A super duper awesome day!

This just in – Aviva Dunsiger tweeted out a link to her blog after I had written the above.  Through Twitter messages and pictures, it looked like a very constructive day in her classroom.

And, guess what?  She’s presenting at ECOO13 too.  Aviva is part of the Minds on Media team.

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