In the Horizon Report’s write up of “Technologies to Watch,” I was fascinated to find many ideas applicable to our current school district, grade-wide curriculums, and student population.
The first notion of Mobile Computing, can be easily integrated through the utilization of the ever-present Smart Phone. The majority of our student body already carries these devices, and with the creation of our very own “Regional School District 17 App,” we will be able to connect with our students with even greater ease. This App will only add to what we already offer students through both our email system and our district website. Those students who do not own Smart Phones will not lose out to their peers who do own them. Rather, this will only create a unifying, mobile platform that we can hopefully one day all meet equally upon.
The concept of Open Content is something that is spreading through higher level education and can be easily integrated here as well. Sharing our curriculum, mission, methodology and lesson plans through an online file sharing network could easily link us to other school districts in the county and even the state. From there we can see where our students fall in comparison to their peers both on a state and local level. Hopefully this file sharing can reach a national and even global level one day as well.
Electronic Books are sweeping the country. Borders is going out of business and paper back books can only be purchased through online merchandising warehouses like Amazon and Half.com. Hard-copy text books have always been the bane of every student’s existence. Rather than continually re-modeling the book-bag, why don’t we re-model the book? Integrating electronic text books into our district curriculum through the pilot programs being offered by Apple and Amazon would allow us to avoid the physical ramifications of young students carrying heavy books, and also decrease the amount of waste we produce.
Simple Augmented Reality refers to those “applications for laptops and smart phones which overlay digital information onto the physical world quickly and easily.” Similar to what I mentioned earlier in regards to Mobile Computing, this level of technology would be delivered in the form of a district-wide Application that would allow students to access their course schedules, homework, rules, regulations, and district-wide announcements. Different portals could be created for each school, and even each classroom so that specialization could be ever-increased.
Gesture-Based Computing is something that we are going to integrate into our Physical Education curriculum at all levels. The monitoring of a child’s health through the use of various “gesture-based” games would allows us to have a more objective approach to evaluating child health. Various games can be implemented using these consoles (similar to Wi-Fitness and other devices), and then reports on the performance of different students in these games can be streamlined into one database that will be able to compile the data and evaluate with students are struggling in which areas of personal health and grow. The development of hand-eye coordination, more complex motor movements (for younger children), and varying activity levels can be managed through the use of these consoles and this technology.
More independent, project and problem-based learning can be easily implemented in the classroom through the use of Visual Data Analysis. This technology offers us a way of moving through large mines of data to better understand their value and meaning. Students could use this in almost any subject area. Multi-screen computing with emerging education-based programming would allow for any Art, Science or Social Studies student to interact with a painting they are studying, a chemical equation they are writing or an archeological dig they are uncovering.
Excellent post. I was particularly impressed with the level of familiarity that you seem to have with many of these technologies and the extent to which they are already in use at your school or just around thhe corner from that.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, you are absolutely correct about electronic books. The marketplace is making it clear where the future, or perhaps the present, lies and schools would be wise to adapt to this as soon as possible. You put it very well when you said that we should simply change the books rather than the bookbags.
I would be interested to know what the official stance of yur school is in all of this. Is the school leading this change or is it adapting to the changes that the students are presenting to it, i.e. their use of technology? Or is it a degree of both?