The Background In August 2008, I wrote my master's thesis petitioning school officials to abandon $6,000+ interactive whiteboards and instead invest in tablet PCs (remember the clunky, twisty screens HP and Dell introduced in the late 2000's?) with wireless radio frequency cards to project teacher notes for 1/6 of the cost. Then, in January 2010, Apple announced the berth of an entire new genre in computing when they introduced the iPad the world. Paired with Apple TV and a cheap projector, an ed-tech arms race began that is still growing and gaining traction. As of February 1, 2015, there were 4,446 teachers on www.donorschoose.com asking for community assistance in purchasing iPads for their classrooms. Grant writers, teachers, librarians, administrators, district officials, and parent teacher organizations have all been scrambling to find funding to put personal computing devices in the classroom. The emerging challenge is to develop strategies for integrating personal technology to enhance the educational experience of students. In 2008, I was trying to convince officials that these devices were the future and that to take advantage of the technology revolution of the day, the education community would have to set aside a long held tradition of making research-based decisions and start to innovating (regardless of the mess it would inevitably produce). Today, I work in a STEM school that does just that. As a 1-to-1 iPad school, every student and teacher in our building has an iPad and we are quickly shifting from costly interactive whiteboards to Apple TVs with televisions (a savings of nearly $4000 per classroom). There still are not a ton of resources for thriving in a 1-to-1 environment, but we are making strides. Shift Happened Now that the educational community has generally embraced the fact that personal technology is in the classroom for good, it is increasingly important that educational leaders quickly adapt to the new possibilities and start developing training that takes advantage of the global shifts that have occurred in the last decade. In a February 2015 Wired article, Chris Kohler explained that with a few recent releases, the three major video game manufactures have now officially ditched the TV requirement for gaming and are providing gamers with the ability to stream their games wirelessly to their personal devices from their consoles. This marks the end of a subtle technology shift that has been evolving since the iPhone was released in 2007. As the author notes, "(a recent study indicated that 2014) marked the first year in which Americans who own smartphones or tablets spent more time engaged with small screens than they did watching TV." This is a substantial shift.
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Michael StoneClick here to read about the blog's author. My BooksKeynotesCleveland Rotary Club
Innovating Education Through Community Partners NEA Foundation The Promise of Public Ed Leveraging Teacher Leadership to Increase STEM Education US Senate Briefing The Need for a National Organizing Body of Digital Fabrication NACCE California Symposium Scaling Innovation through Partnerships Volkswagen eLab Ribbon Cutting Why Digital Fabrication can't be an Option NSTA STEM Leadership Developing, Incubating, and Implementing Public/Private Partnerships that Matter Chattanooga Fab Institute Revolutionizing Learning through Digital Fabrication HCDE Future Ready Institute Launch Developing PBL Units with Business Partners STEM Fellows Celebration Community Partnerships for Teacher Leadership TSIN Summit Scaling Innovation in Schools Remake Learning Days Dig Fab in the Community America Achieves Public/Private Partnerships Panel DigiFabCon Chicago Digital Fabrication in the Modern Classroom Redesign for Student Success (San Diego) Scaling Innovation through Digital Fabrication GE Leadership Summit Leveraging Innovative Technologies for Learning Texas Open Innovation Emerging Innovations in Education Indiana University Authentic PBL FFT Leading & Learning Boston, MA Connecting Global Ed reMake Education Summit Keynote National Governor's Asc. Coding with Governors US Dept of Education Round Table with Secretary John King TSIN Summit K-12 Pathways for CS Google Headquarters Ed Foo NASA Headquarters K-12 Education Panel White House Reducing the Racial Gap in Computing Boston Museum of Science Teaching with Toys US Dept of Education MSP CS Proposition Archives
October 2018
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