New Frontiers
Last year, the Technology Vision Team (TVT) authored a vision for the future of Fairport schools in terms of learning in the 21st century. This vision has guided decisions made at the district, school and classroom levels.
This year the TVT, updated with a few new members and a structure to faciliate a living vision over the years to come, embarks on a path to update the vision and explore and examine a set of web-based learning tools. These tools will be explored through two lenses, from the personal/professional perspective and through the eyes of the classroom practitioner.
In addtion, as you already know by reading this, the TVT has a new home. Your work has lead to Fairport’s adoption of Wordpress blogging software installed locally on the district servers and maintained by the stellar ISC crew. Many thanks to the folks that set this software up, they are our “angels in the sky”.
Take a few minutes to poke around this site and provide your initial thoughts, hopes and suggestions in the comment section below.
This is also on my blog….I thought it would fit pretty well here as well….I had an opportunity to try out an Amazon Kindle last week thanks to Eileen Horak, a fifth grade teacher at Brooks Hill. It was a very cool little device, with the ability to hold 200 novels (even more with a SD card) and the ability to link via a network based on cell phone technology virtually anywhere. No “hotspot” needed. It comes with its own dictionary and access to Wikipedia.
It is a little bigger than your average size novel. It was easy to use and had some pretty cool features. My classroom was moved last year and I spent a majority of the time packing and unpacking books. There were 3 sets of dictionaries in my room left over from previous 5th grade teachers that had been there before me. It would be very cool to give each student a Kindle type device at the beginning of the year that had all their text books already loaded on. How many storage rooms are there currently in the district with shelves piled high with outdated books? Something to think about……
Also….many of you know that my son Luke is visually impaired. He is learning braille and amazes me everyday. One of the things we have struggled with as parents is finding a way for him to interact with peers on a level playing field. I discovered a video game developed for the Wii by engineers at the Singapore-MIT Gambit Gamelab called Audi Odyssey. It can also be played on a PC. You can link to it here http://gambit.mit.edu/loadgame. Look for the games developed in 2007.