Giving students control

Something I have been learning along the way is to give students more control. Especially in our 1 to 1 tablet environment. Of course we leverage the students knowledge here at ASB with technology use and have them help us learn but I have seen some great things happen when you give them control to run things. At our 1 to 1 conference the Student Tech Crew was an integral part of the management of many different things. With some guidance and helping them to understand the outcome students can make things happen. However, it still means the adults need to be involved. In an interview in the School Administrator of Feb. 2008 between Daniel Pink and Thomas Friedman, Pink describes the teacher's role today, "Sifters, sorters, connectors, "yes but-ers." When students ask for your opinion a "no" answer will stop them dead in their tracks, a "yes" answer will empower them but a "yes-but" answer will help students reach their potential. Because we are able as teachers to sift, sort and help them connect information that will help the students move forward and surprise you. The MS Student Tech Crew had an idea to get information about tech use out to the MS community. They created a Tech Weekly magazine through collaborating in Google Docs. They got my opinion and through some yes-buting the first edition was well received!

Presenting what you know

"If you want to learn something, you need to teach it to someone else." Or create a presentation or workshop to your peers. We just finished a wonderful weekend hosting the first One to One Laptop Conference for International Schools at the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India. It was called ASB Unplugged and was focused on helping other international schools develop, begin, plan or start the conversations about a laptop program at their schools. It was a success on many fronts. The faculty from ASB presented many of the workshops based on their experience form the past 7 years of being in a one to one environment. While putting together the presentations for the workshops we reflected, discussed, researched and reevaluated the program we are delivering. We learned a lot about what we do here.

6th Grade and Tablets - Are you crazy?! What makes you think that 11 year olds can own and use their own tablet computers. We have been working hard to put many systems in place to support these students and overall we have been successfull. In the next couple of weeks I will be thinking about what we have done so to start planning our 2007-08 school year.

Global 20/20 Project

This will be an area to discuss the 20/20 Global Project on Global Warming. What is global warming? What causes it? What is being done about it?