paradise unplugged

… if you read the blog of one of my partners in crime yesterday, you know that I had one of those rare moments in time when I was on the verge of laughter or tears or both…when SH said “LG, I have some homework for you” my insides just collapsed and I felt myself paste a ‘team player’ attitude on my face. In the next few seconds my insides recovered sufficiently to begin screaming “I have enough work to send me completely round the twist and off for a little rest in the insane asylum!”

Then I heard some key words drift through … technology … more laptops …. more classes with computers … and then I couldn’t help myself … I

bugger!! now he knew I was keen and he was on a winner!! te he he

So now we take a huge step and blast off into new territory. And I chose the photo for this post quite intentionally … because in this leg of our journey a key to our success will be getting the groundwork done and done very well. Even Houston doesn’t achieve lift off unless so many obscure and minor details are in place at just the right time.

What?

People (teachers, techies, management, students, parents, sponsors) need to be on board, strapped in, excited, knowledgeable, with a clear vision of their part of the journey, eager to play their part in the team … but with a shared goal in mind.

It’s not about the ICT gadgetry; that’s the console that TFT will operate in mission control. It’s about the pedagogy that comes with shifting our teachers’ and learners’ positions in both time and space. It’s about us capitalising on each component of the staging of this learning and using that to propel us into the next phase. It’s about changing how we do what we are already doing well. It’s about keeping the reason for this journey clearly in mind.

And that reason is?

Facilitating the learning of our students so that they are lifelong learners with ubiquitous skills for the 21st Century world that awaits them.

That’s our payload for this journey.

…5, 4, 3, 2, 1, (Now, who has the map?? I do … )

Authoring and MultiMedia Task

LG sent me this the other day, and asked “any ideas? I had thought that we might use it for real in the MS Office in view of SH coming over to the twisted dark side…..”

So, this lead me to think about how we could achieve this. The Hardware side of things is easy, though we’ll have to get a Touch Screen from somewhere. How best do we get our students to come up with a solution to this. The biggest issue is making it stable, and easy to restart in the possible event of a crash or freeze.

My first thoughts were these:

There are 3 ways that come to mind that this could be done.

1. PowerPoint based application – probably a bit flaky
2. Web page shown in Kiosk mode – better option + easy to set up
3. Flash based using “Swish” or Adobe Flash (if it can be accessed). Swish is on the College Computers and I have flash on my Macbook. Also very easy to run as a Kiosk style appliance.

Yes, I think we could put one in MS. Would be a good demonstration tool of what we are about, using Technology created by our students in a “real world” situation.

How would you do it? What other options can you come up with? Lets see where this discussion can get us?