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Comment by Janice Friesen on February 21, 2009 at 2:57pm

Alice, Bob and Cheryl,

Thanks for the opportunity to participate in the show. It was a great experience. This community is really helpful in working to tie all of the exciting things happening with technology into the reality of day to day school life.

Janice

Comment by Bob Sprankle on February 20, 2009 at 5:33pm

Looks like folks are posting comments right here on the wall, rather than in the Discussion Forum part of the group (see above.... next to Alice's picture). This probably will work fine... Comments just won't be threaded.

What do y'all think?

Comment by Jenifer on February 20, 2009 at 4:11pm

So sorry I missed the show last night! Will check out the archive...

John Patten, At the risk of re-stating the obvious, a small bit of advice as you go 1:1...peer-to-peer professional development brings powerful results in spanning the user continuum from the fevertly excited geeky digital native &/or skillful immigrant to the if-I-touch-this-I'll-break-it (and who cares anyway)- print-based person, Changing hearts and minds as well as practice is best accomplished with enthusiastic, practical, humble hands-on, personally tailored support and/or careful external coaching. Just ask these SEEDlings! A careful re-read and consideration of the Concern'sBased Adoption Model (try here for starters http://www.nas.edu/rise/backg4a.htm) may give you some good food for thought...

Comment by Alice Barr on February 20, 2009 at 3:42pm

Janice and Ernie, it was great to have you join us via Skype for the first time. Technical problems aside, I thought it went pretty well and would be interested to hear what you thought. Chat room folks, YOU ARE AMAZING! I love how the conversation goes all different directions! Thanks you all! The show and chat are posted here.

Comment by John Patten on February 20, 2009 at 12:44pm

found the recording...been so, busy have had time to checkout many of my nings :-P

Comment by John Patten on February 20, 2009 at 12:40pm

Sorry I missed the show...are these archived somewhere so we can listen when we have time?

Looks like the topic was 1 to 1s....

We just in the process of implementing 1:1 in 16 of our 5th grade classrooms. Part of an EETT competitive grant we were awarded. Each of our 5th grade students in these classes will have an Asus EeePC 901, 16gb SSD, 1 GB RAM, etc., etc... We are configuring them right now. They are running Xandros Linux, and the suite of OpenSource applications that come with (StarOffice, etc.), in addition we're adding Scratch, Audacity, and iTalc. We're at the process of configuring each one right now, and one person can completely configure 96 computers and three carts in about a day. Laptop configuration is being done via 4GB flash drives. Teachers will be able reconfigure, if need be, saving user files, and restoring all apps via start up and specific function key combination. ...very nice feature, not very common on other netbooks.

We're still very early in the process, but everyone is excited to get their hands on them :-)

Comment by Jeff Bailey on February 20, 2009 at 9:35am

John Jaques,

We are a 1-1 iBook district in grades 7-12 and have been for a few years now. We are becoming an RSU and partnering with two other districts that don't have 1-1. I don't really know exactly "the plan" to bring the other districts up to an equitable level, but I have heard it goes a little something like this.

Our district has a pool of iBooks that were set to be replaced (they are at least 4 years old). Our pre-RSU budget proposal included the purchase of Macbooks for 2-3 grade levels. The old machines are planned to be reconditioned/refurbished and then distributed to the other two districts. I'm not sure that's the best plan but it seems a bit more practical than dividing out the current laptop fleet and diluting 1-1 to 1-2 or 1-3.

Again I'm not sure if this is the "official" plan, but it's what I've been hearing. I would be interested in knowing how other RSUs are dealing with inequities. Will there be more consideration of Open Source and Webapps to trim tech budgets?

Comment by Alice Barr on February 19, 2009 at 7:37pm

Hi John Tanner:
We did a show with Liz Kolb in October. She has done extensive work with using cell phones in the classroom and has written a book called Toys to Tools. She is a wealth of information and may have soem AUP information for you.

Comment by John Jaques on February 19, 2009 at 7:08pm

Anyone working on a new Maine RSU tech plan? Working on how to address imbalance across schools.

Comment by John Tanner on February 19, 2009 at 3:16pm

In my state Michigan we are working on district Technology Plans and I have had questions about upgrading district AUPs with language that accounts for cell phone use in classroom, use of Web 2.0 sites and balancing their access with school filtering...does anyone have any sites that can provide some current information on how AUPs are handling these issues? Glad to be part of Seedlings...