Welcome Back to School!

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Welcome back to school! Yes, it has been anywhere from five to nine weeks since school started, depending on what region of the country you are in, but things have been so busy that I am only now able to stop long enough to post! The summer was busy with developing processes for maintaining the backend technology at my school as well as developing a strong teacher training program, reviewing and evaluating the results of the previous school year's initiatives, and determining a process for creating a vision for technology for the school. As usual, the summer went by quickly and here we are: five weeks into the new school year.

An Update

My previous posts have included the mention of an iPad Pilot Program. I would like to offer a "report" of how that initiative fared.

We began the initiative with 15 iPads for an eight grade science class with as many students. The teacher of this class was very diligent about the use of iPads in her curriculum and made sure that it was the central tool for her course. The students used many science-specific apps like Pig Dissection, Chem Lab, and Quiz Chemistry, as well as some productivity and creation apps like Explain Everything and Evernote. I sat in on many classes and was witness to the excitement the students exuded when producing video explanations of the parts of the body or a chemical reaction. In the end, the pilot was a success. All of the 15 iPads we began with are still with us and in great condition! We used the ASVPP with one Apple ID so we still have all of the apps used last year to continue to use with this year's eight grade science class. In addition to continuing the Science 8 initiative, our middle school French teacher has been added and we are now exploring expanding the program to 6 more classes. We have graduated our classroom-sized pilot into a middle school pilot. A new adventure for a new school year.

Posts to come

I plan to continue to report on our iPad program this year. I am certain there will be a lot to learn from it. We have also begun a new initiative surrounding teacher development. The school administration has decided that integrating technology and supporting teachers as they learn to do this is so important that time has been allocated on their weekly schedule to devote to this endeavor. I have been meeting with every teacher weekly (our faculty is small enough for me to - barely - do this) to work on developing their technology and integration skills and knowledge. Again, I am certain there will be much to learn from this endeavor and I plan to update this blog with the progress. A third major project this year is the work of establishing a technology vision for the school. This is an exciting step forward as we think about and mold the future of our school.

So, please continue to read and I hope that you can glean something useful from the posts. As always, please share your comments, thoughts, and questions with me and other readers. Discussion is always welcome!

Thanks for reading!



Links to apps mentioned in this post:
Pig Dissection
Chem Lab
Quiz Chemistry
Explain Everything
Evernote