Year TWO of 1:1

Well... we're halfway through year two of 1:1 learning in my building.  I've learned a lot, the classroom teachers have learned a lot, and I know there is a lot more to learn.  The beautiful thing about my job is that I am learning new and exciting things all the time.  I love scrolling through my Twitter feed to find new things to try using the awesome technology that we have.

My school district is fortunate enough to have administration and school board members who are completely on board with where we are and where we are heading with technology.  We have Technology Integration Specialists (Ed Techs)

in every building K-8, which is 7 of us right now.  

When we first started there was only 4 of us because we rolled out 1:1 in our 3-5 buildings, one K-5 building, and one middle school building first.  This year we added both of our K-2 buildings and our other middle school.  Yes... we are 1:1 learning with Android tablets and Chromebooks K-7.  Next year we will be adding on our 8th grades.  

As Ed Techs, we meet about twice a month to plan professional development.  We provide professional development to our building classroom teachers twice a month.  We've slowed down a bit with giving the teachers new things to use in their classrooms.  We're focusing more now on giving them other ideas of things they can do using the tools they already use with the students.  We also started sharing ready-made activities that the teachers can use in literacy, math, science, or social studies using technology.

Over the past 3 weeks we piloted some Chromebooks in the school where I am, which is a 3-5 building.  Our main concern was the 3rd graders using the mouse pad.  They were awesome with the Chromebooks and absolutely loved them.  When we first went into the classroom, we showed them how to log in.  We just let them play around with the Chromebooks for about a 1/2 hour.  The following 2 weeks, we brought in the Chromebooks during literacy blocks so we could see them in small group instruction and independent work time.  The students did really well with them and really wanted to keep using them because of their ease of use.  I'm not sure when or if we'll make a change, but I think I see Chromebooks in our future.