Last week I had the chance to attend this symposium with a couple hundred of my IT and ET colleagues. It was a great event to network, learn and reflect on what we are doing in each of our districts.
Some of the things that I took away from this event:
1) Microsoft's Productivity and Future Vision
Is this what you see in the future? When, how far away are we? I know I leaned over to IT Darcy a number of times and asked him when I could get this in our classrooms! 2) Digital Citizenship: Tania Sterling (@taniasterling) was great. She shared this LiveBinder full of resources for digital citizenship in our schools. There were two ideas that I want to run with
Family Acceptable Use Agreement - Parents and students all sign them, but do they really know what they mean? I want to make a serious effort in engaging our parents in this conversation and education.
Students involved in PD - students may be our best resource as we navigate 21st century skills. It's time to enable and encourage them to become leaders. During upcoming PD sessions I would like to use students as facilitators.
3) Google - Only Google could fill a room with a sessions that starts at 7:45am!! The cloud seems to be the direction that PWSD is taking, although we still need to decide between Google Apps and Live@Edu, hopefully soon!
Google is in process of totally revamping Google Presentation, otherwise know as the ugly step child of Google Docs
Their motto is "Don't be Evil" when they look at doing things
20% on innovation, that is the rule for all Google employees. Each week one days is spent on something that is not work, can you imagine?
Will it stay free for education? Each mail box cost approximately $1 to create and maintain. Google charges business $50, keeping it free for education.
4) What are you most excited about in Alberta Education? (I will admit this was easier to answer before the budget announcement Thursday afternoon but...) I am most excited about the never ending possibilities there are in education right now. It is truly an exciting time to be involved in teaching and learning as it continues to evolve. More exciting are the amazing people that I get to work with and connect with. It is not dull and I feel like I have an amazing support system no matter what happens!
Darcy, Shelley and myself ventured down to Edmonton Wednesday for a meeting with Alberta Education and participating schools with regards to productivity and collaboration. Say what?!?!
Peace Wapiti is working on a productivity solution for students. We have lots of tools at our disposal to access our information. Both staff and students can use Ecommunity or MyDocuments, to have access to their files and assignments where ever they are. Teachers also have access to Citrix which allows them to work on their desktop and have access to programs like Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Alberta teachers also have access to preferential pricing for the office suite. We are missing this piece for students to have reasonable, inexpensive access to these tools.
Simply Live@Edu gives PWSD students access to Word, PowerPoint and OneNote in the cloud. This means you do not have to have these programs installed on your computer but rather just have an Internet connection for it to work. So students can be at home, the library, the mall or at school and have access to the documents and programs they need. It also offers some unique ways for students to collaborate on a document all at one time.
Currently Savanna , Harry Balfour and La Glace are working on this trial with us but we are always looking for interested teachers and classrooms. If you think this is something you would be interested in, please contact myself or Shelley and we will get your logins set up and provide some support to get you started!
